The FSI Chinese Society Module (SOC) will provide you with the linguistic skills and cultural background information you need to visit a Chinese family, discuss some aspects of family life and society, to find out how someone's family fits into the pattern of traditional Chinese society, and how it reflects the changes of modern society.
Before starting this module, you must take and pass the MTG Criterion Test. In addition, it is assumed that by this point you will have already completed the optional modules Personal Welfare, Restaurant, and Hotel vocabulary from these modules is now considered taught.
The SOC Criterion Test will focus largely on this module, but material from the first six core modules and associated resource modules is also included.
OBJECTIVES
Upon successful completion of this
FSI Chinese Society Module, you should be able to
1. Give the English equivalent for any Chinese sentence in the SOC Reference Lists.
2. Say any Chinese sentence in the SOC Reference Lists when cued with its English equivalent.
3. Ask someone about the size of his family, which family members live at home, and where other family members live and why.
4. Use the rules of Chinese etiquette in social visits: the proper times for visiting; the custom of offering refreshments to visitors and the type of response expected from the visitor; and some polite ways to end a social visit.
5. Discuss the status, duties, and responsibilities of sons in the traditional Chinese family.
6. Discuss the different relationships within the Chinese family, especially those between parents and children, and between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
7. Explain why the large (extended) family was the ideal pattern in traditional Chinese society.
8. Use the proper-terms for referring to your own or someone else's children, and understand the terms for addressing one's children directly; use the terms for paternal grandparents; use the terms for the parents of one's friend.
9. Understand why early marriage was a common practice in traditional China.
10. Discuss the effects of the development of industry and business on traditional Chinese society.
11. Discuss the concept of filial obedience.
12. Compare the position of women in Chinese society before and after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
13. Discuss traditional marriage arrangements in China and the roles women were placed in as a result. Understand the government's policy toward marriage after 1949 and the actual changes that have occurred.
14. Explain and defend some of your personal views on topics such as equality of the sexes, the status of women, living together, marriage, parent-child relationships, care of the elderly, the effects of political and economic conditions on society, crime, and drug abuse.
You can find the other volumes of the FSI Chinese Basic course here:
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 1
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 2
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 3
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 4
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 5
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 6
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 8
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FSI Chinese - Standard Basic Course - Volume 9
Chinese is a group of related but in many cases mutually unintelligible language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many other ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world's population) speak some form of Chinese as their first language.
The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 960 million), followed by Wu (80 million), Yue (70 million) and Min (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.
Chinese Mandarin is spoken in: China
Chinese Mandarin is also called: Beifang Fangyan, Guanhua, Guoyu, Hanyu, Hoton, Huayu, Hui, Hui-Zu, Hytad, Kuoyu, Mandarin, Northern Chinese, Putonghua, Qotong, Standard Chinese, Xui
