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"Defrancis Intermediate Chinese Reader" and "China Scene" Vocabuary Lists COMPLETED


ablindwatchmaker

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Third year Chinese at UT Austin? The Chinese program must have changed a lot there, when I visited in 2006, the textbooks for third year Chinese did not include China Scene and they were using very old editions of NPCR for the first and second year levels. Do you have the syllabus for the class using China Scene? I think you had two years of Chinese at Austin Community College. By the way I may be in Austin for a deafblind Christmas party next weekend, will PM you later today. 

 

I am going to take a look at your DeFrancis lists too. Many thanks for doing this. The DeFrancis and the China Scene were my big favorites for self study. 

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Yeah, they are now using "Integrated Chinese" for the first two years. For the 5th semester they use "A Trip to China" and then "China Scene" for the sixth. We have other classes outside of this but that is the core progression. Next semester I will be taking classical Chinese and probably another Chinese elective.

 

I have attached an old syllabus which is identical to the one we are currently using for "Chine Scene," but it doesn't have a lot of info.readings 2 syllabus.pdfreadings 2 syllabus.pdf

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks for sharing this!

 

I'm heading into my 6th semester of studying Chinese at uni and we're going to be using China Scene so you're vocab list will be a good preview of what is to come whilst I wait for my textbook. I didn't expect other students to be studying from it because from what I've seen it's a really thick textbook and it seems like a daunting task to go through all the content.

 

What did you like and dislike about it if you don't mind me asking?

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Exactly what you said. Thick and daunting. But that's because the whole book has the trad on the right page and simp on the left page, throughout the whole book. But I thought the content was remarkable in that it delved into adoption, funerals, etc topics that I did not see other texts even touch. 

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I really only have one complaint, and that is the lack of clarity with a few English translations. Every once in a while you will find a word with an English translation that is technically correct but doesn't honor the meaning within the context of the passage. At UT, we are required to translate all of the passages into grammatically correct English, and our teacher routinely corrects the translations that are based on the vocabulary list in the textbook. It's not that they are wrong, but they aren't always the most appropriate translations. That being said, this is a problem with all textbooks and the only reason I notice it as much with this one is because I am required to do precise translation. In the past, we weren't asked to do as much translation, so for all I know the other books weren't any better.

 

Well....Another is that the audio components and visual components are very expensive. I can't afford to buy them, but it would be really nice to have them. Right now, we are taking what was originally broadcast on television in the form of a documentary and only focus on reading and composition. I've always hated when classes omit listening components, but I guess the class is "Readings in Modern Chinese 2."

 

The book is great, overall. You will learn a ton of modern Chinese history, especially during and after 改革开放 in reasonably advanced prose, you will become familiar with many conventions used in classical Chinese and newspapers, and learn a lot of formal sentence patterns that will assist you in higher level writing. The class doesn't focus on colloquial Chinese much, but you will still get quite a bit of useful stuff from it.

 

If you ever need any help with any aspect of the book, let me know and I'd be more than happy to help. If you're interested in really learning the sentence patterns, I have created an Anki deck based on the sentence patterns, but I'm still uncertain as to the legality of posting it publicly, so you will need to PM me.

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