The Students

In general, students at this level are motivated and committed learners. They have no problem expressing themselves in Chinese and reading lengthy articles in characters. However, students’ language levels might vary depending on their previous learning experiences. Some of them are solely PM trained, some major in Chinese in university; Some might have spent several years living in China, while some might have never been to China. Therefore, be prepared to teach students with diversified abilities.

Level 5 won’t have any grammar teaching; however, some students might still have grammar structure related questions. Students at this level love asking the teacher to compare and contrast similar words 同义词辨析. Be prepared. HSK 5 covers loads of Chinese idioms 成语and proverbs 俗语. Students are interested in learning those, however, how to use them appropriately is a big challenge for them. You can ask them to take it easy and do it step by step. For now, just understanding the meaning of those would be sufficient.

Most of them still have difficulty in understanding authentic videos in Chinese and assistance of Chinese or English subtitles would be greatly helpful.

They are interested in games and activities that allow them to express their opinions and ideas. They are interested in discussing current affairs related to Chinese society and culture. The teacher can bring in such elements by, for example, simply sharing with them the current popular internet slang 网络流行词.

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The Materials

Term Start & Term End

Term Start: Since students are rather vocal and would be eager to speak Chinese by this level, each term start for ice breaking, perhaps use small talk conversation cards, or other creative ways you can design to bring some energy and excitement to the class.

Term End: There is no assessment designed. We would suggest again giving students the chance to shine, asking them to make a presentation, asking them to do pretend interviews etc.

Each teaching PPT covers one Unit of the book, the PPT gives a flow already, similar to a teaching plan, please refer to the teaching plan sample for time control reference. There is material outside of the PPT that you can use to organise the activities. Each of the activities is designed to engage students with practising 听说读写, but all should be organised as student-centred 学生练. There is much less teaching 老师教 in this level, take a step back, take good control of the flow, give clear instructions to do each activity, and have fun talking with your students.

PPT 课件 & Activities

Close to 100% Chinese

讲来听听 – Warm-up questions to introduce the main topic of the lesson, it’s like 打开话匣子.

对话卡: 6 questions related to the theme of each lesson. You can use it in multiple ways at different stages of a lesson. For instance, they can be used as warm-up questions at the beginning of a lesson, or they can be used after done reading each lesson’s text. Students can be divided into small groups to answer different questions first. Later, a summary, compare and contrast of their answers can be encouraged to share in front of the whole class.

阅读理解: Because HSK text is rather long, if you ask your students to read it in one go, it will take too long and it’s exhausting. Instead, we tend to break them down to a few sections, ask students to read in pairs, answer the questions provided, learn the new words, before moving onto the next section.

复述课文- each slide contains several words selected from the sections divided. Students are asked to retell the story based on the words cue. It’s an effective way to revise words and a good output exercise after reading.

小翻译 –  A small paragraph for students to translate the article from English to Chinese either in class or as homework;

Practice

Practice

生词卡 & 看图说话: We intentionally bring in the new words introduction as games before the start of reading tasks. The 生词卡 contains new words from the lesson, but not all. Students can start to learn about them with games like 你说我猜, 看图说话。

PPT生词:  Each slide contains a new word, related or similar words, example sentences; bear in mind some students can’t read Hanzi, encourage the ones who can to read the sentences out, or teacher might have to help.

汉字 Bingo: The rule is that students cross the word after the command from the teacher and the first one who has a line wins. There are many ways you can use a Bingo sheet to help your students to recap each unit. 1）Bingo X Listening: The teacher will say a sentence in Chinese that contains the target word to see if students are able to capture the word in that sentence; the Teacher will say words one by one in English 2）Bingo X Sentence-Building: Within a limited time (one minute) to see how many words that students can use in their sentence. The more, the merrier.

汉字摩天轮: Teach will need to choose a few Hanzi from the lesson, for example, 常，and students to write down how many words they know use this Hanzi, like 经常，通常，常常 etc.

Liven Up

Quizlet: online Quizlet flashcards created for each lesson. You can click the “live” function and let students play against each other in class as a way to end a lesson. You can also assign it as homework. Be careful, to play Quizlet, students need to use their own device connected to internet. Also, try the Quizlet link provided before class and make sure it works for you.

问题大挑战: 12 questions regarding vocabulary, useful expressions and topic of each lesson. It’s again a quick listen and answer game, and it’s a much-loved game by PM students. Again, you can organise it S to S, or T to S. Bells and penalty cards are also available to pick up from the head office to make the game more fun.

Board games or any other games: from time to time, you will need to bring in games to play in the lesson, to make your students interested and engaged. Think about what games or activities you could have played with your friends, and bring them to class, treat your students like your friends! Some teachers even 包汤圆 with the students!

For this level, we didn’t make original videos for them. Since students might be able to understand a bigger part of an original Chinese video. So we can source these videos online.

辩论会:   Find some material about a controversial topic, after that, students might have opinion of their own, organise them into two opposite parts to have a debate, the teacher should be the 主持人 in this section.

中文剧场: YouTube videos related to the topic of each lesson, usually with Chinese/English subtitles available. It is a great way to consolidate and expand students’ vocabulary on a specific topic. It can be used as a cue for classroom discussion or homework. These videos are also available with additional script tools in our E-learning platform.

对话小剧场: Our idea is to let students watch a famous TV or movie scene, it could be in English. After watching the students can act out the characters, but of course speaking in Chinese!

写作会: Ask students to write an article as homework and the teacher will provide feedback to each student;

Online Videos

Output

写作会或辩论会: Ask students to write an article as homework and the teacher will provide feedback to each student.

阅读会: send some interesting online articles for students to read and talk about in the following lesson.

As you can see, there are loads of teaching resources available in each lesson. Feel free to mix and match and organise the teaching flow the way you find suitable for students’ language level and learning ability. Also, each lesson’s teaching flow does not always need to be the same. The diversified formats can bring more excitement and fun to the classroom.

As Chinese teachers, we need to continuously develop our subject knowledge regarding the Chinese language and culture. This is especially prominent for our HSK 5 and HSK 6 teachers. I summarise five aspects that we need to pay special attention to 1) English and Chinese vocabulary – students often ask “XX用中文怎么说？.” From this level on, some of the words they ask can be really hard. Being able to consistently answer their questions regarding this can help you to win their respect as a subject expert; 2) Grammar – although grammar is not taught in this level, they still have many questions regarding it; 3) Chinese idioms 成语, proverbs 俗语 and their stories behind. For instance, do you know the story behind the expression “炒鱿鱼？” 4) New expressions and internet slang 热词和网络流行词 – update our vocabulary and keep it up with the new trends, for instance, what is “凡尔赛?” 5) Current affairs 时事 – read Chinese news and keep up with the new societal and cultural changes and trends, for instance, what is “双减政策?”

To bring excitement to students, for HSK 5 onward classes, it’s highly recommended to use some English boardgames, by just changing the language.

Games like Chameleon, Codename we have in the headoffice, feel free to suggest buying new games!

It’s proven to be much loved by students, who don’t want to play and learn at the same time?