Special course in Chinese: Reading Classical and Literary Chinese
- Course Code:
- 155901234
- Unit value:
- 1
- Taught in:
- Full Year
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of about 500-800 characters. Students will be given a placement test to determine level.Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
This course aims at enabling students to use Classical Chinese source material in a competent way in their research work. At the end of the course, a student should be able to:
- deal with grammatical problems of Classical Chinese,
- have developed a clear awareness of lexical differences between Classical Chinese and Modern Chinese,
- use traditional Chinese commentaries and glosses for clarification of problematic passages in the primary textual material,
- establish a reasonable contextual knowledge based on reference material and Chinese encyclopaedias.
Workload
Total of 20 weeks teaching with 3 hours classroom contact per week.Method of assessment
One three-hour written examination taken in May/June (70%); a short written report on a given research topic (5%) to be submitted on the last day of the penultimate week, term 1; a short written report on given research topic (5%) to be submitted on the last day of the penultimate week, term 2; an annotated English translation of a piece written in Classical or Literary Chinese (20%) to be submitted on the last day, week 1, term 3.Suggested reading
See reading list
