全球文化
Quánqiú wénhuà — Global Cultures
The independent research unit. Each student picks one place in the Chinese-speaking world and goes deep — using Chinese-language sources, and presenting findings that the rest of the class doesn’t already know.
Unit objectives
- Research a topic using at least two Chinese-language sources
- Summarise a source in their own words rather than copying it
- Present findings in five minutes with visuals
- Answer unprepared questions about their own research
Key vocabulary
全球 文化 研究 资料 历史 移民 方言 影响 特点 据说
Attributing what you read
Academic honesty has its own vocabulary, and this is where students meet it:
据说… it is said that…
根据… according to…
有人认为… some people think…
我发现… I found that…
One place, properly understood
Choose a place
Taipei, Penang, Singapore, Chengdu, San Francisco’s Chinatown — somewhere with a real Chinese-speaking community.
Finding sources
Searching in Chinese, judging what’s reliable, and coping with pages above their level.
Summarise, don’t copy
Reading a paragraph, closing it, and writing what it said — the core research skill.
Food, language, festival
Three concrete angles that always produce findings, whatever the place.
Build the presentation
Five minutes with visuals, structured around three findings rather than a list of facts.
Present & defend
Three questions from the audience, answered unprepared. The hardest part, and the most valuable.
Chinese communities that aren’t in China
Roughly fifty million people of Chinese descent live outside mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong — in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Peru, Canada, South Africa and dozens of other places, many for well over a century. Their Chinese often preserves older vocabulary, borrows local words, and may be Hokkien or Cantonese rather than Mandarin; their food evolved with local ingredients into something genuinely its own. Choosing one of these as a research subject tends to produce the most interesting presentations in the unit, precisely because nobody in the room can predict the findings.
Unit 3 progress check
A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:
- Did your child actually use Chinese-language sources?
- Is the summary in their own words?
- Could they answer a question they hadn’t prepared for?
Working from sources above their level is the point, not a problem. Partial understanding, honestly reported, is real research.