Elementary Chinese
At the American School in Taichung, your child will be taught Chinese from the beginning of their elementary schooling. AST students work to develop a good command of all four language skills in Chinese: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Our students range from complete beginners to those with fully age-appropriate native-language literacy skills. To meet the learning needs of each student, the AST Chinese curriculum employs two paths: Chinese as a Native Language or Chinese as a Foreign Language.
Our students range from complete beginners to those with fully age-appropriate native-language literacy skills. To meet the learning needs of each student, the AST Chinese curriculum employs two paths: Chinese as a Native Language or Chinese as a Foreign Language.
Chinese as a Native Speaker (CNS)
Students who acquired Chinese as their first language at home and/or in schools where Traditional Chinese was the instructional medium, will participate in 45-minute Chinese classes a day. Within this pathway, the classroom language used by both teachers and students is Chinese. In the early grades, students will learn to spell, read and write phonetic symbols and get familiar with vocabulary and words. We also do picture book reading at the same time. The children will experience the joy of learning and reading Chinese. In the upper grades, the focus for students is to further develop their skills of analysis and evaluation using a variety of Chinese literary texts and to develop their practical and creative writing.
Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL)
This pathway is for students who are learning Chinese as an additional language. From an initial stage, the course places a greater emphasis on functional skills in listening, speaking and reading. Our curriculum is designed to help all language learners to perform highly in the class and also acquire the knowledge of Taiwanese culture.