Final Essay

Before going to USC for seminar on Gender and Generation in East Asia, I learned that there would be new changes to AP Chinese Language and Culture exam starting fall 2019 with these six themes: 1) Families in Different Societies; 2) The Influences of Language and Culture on Identity; 3) Influence of Beauty and Arts; 4) How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives; 5) Factors that impact the Quality of Life; 6) Environmental, Political and Societal Challenges. I was thinking and even struggling with what to do in teaching my students the what, the why, and the how for the new themes in my AP Chinese classroom. It was to my relief  that the seminar at USC's China-U.S. Institute shed some light on my curriculum and lesson planning. 

I come up with some ideas I can use for my AP Chinese class:

For the theme of “Families in Different Societies” in my AP Chinese class, I could introduce Ban Zhao’s “old standards” for women in simple Chinese (my students may have difficulty reading Ban Zhao’s  original Chinese text) about good women being) as 1) 不自大derived from 卑弱; 2) 先人后己(putting others before oneself) as good women such as Ban Zhao herself never lived a life of her own(i.e., selfless devotion to her family and emperor). However, Ban Zhao’s traditional “old standards” have changed over dynasties to today’s “hot mom standards” being “Women holding half the sky” and they can “be graceful in the living room, be skillful in the kitchen, kill a Trojan virus in their computer, find ways to decode stuff, drive a car, buy a decent house, win in battle with husband’s mistress and beat off a rascal(上得了厅堂，下得了厨房，杀得了木马，翻得了围墙，开得起汽车，买得起洋房，斗得过小三，打得过流氓). 

For the theme of “Environmental, Political and Societal Challenges” in my AP Chinese, I could show the students “Wondering Earth 流浪地球 Liúlàng dìqiú” with subtitles in Chinese and Engish. I could design my lessons around this movie for global warming causing the people of Earth having to build giant thrusters to move the planet out of orbit and sail to a new star system. After 2,500 years, young people continue the fight for everyone's survival. I can also combine the recent Shanghai trash sorting to lead my students to reading, speaking and discussing what Chinese people are currently doing for environmental protection. 

For the theme of “Influence of Beauty and Art” in my AP Chinese class, I could design activities that allow comparison and contrast of what makes a Chinese woman and Korean woman beautiful from ancient times to modern times, such as from ancient foot binding to contemporary plastic surgery.