Grade 8: Acquiring Information

This sub-organizer contains the following sections:
Prescribed Learning Outcomes
Suggested Instructional Strategies
Suggested Assessment Strategies
Recommended Learning Resources

PRESCRIBED LEARNING OUTCOMES

It is expected that students will:

obtain specific information from age-appropriate Chinese-language resources to complete authentic tasks
convey acquired information in oral, visual, and written forms

To view the prescribed learning outcomes for Acquiring Information in other grades click on an icon below.

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

Students should be given opportunities to acquire specific information from various Chinese-language sources (e.g., radio, television, newspapers, magazines). It is important that tasks are simple and interesting to students at this grade level.

Suggest that students use a local bus schedule and plan a journey to a given destination, noting important arrival and departure times. Have them role-play leaving messages about their plans on friends' answering machines.
Have students read Chinese-language newspaper advertisements or flyers and then plan shopping lists and budgets for shopping. Students could also visit a Chinese marketplace.
Ask students to find out when and where Chinese or other movies are being shown and role-play making plans to meet friends to see one.
Show students slides of various famous sites in China and narrate the display in Chinese, giving key information. Ask each student to note the facts and record them in the form of booklets, posters, or pictorial displays with captions written in Chinese characters and Pinyin.
Invite students to watch a program of sports highlights reported in Chinese. Then have them record on charts key information such as scores, names of players, and nationalities of teams and players.
Ask students to use the Internet to access a Chinese web site. Have them download items of interest, add headings, and exchange findings with other class members.

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

Students most often demonstrate their skills in acquiring and using information when they perform integrated tasks that also involve communication and, in many cases, cultural issues. Effective assessment requires that students have opportunities to work with a range of appropriate written, visual, and media resources.

When students use bus schedules and newspaper advertisements, look for evidence that they are able to:
- locate familiar words
- use the context to support inferences about the information
- predict meaning by interpreting graphics and pictures
- use the information to make plans or give directions
As students work with information they have acquired, note the extent to which they:
- combine words and pictures to convey simple meaning
- organize their work to make it easy to follow
- try to make their work interesting and appealing by including details or using a variety of language patterns
- include Chinese characters (rather than relying exclusively on Pinyin)
- follow some of the patterns they have observed in Chinese materials
Work with students to develop criteria for assessing their use of Chinese-language audio or video resources (e.g., sports highlights, movie reviews). For example, students might be expected to recognize:
- main topics or events
- names of some of the people involved
- qualities or descriptions given of key people or events
- feelings associated with events (e.g., triumph, tragedy, disappointment)
- outcomes
- one or two new vocabulary items they want to learn

RECOMMENDED LEARNING RESOURCES

Print Material

Concise English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary (Oxford)

Video

Childhood of Wang Mian
The Dragon's Tongue Series
Tadpole and the Whale

Multimedia

Chinese Mandarin Resource Book - Volumes 1, 2, and 3
Zhongguotong

Last Modified: March 24, 1999

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