未来计划
Wèilái jìhuà — Future Plans
High school, careers, ambitions — talking about a life not yet lived. Grade 5 taught next week; this unit stretches the same structures across years, and adds the language of hoping and doubting.
Unit objectives
- Describe plans for the next five years
- Distinguish hoping, planning and expecting
- Use 如果…就… for hypothetical futures
- Discuss a career with reasons and doubts
Key vocabulary
未来 高中 大学 专业 职业 希望 梦想 机会 挑战 担心
Three degrees of certainty
我要上大学。 I’m going to university. — decided
我希望上大学。 I hope to go to university. — wanted, not settled
如果我上大学，我就学中文。 If I go to university, then I’ll study Chinese. — conditional
The third is the new one. 如果…就… is another paired connector, and the 就 is not optional.
A life not yet lived
Next year, next school
Concrete near-future plans — the transition they’re actually about to make.
Jobs and fields
Career vocabulary well beyond Grade 2’s community helpers, including jobs that didn’t exist twenty years ago.
Hope versus plan
The difference between what you intend and what you want — and why the distinction matters.
If… then…
Conditionals, practised on genuinely uncertain futures rather than invented ones.
What worries you
Naming doubts in Chinese — a surprisingly freeing lesson for fourteen-year-olds.
Five years from now
A three-minute presentation about where they hope to be, with reasons and honest uncertainty.
Whose decision is it?
Choices about university and career are commonly made with much heavier family involvement in Chinese families than many Western students expect — parents may have strong views on which subject is worth studying, and those views carry real weight rather than being advisory. This connects back to 孝 from Grade 5: obligation runs in both directions, and a family investing heavily in a child’s education expects a say. Students find this genuinely interesting to compare with how decisions get made at home — and the comparison works in both directions.
Unit 2 progress check
A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:
- Can your child describe a five-year plan in Chinese?
- Do they distinguish hoping from planning?
- Do they include 就 in a conditional sentence?
Not knowing what they want is a perfectly good answer — saying so in Chinese is harder than naming a career, and worth more.