我社区的故事
Wǒ shèqū de gùshi — IPA: Stories of My Community
The Grade 7 IPA. Students research, interview and present a real story from where they live — and for the first time the interpretive material is written for adults rather than children.
The three tasks
1. Interpretive — read an authentic short article about a community somewhere in the Chinese-speaking world, plus an audio clip. Show understanding of the gist, the key details, and one thing implied but not stated.
2. Interpersonal — an unrehearsed conversation comparing that community with their own. Both partners must ask as well as answer.
3. Presentational — a four-minute presentation telling one real story from their own community, in the past tense, with evidence.
What the year feeds in
- Narrating the past with connectors — Unit 1
- Describing how a place changed — Unit 2
- Stating a problem and proposing something — Unit 3
- Profiling a person with evidence — Unit 4
- Reporting on something that actually happened — Unit 5
What’s harder than Grade 6
Three things step up. The reading is written for adult native speakers, so the gap between what students know and what is on the page is wider. The conversation has no prepared topic list. And the presentation must be about something real that happened to someone else, told accurately — which removes the safety of writing about yourself, where you can always steer towards vocabulary you know.
Six lessons, one story
Read the authentic article
Adult-level text, with dictionary lookup allowed — which is itself a Grade 7 skill.
Listen and infer
An audio clip, then questions that go past the literal — what does the speaker think but not say?
Compare in conversation
Unrehearsed paired discussion. The prompt is handed out at the start of the lesson.
Find your story
Choosing something real and local, and gathering enough detail to tell it properly.
Build the presentation
Four minutes, past tense, with evidence. Notes only — no script.
Tell it
To the class, with two questions afterwards — answered unprepared, in Chinese.
Dictionary skill is part of the assessment
Looking up an unknown character is a real skill with three methods: handwriting recognition on a phone, pinyin search if you can guess the pronunciation, and radical-plus-stroke-count for something you can neither say nor write. That third method is why Grade 2’s radicals unit keeps earning its place — it is the only route into a genuinely unfamiliar character. Students should be taught to look things up efficiently rather than discouraged from looking things up at all.
End-of-year check
A student ready for Grade 8 can:
- Read about 720 characters
- Read a short authentic article with a dictionary
- Narrate a past event in connected paragraphs
- Keep an unrehearsed conversation going and recover when stuck
That last one — recovering rather than stopping — is the difference between Novice High and Intermediate Low, and it is what Grade 8 will push on.