Preface

This OER workbook, funded by Open Educational Resources at Michigan State University, aligns with the published OER textbook: Elementary Chinese I. Both the OER textbook and the workbook are designed for students to use, not teachers.

Through the power of H5P interactive activities, this workbook, employing an innovative e-writing approach, is designed to help beginning learners lay a solid foundation for the natural development of the Chinese language skills necessary to excel in their learning journey. At the heart of this method lies a focus on Chinese receptive skills that are essential for the development of communicative competences: listening and reading, seamlessly integrated with typing. This unique combination, unlike the traditional handwriting approach, not only fosters accuracy in listening and reading comprehension but also enhances their accurate pronunciation and typing in Chinese communication.

This workbook utilizes H5P interactive exercises to achieve the above goals. Each dialogue in this workbook contains four parts. The first part focuses on developing students’ Chinese listening and reading skills, coupled with typing exercises. Specifically, students start with basic character/word knowledge: they listen to simple Chinese characters or words, match what they hear with what they read, and then type what they hear. Then they proceed to listen to, read, and type longer phrases, sentences and even paragraphs. This progressive process scaffolds learning naturally and assists learners in making gradual progress in receptive skills. The use of H5P interactive activities allows learners to immerse in a gamified learning environment, which engages, challenges, and ultimately empowers them on their path to Chinese language proficiency. During the process, immediate feedback is provided. The second part helps learners practice listening and typing Chinese where they listen to sentences and type what they hear. The third part offers opportunities for learners to practice reading and typing Chinese. They start by recognizing and typing simple words and phrases and then gradually progress to recognizing and typing sentences and paragraphs. Their reading comprehension is assessed. The last part is dedicated to reading and speaking, where learners are required to be able to recognize key Chinese phrases or sentences and read them aloud.

This is a great resource for beginning Chinese learners to use inside and outside class. I would appreciate your suggestions on how to improve this workbook. I can be reached at zhouweny@msu.edu.