How to help kids' school Chinese exams? Curriculum and Chinese exams can be confusing because there are IB Mandarin B, AP Chinese Language and Culture, SAT II Chinese, GCSE, iGCSE Chinese. Here are some differences.
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IB, GCSE, AP, what are the differences?
They are different curricular/programmes used in different countries. They are also under different exam boards. To be short:
The International Baccalaureate® (IB) has four programmes[source]: PYP for children aged 3-12, MYP for students aged 11-16, DP for students 16-19, and the Career Related Programme.
TutorMing's new courses focus on the IBDP programme, and in "Group 2" when Chinese is a second language (Language B)[read more].
There are three levels of Chinese as a second language in IBDP:
Ab initio is supposed to be for total beginners, while Mandarin B is for students who have had some years of experience with Mandarin. However, they both are challenging (but achievable! :)
Here are 24 topics the course has to cover in 1.5 year DP programme:
Teachers usually wrap 2-5 topics into a unit. For example, Holiday, Transport, and Health are quite often combined into an unit.
Environmental concerns, Global issues, and Technology might not look like topics for beginners, but in IB exams they appear very often. All my abinitio students had no problems saying and writing "现在全球暖化，气候变迁，我们要减少碳排放量，减少一次性塑料。" (Nowadays due to global warming and climate changes, we need to reduce our carbon emissions and single use plastics. )
There are no prescribed topics in Mandarin B, instead there are 5 themes and optional topics in the guide:
Same as Ab initio, Global issues is a hard topic but they frequently show up!.
GCSE and iGCSE (international GCSE) are middle school programme equivalent to IBMYP. Chinese (Mandarin) is a common option of Modern Language subject in these schools.
Similar to IBMYP, iGCSE modern language Chinese has some topics it focuses on:
There are five areas to study: Everyday activities, Personal and social life, The world around us, The world of work, The international world. [source]
I feel the logic is similar to the Confucianism proverb: 修身, 齐家, 治国, 平天下. Which means to cultivate one's moral character --> to manage one's family --> then s/he can rule a country --> then s/he can pacify the world. Anyway, from ourselves to the world, iGCSE Chinese covers it all!
Related: English Idioms That Also Exist in Chinese
AP is a course/exam that American high school students can take before university and the credits can be counted into university credits.
SAT, SAT II and another exam called ACT are like Gaokao in China, which is a crucial exam students take to get into universities they prefer.
Related: What is Gaokao
However, the AP Chinese exam is more widely taken than SAT II Chinese. This is because not many universities require SAT Language grades in school applications. Although AP Chinese is difficult, students get good grades can still use them to apply for universities.
So, 6 themes. Each theme covers 6 topics.[source] I've never learnt or taught AP but I like it because of the number of 6 (6 is a super lucky number in Chinese!) Moreover, Beauty and Aesthetics is one of the 6 themes! As a female teacher I think I can talk about a lot under this theme!
Related: Chinese lucky numbers
I also noticed that the AP Chinese guide isn't just focusing on language, but also on the culture. Which is a great concept! A language is part of the culture and culture is part of the language!
Languages are languages, no matter which exams we are taking. Exam scores might enable us to reach our goals but you have to enjoy the learning the language as well. It can be the fun interaction, useful communication, new insight of different cultures, or linguistics, anything you feel interested in. That's the key to learn a language!
We hope this post is useful! I'm more familiar with IB curriculum than to others. If there're any mistakes, please comment!
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