CHNS3001 Chinese for NativeSpeakers 2

This research project aims to develop your critical thinking and research skills by drawing on empirical data. It requires you to organise a piece of mini research by library research and develop logic arguments with detailed support. First, you will identify a piece/sof high quality Chinese literary or media work that you have enjoyed reading for this project.

Second, you are expected to analyse some specific aspects of this piece of work in depth from critical perspectives and maintain coherence and consistency throughout the whole project. It is advised that it is your responsibility to select a topic of interest, identify the exact piece/s of work, search previous research on this work through a range of academic sources (esp. the Chinese database below) and develop your own findings/arguments based on the research under the close guidance of your tutor in this unit.

To complete this project, you need to do three assessment tasks on analysing the same Chinese literary work or media articles:

1)   a research proposal (5%) (due in Week 5)

2)   an oral presentation (15%) (due in multiple weeks from Week 6-13)

3)   a research project report (35%) (due in Week 13)

Detailed requirements for each task are listed below.

Research proposal

In Week 5 of the semester, you are required to submit a brief proposal for the research project in 200 words (i.e., about 300 Chinese characters). Prior to your research on the chosen topic, your proposal must be reviewed and approved by your tutor, who will provide detailed feedback and suggestion for your project. You need to list your primary and possible secondary data in the proposal.

Primary data: the text/s to be analysed for this project.

•    In this unit, only literary/non-literary work originally published in Chinese after May  4th  Movement (1919) or media articles published in the past 10 years can be used as primary data.

•    Please be noted that any texts discussed in the lectures and tutorials cannot be used as primary data for this project.

•   Also, translated work from other languages or works published earlier than 1919 cannot be used for this project.

Secondary data: previous research literature on the topic chosen or the texts to be analysed.

The following database fully available via the Fisher Library website would be extremely helpful for developing this project as the source of secondary data.

CAJ: China Academic Journal Full-text Database via CNKI

https://www.library.sydney.edu.au/browse/databases

The proposal should include

1)   preliminary title of the project

2)   primary data

3)   possible secondary data

4)   possible research focus or research question.

All the contents in the proposal can be amended or changed due to your further reading and thinking, but major changes to the primary data should be re-approved by your tutor. Samples of research proposal can be found in the Course Reader.

Oral presentation

This is the opportunity for you to share your research in progress with your teachers and peer classmates and to seek their feedback and suggestions. A 10-minute oral presentation plus 5-minute Q & A with preparation of around 10-12 PPT slides will start in the tutorial from Week 6. In the presentation, you are expected

- to demonstrate ability to establish and develop an argument and provide support for the argument by exploring relevant references from different sources.

- to do their presentation in an effective manner, especially in terms of delivery skills and audience engagement skills.

In the presentation, you are NOT expected to present a complete research project. You can just present your work in progress and let us know what you have done so far for this project. The teachers expect you to present clearly:

1)   your primary data

2)   your secondary data that you have collected from CAJ (China Academic Journal) Full- text Database and/or other sources

3)   the major aim or research focus of your project

4) the possible arguments you have developed and the key distinctions between these arguments and those in the previous research

5)   the details in support of your arguments.

Please the registration and scheduling for oral presentation will be opened in each tutorial group in Weeks 4 and 5. The students who choose to do their presentations in Weeks 6 and 7 will get a bonus point of 0.5 (for Week 6) and 0.25 (for Week 7) respectively. Please contact your tutor for details.

Research project report

The report needs to be completed in Week 13 with 2,000 English words or about 3,000 Chinese characters. Sample reports are available at the end of the Course Reader.

Subheadings can be added for each section. Possible sections can include

1)   introduction

2)   analysis

3)   discussion

4)   conclusion

5)   bibliography

The reference style should be APA 7th. A complete guideline for APA 7th  is available on the Canvas site in the module for Week 1.

Possible primary data

Each research project needs to be 2000 English words or about 3,000 Chinese characters. You can choose media articles from the following list or literary work from the Reading List on Canvas to work on for the project. It is also possible to choose any other piece of work    beyond these lists, subject to the teacher’s approval. You are encouraged to find your own  interest and develop the research by reading and thinking around your own interest.