Designed to meet the ACTFL proficiency guidelines, Mastering Chinese through Global Debate uses level-specific scaffolded language exercises, rhetorical strategies, and topic-specific texts to develop sophisticated Chinese language skills with the goal of achieving Superior-level proficiency.

eTextbooks are now available through VitalSource.com!Mastering English through Global Debate brings together rhetorical traditions and the best practices of ESL instruction to facilitate superior-level proficiency in the English language. Each chapter addresses a rich topic of debate, providing students with a set of prereading activities, texts covering both sides of a debate topic, and postreading comprehension and lexical development exercises—all of which foster the language and critical thinking skills needed for successful debates. A rhetorical methods section in each chapter integrates language and practice and prepares students for end-of-chapter debates. Using debate to develop advanced competency in a second language is a method that is finding increased interest among instructors and students alike, in both synchronous online teaching and the individual classroom. Students are prepared to participate fully in debates with their classmates—at home, abroad, or both.

What do China’s scholars make of the nature of China’s global rise? And what is the significance of academic debates for Chinese policy goals and preferences? In this book, leading Chinese specialists outline how their colleagues are studying and interpreting different dimensions of China’s evolving global role, opening these Chinese language debates to a new audience. Collectively they show that while some ideas and ways of thinking are more prominent than others, there is no homogeneity of scholarship and no single conception of what China thinks and wants. Not only has the range of issue areas under discussion actually increased as China’s global role and impact has changed, but there also remains considerable diversity when it comes to thinking on what China can, might, and should try to do as a global power, and how China’s global role should be studied and theorized. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, The Pacific Review.

To Advanced Proficiency and Beyond: Theory and Methods for Developing Superior Second Language Ability addresses an important issue in Second Language Acquisition—how to help learners progress from Intermediate and Advanced proficiency to Superior and beyond. Due to the pressures of globalization, American society encounters an ever-increasing demand for speakers with advanced language abilities. This volume makes available cutting edge research on working memory and cognition and empirical studies of effective teaching. In addition it can serve as a practical handbook for seasoned and pre-professional instructors alike. The bringing together of the latest in second language acquisition theory, decades of empirical research, and practical classroom application makes for an unprecedented volume examining the achievement of Superior-level foreign language proficiency.

The three concepts mentioned in the title of this volume imply the contact between two or more literary phenomena; they are based on similarities that are related to a form of ‘travelling’ and imitation or adaptation of entire texts, genres, forms or contents. Transfer comprises all sorts of ‘travelling’, with translation as a major instrument of transferring literature across linguistic and cultural barriers. Transfer aims at the process of communication, starting with the source product and its cultural context and then highlighting the mediation by certain agents and institutions to end up with inclusion in the target culture. Reception lays its focus on the receiving culture, especially on critcism, reading, and interpretation. Translation, therefore, forms a major factor in reception with the general aim of reception studies being to reveal the wide spectrum of interpretations each text offers. Moreover, translations are the prime instrument in the distribution of literature across linguistic and cultural borders; thus, they pave the way for gaining prestige in the world of literature. The thirty-eight papers included in this volume and dedicated to research in this area were previously read at the ICLA conference 2016 in Vienna. They are ample proof that the field remains at the center of interest in Comparative Literature.

Developing Advanced Proficiency in Chinese through Debate provides lesson plans for holding high-level debates in the classroom. The lesson plans in this textbook were created based on the standards of the Oral Proficiency Interview held by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. These lesson plans train students in advanced language tasks such as giving thorough descriptions and narrations, comparing abstract concepts, and establishing hypotheses. The lesson plans in this textbook will train students in dialectical thinking and give them opportunities to improve their ability to summarize, make inductions, and contrast hypotheses. The debate topics of each lesson plan emphasize areas that are familiar to the lives and interests of Western students while still allowing them to engage with differences between Chinese and Western culture. The lesson plans address a wide range of topics, such as employment, financial management, psychoactive drugs, and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, every lesson plan includes material to help students practice listening and contains lesson-specific vocabulary, discussion questions, debate prompts, debate tactics, and grammar practices. Accompanying e-resources are available at https://advancedchinese.byu.edu/. This book is suitable for students who have acquired high levels of proficiency in Chinese or who have taken at least three years of college level study of Chinese as their second language. Teachers will also be able to use the structure of the lesson plans in this textbook to assist them as they design assessments for their students.

Since the start of the economic reform process in the 70s China has been able to generate a large volume of investment, both from domestic and foreign sources. This high volume of investment was instrumental in sustaining strong economic growth and related improvements in living standards.