Chinese 431 Advanced Conversation

Mid-Term Project

Due 4/4/06 (Tuesday)

As you may or may not have noticed on the syllabus, there is both a mid-term and a final for the course (15% and 15% of the course grade respectively). Both are take-home projects.

As the mid-term is a test, you will not have an opportunity to practice with partners and present in class; nor will you be getting feedback before the recording. But you already have all the feedback you need, due to the nature of the mid-term.

The mid-term is a combination of the first two projects we did, namely, self-introduction and description of one’s hometown. Instead of introducing someone else and describing someone else’ hometown, as we did earlier, this time you are to introduce yourself and describe your own hometown.

Obviously, 5 minutes is not going to be enough. I think 7 or 8 minutes is a good, manageable length.

I will mostly be looking for improvement and the incorporation of feedback. Since we start at different levels, I am not going to grade with one single standard. Rather I will be comparing your starting level with your current level.

As feedback is of paramount importance, you should incorporate all the feedback I have given you both in class and for your recordings. Make a checklist of the things to correct.

You should write out the mid-term, for the purpose of polishing/editing. You can annotate it with pinyin and mark the tones (Njstar has a pinyin conversion function, but sometimes the pinyin can be misleading as the same character may have different sounds) to better produce them. You can also use the draft to edit out word choice mistakes and grammatical errors. But your recording should still sound natural and not reading of script. Please submit your script along with your recording.

Obviously, you should listen to your earlier recordings again (I hope you did not erase them) and see if you can find all the errors I noticed. The first step of correcting a mistake is to know that it exists! If you cannot find the problems, I will help you find them. You can also elicit the help of your classmates/friends.

Good luck!