Discovering Chinese series is for the beginning young adult with no prior exposure to Chinese. This 4-volume, 48-lesson curriculum builds student’s understanding of Chinese language and culture with themes and subjects that are relevant to their daily lives. Through 12 lessons per volume, students will build their language skills at the SAT 2 level, while becoming acquainted with relevant Chinese cultural lessons such as idioms, origins of Chinese characters, and typing Chinese characters. High-quality situational illustrations and online lessons make learning fun and effective, while the review of previously-learned material, both within volumes and between series, ensures long-term language retention.
Discovering Chinese series has been adopted by the Department of Education in the following states:
-Georgia
-Idaho
-Oklahoma
-Tennessee
-Utah
-West Virginia
-North Carolina
-Texas
Online Learning: Students, parents, and teachers can utilize Better Chinese Online Group Accounts to extend Chinese learning beyond the classroom. Students have a chance to review what they have learned in the classroom, and enjoy additional fun ways of learning Chinese, like our 1400+ animated stories, voice recorders, and writing pad. Parents can keep abreast of their students' progress by following the teacher's lesson plans. Teachers can monitor students progress, communicate with students via the message board, and assign homework or stories with a push of a button. The online resources correspond with our curricular series and overall, helps students develop their literacy skills by creating an immersive context for language learning.
Online Lesson Planner: Allowing teachers to automatically create customized class syllabi for daily classes as well for the entire academic year using content from the Teacher's Guide and other Better Chinese teaching resources such as worksheets, writing sheets, assessments, and homework, the Online Lesson Planner helps teachers plan, share, manage and record daily lessons in a matter of minutes.
Supportive Teacher/Parent’s Guide: Focusing on interpersonal, interpretational, and presentational skills, the teacher’s guide includes task-based assessments for lesson planning and goal setting.
Additional Learning Tools: Flash cards, other level-appropriate story CD-ROMs, supplementary books and online stories further facilitate and enhance Chinese language and cultural knowledge.
*Note: Discovering Chinese Series come with Traditional or Simplified Characters and Pinyin.
Please contact us for Group Licensing for online materials
Discovering Chinese is designed for middle to high school students at the beginner level. The spiral-up approach allows students to review past lessons as they advance through the volumes in the series! (Lessons in Discovering Chinese parallel the lesson progress in My First Chinese Reader, so students who began their Chinese learning with the My First Chinese Reader series can easily switch to Discovering Chinese once they enter middle school. ) Discovering Chinese is currently used in 200+ schools.
For daily lessons/sessions (1-hour per session): Educators are recommended to teach 1 lesson per school week. Each volume contains 12 lessons. We recommend middle school students to complete each volume in 1 academic year (approximately 32 weeks) with teachers supplementing additional cultural and extracurricular learning, such as Chinese Festivals, Chinese Yo-Yo, Chinese Hockey Sack, etc. For high school students, we recommend students to complete each volume in 1 academic semester with additional cultural activities and learning.
For fewer than 2 weekly sessions: In learning environments in which students have 2 or less sessions per week, teachers are recommended to complete 1 lesson in 2-3 weeks with additional cultural activities and learning. This series is recommended for 1 to 2+ academic years depending on learning objectives and goals.
