Author Description

Step Up with Chinese is a ground-breaking Chinese language textbook for secondary students with little or no Chinese language background. It is designed by a team of experienced Chinese language educators and Chinese language specialists, in collaboration with the Cengage Learning Chinese Language Teaching Team based in Singapore. Step Up with Chinese is learner-friendly and task-centered. It is designed to progressively develop learners’ four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Instead of the traditional text-vocabulary-grammar approach, each unit is broken down into small chunks of patterns to learn and practise. This step-by-step approach helps students progress in stages, from bite-size tasks to lengthier and more complex assignments. Each lesson systematically builds upon vocabulary and sentence patterns learnt in the previous lessons. Step Up with Chinese is designed with a strong focus on communication, intercultural understanding, and connections with other key learning areas (KLAs), so that learning of the Chinese language is both authentic and interesting. In this Australian edition, references to Australia, be it places, people and culture are made throughout the series. The aim is to encourage students to use the target language to talk about ideas and experiences that they are familiar with, while maintaining a focus on the Chinese language and culture. This Australian edition aligns the learning goals of each chapter to the ACARA Australian Curriculum: Languages Chinese. Each textbook is designed to be covered in one academic year. The accompanying workbook features a wide variety of exercises d