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Middle School
MS Curriculum
Modern Languages
Middle School students may choose from among French, Spanish, Chinese and Latin for their foreign-language instruction.
By studying a modern language over a three-year period, Middle School students build a strong foundation for future work. During this early period, they are also exposed to the cultures associated with the language studied. More importantly, they develop their oral skills at a time when they are developmentally ready to assimilate oral techniques with ease. Students who complete the three-year modern language sequence in the eighth grade are given a minimum of one year of credit toward the Upper School language requirement.
Chinese Courses
List of 3 items.
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Chinese 6
This introductory course is for those students who wish to begin their study of the Mandarin dialect of Chinese in the Middle School. In the early stage of the course, students will learn to read and write pinyin (the phonetic representation of Chinese sounds), and will then move on to learning the techniques of writing simplified Chinese characters and recognizing different structures of character composition and their radicals. By year’s end they will learn to write or recognize about 125 characters.
The approach will be thematic, and new material will be incorporated by means of basic conversations and simple texts. Elements of Chinese culture will be integrated into the course. A textbook and interactive website will form the central core of the course, supplemented by audio-visual and web-based resources, which will be used for home and class work. -
Chinese 7
This is the second course in the three-year Middle School sequence of Chinese language study. Students will continue developing the skills that were established in Chinese 6, with more complex conversational and grammatical forms introduced at a faster pace. Basic pinyin, character writing and grammatical structures are reviewed when new units are introduced, enabling students to solidify their prior knowledge of the Chinese language while learning new material. By year’s end, students will learn to write or recognize approximately 150 additional characters and will know how to input characters electronically for presentations and correspondence.
Students will expand their basic communication skills through speaking tasks and will read and write short passages on familiar and personal topics. Chinese history and culture will continue to be introduced to help students develop a broader understanding and appreciation for their study of the language. A textbook and interactive website will form the central core of the course, supplemented by audio-visual and web-based resources, which will be used for home and class work.