LN821
Mandarin: Level 5 (Legal Issues)
This information is for the 2018/19 session.
Teacher responsible
Dr Lijing Shi Pethick-Lawrence House, 6.01H
Ms Hongyi Xin Pethick-Lawrence House, 6.01G
Pre-requisites
Students must have completed Mandarin: Level 5 (Standard) (LN719).
Student should have successfully completed LSE Level 5 or have reached high proficiency level of Chinese. They are expected to be able to communicate on rather complicated non-routine topics and recognise around 3000 characters.
Course content
COURSE AIM:
The linguistic focus will continue to advance the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, meanwhile helping the students to gain substantial knowledge into vocabulary, syntactic structures and pragmatic usages widely used in legal discourse. It features the general introduction into Chinas legal system and its legal professions, with particular emphasis on Chinese civil and commercial laws. Authentic legal documents will be introduced extensively.
The course will enhance the students Chinese skills in legal contexts so as to prepare them for successful participation in their future professional communication.
COMMUNICATIVE CONTENT: The course is focused on the following communicative functions:
Participating in discussion
Logical argument
Interaction/Exchange specific information in legal context
Communication in legal context
Reading and summarizing complex legal texts
Writing letters, report and documents with legal elements
Using language strategies to cope with specialized topics: i.e. law, business, politics and current issues.
STRUCTURAL CONTENT: This course will focus on the following grammatical areas:
Mandarin pronunciation: Pinyin and tones
Simplified characters
Chinese advanced grammar review
Specific grammatical aspects of topical texts
Relevant grammatical issues for advanced and specialized communication
Attributives
Adverbials
Appositives
Regular group or individual translation of legal works
Reading and summarizing complex legal texts
Advanced language tasks with reference to case studies
Advanced language tasks with reference to Contemporary Chinese laws
Reading comprehension
Oral presentation
The course will introduce 350 words used in legal discourse.
It will bring students to level C2 of CEFR.
Teaching
8 hours of workshops in the MT. 11 hours of workshops in the LT. 1 hour of workshops in the ST.
Formative coursework
Students will be expected to produce 6 pieces of coursework in the MT and LT.
Indicative reading
中国法律专业汉语教程 北京大学出版社 第1版 (2007年2月1日) ISBN: 7301116462
条形码: 9787301116463
法律汉语 -商事篇 张泰平 北京大学出版社 ISBN:978-7-301-13109-1
William C Jones "Basic Principles of Civil Law In China" published by ME Sharpe. Inc.
Websites:
www.civillaw.com.cn 中国民商法律网
http://www.88148.com/ 中国法律
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/dictionary.php?word=%E5%9A%B7&cache=21961
Dictionary on yellow bridge
Assessment
Continuous assessment (70%) in the MT, LT and ST.
Oral examination (30%) in the LT.
Key facts
Department: Language Studies
Total students 2017/18: 8
Average class size 2017/18: 7
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Specialist skills