Resident characters are used throughout Discover China for the presentation of new language. They play a functional role in providing a basic communicative context for language presentation.
Pre-listening activities are designed to provide focus and situational context for each unit. Pre-teaching of key words familiarizes students with thematic vocabulary as well as linking learners’ prior knowledge to the language points of the unit.
Meaningful, authentic conversations are role-played by the resident characters and link the new language presented to the theme of the unit. These dialogues present the new vocabulary and grammar of the unit in a natural context.
Pre-reading activities are designed to activate students’ background knowledge and schema in regards to the text topic. Target keywords are pre-taught to prepare students for the main reading task.
Reading texts cover a wide range of text types relevant to learners, such as diaries, text messages, thought maps and blogs. Depth of topic coverage progresses at a controlled pace from short, simple text types to substantially longer, more sophisticated reading.
In the Writing section, students are taught how to write the most frequent characters. To allow flexibility and further development of character writing skills, the Workbook provides extended character practice of new words presented for recognition purposes in the Student Book. Activities focus on the most commonly used characters, linking to the unit theme and to existing vocabulary with shared radicals.
