This project is to make listening materials and worksheets through blackboard for 1 st Year Chinese students. The materials are based on the textbook by P.C.T’ung & D.E.Pollard (1st-Year foundation coursebook). The materials consist of three parts for each chapter: Sentences; Dialogues; Passages. For each part, the students have the access to the audio files, worksheets and word documents.

Part I: The Sentences are based on the new grammars and vocabularies of each chapter;

Part II: Dialogues are to use the vocabularies to create situational conversations;

Part III: Passages are for practising listening comprehension and introducing some formal writings.

All the materials are closely followed the textbook, which have been used in and out the classroom throughout the academic year. The extra vocabularies will up-grade the old textbook and the students can learn in an authentic way.

The blackboard offers the learners to study themselves whenever or wherever they need. The access to the blackboard creates the learning environment for the students to study Chinese outside China. The students can use the materials in different ways to practise their listening comprehension skills, to do readings, to do translation exercises, to practise the grammars or to check the answers.The materials offered on the blackboard are used for the individual needs with individual pace outside the classroom. The blackboard has made it possible to maintain the high teaching quality although the students’ number doubled in recent years.

Elementary Chinese Listening is systematically designed for the teaching of listening to first Year BA Chinese students who are absolute beginners and advanced beginners in the Department of Languages and Cultures of China and Inner Asia at SOAS, University of London. It is particularly used in the Language Lab Class to develop learners’ linguistic and communicative competence throughout the whole of the first academic year. The language functions and linguistic knowledge are closely related to the teaching programme of the BA Chinese course on one hand, and to provide some of the latest useful vocabulary and expressions in the target language on the other hand. The listening materials include aural and visual still and moving pictures. Visual materials with various Chinese native speakers using the target language in an authentic language environment will help learners both to learn and to understand effectively the target language and Chinese culture.

Twenty-three lessons are designed to be used for twenty-three available teaching weeks and each week includes three hours of teaching lessons. Each of the twenty-three lessons has four stages, which focus on certain linguistic forms and language functions and is followed by exercises designed to integrate receptive and productive skills. The learners’ listening skills will be improved by completing various tasks.

The aural and visual materials aim to shorten the distance between classroom language teaching and society outside the class and to provide opportunities for students to develop their language sub-skills, e.g. to use existing information to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words with communicative value, to understand utterances made by different Chinese native speakers in normal speaking speed with authentic background The exercise sheet and transcript are in full-form characters and simplified characters to serve the students’ needs. Sheet for different tasks is distributed in Language Lab Class. The visual material provides learners with target language culture and language background in order to see how Chinese native speakers use language in real communication, for example: exchanging information, seeing a doctor, interviewing people, shopping, etc.

This project will develop a description of and resources for a Performance Approach to language learning. In this approach, performance is both a primary learning activity and a primary goal. A range of simple and concrete activities are used, together with group preparation and presentation of an original piece of drama. Audio and video technologies are used to extend the value of the activities.

Performance continually builds up the learners' repertoire (of all skills, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary) in layers. The approach is especially effective for rapid, measurable learning, for creating new learning resources along the way, for developing language functions such as modality and expressing emotion, and for developing real and effective
communicative ability.