Grade 7 · Unit 4 · 故事与社区

日常英雄
Rìcháng yīngxióng — Everyday Heroes

Students profile a real person — someone unfamous who does something worth noticing. Interview, write, present. It’s the first time the Chinese they produce is about someone rather than about themselves.

⏳ 6 lessons · ~45 min each ✎ 28 new characters 🎤 Interview project

Unit objectives

  • Write six good interview questions in Chinese
  • Describe someone’s character and what they do, with evidence
  • Narrate another person’s life in the third person, in the past
  • Present a profile of two to three minutes

Key vocabulary

英雄yīngxióng · hero 采访cǎifǎng · to interview 贡献gòngxiàn · contribution 努力nǔlì · to work hard 愿意yuànyì · willing to 帮助别人bāngzhù biéren 团队tuánduì · team 坚持jiānchí · to persist 例子lìzi · example 勇敢yǐnggǎn · brave

Claim plus evidence

A profile that only asserts things is weak in any language. This unit insists on the second sentence:

她很关心别人。 She cares about others. — a claim

例如，她每个星期六都去帮助邻居。 For example, every Saturday she goes to help her neighbours.

In this unit

Six lessons, one real person

🤝
Lesson 1 · ~45 min

What makes a hero?

Discussion in Chinese about whether heroism requires drama. Most conclude it doesn’t.

❓
Lesson 2 · ~45 min

Writing good questions

Open questions beat yes/no ones. Students draft six and test them on each other first.

🎤
Lesson 3 · ~45 min

Do the interview

Conducted outside class. In Chinese where possible; in any language where not.

📝
Lesson 4 · ~45 min

Turn notes into prose

Third-person narration in the past — Unit 1’s connectors doing exactly what they were learned for.

🔍
Lesson 5 · ~45 min

Add the evidence

Every claim gets a 例如 sentence under it. Drafts are revised, not just finished.

📣
Lesson 6 · ~45 min

Present the profile

Two to three minutes, with a photo. Audience asks one question in Chinese.

For the adult in the room

The interview doesn’t have to be in Chinese

Where a Chinese-speaking community member is available and willing, interviewing them is the richest version of this unit. But it works perfectly well with any interviewee — a grandparent, a coach, a neighbour, the school caretaker. The Chinese lives in the questions drafted beforehand, the write-up, and the presentation. What the unit is really teaching is that a second language is a tool for finding out about other people, not just for describing yourself, and that lesson survives an English-language interview intact.

Unit 4 progress check

A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:

  • Did your child write open questions rather than yes/no ones?
  • Does every claim in the profile have evidence under it?
  • Can they talk about someone else in the past tense fluently?

Third-person past narration is genuinely harder than first-person. Expect more slips here than in Unit 1.