ProjectProject

What’re they?

Chinese characters.

the four treasures of the study

pictographs

万

How did Chinese characters develop?How did Chinese characters develop?

Read the article at p.38 and answer

questions.

1. How old is the Chinese writing?

Thousands of years.

2. Who invented Chinese characters?

Cang Jie.

3. How was Chinese writing invented?

Cang Jie saw the footprints of birds and

animals in the snow and he got the idea

that he could use different shapes or pic

tures to represent objects.

4. When did the Chinese government simp

lified characters?

In the 1950s.

1.The history of many Chinese words can be seen by looking at how their characters developed. 2.All the characters have been simplified

True or False

F

T

Some characters have been simplified and others have been made more complex over time.

3. All the characters are used to describe objects.

4. Pictographs indicate meanings and pronunciation.

Not allF

FThey do not show how they should be pronounced.

Please read the text carefully and find the answers to the questions

1.What does the Chinese language differ from western languages in?

In that Chinese language uses characters which have meanings and can stand alone as a word.

2.Why did Chinese people invent numerous characters?

They invented numerous characters to represent ideas, objects or actions

3.What were the very first Chinese characters?

The shapes or pictures.

4. Are the first real characters pictographs?

5. How did the Chinese character ‘mountain’ develop from drawings into standard forms?

Yes

The pictograph for a mountain was originally three peaks together. This became one peak and three lines and eventually turned into the character used today.

6.How was the Chinese character ‘rest’ was made ?

7.How was the character ‘prisoner’ formed?

By putting the characters for a man and a tree together.

The character ‘prisoner’ was formed with the symbol for a man inside a square.

8. How did pictophonetic characters combine?

They combined part of the character indicating meaning and the other showing sound.

Read the passage again and divide the

passage into several parts, then give the

main idea of each part.

Para. 1.

Para. 2.

Brief introduction of Chinese

characters.

The origins of Chinese

characters.

Para. 3-6

Para. 7-8

Form and development

of Chinese characters.

Pronunciation of Chinese

characters and simplified

Chinese characters.

differ from in that

over time as a whole

develop…into turn …

into this way in the

1950s

Useful expressions

Fill in the blanks with the phrases from

the box below.over time according to differ from

in that this way turn…into

as a whole develop …into1. Old English _____ greatly ____ the

modern English we use today.

differs from

2. Life on the island has changed

________ because of the growing

number of tourists who visit it

every year.

3. ____________ the tickets, the train

will leave at 8:30. We’d better

hurry to get to the station on time!

According to

over time

4. She said it was the teacher’s praise

and encouragement that ______ her

___ a good student.

5. Install this spell check software on

your computer. You will avoid

making spelling mistakes ________.

turned

into

this way

6. Considering your idea _________, I

think it will contribute significantly to

the development of the company.

However, it may cause some problems

as well.

7.I was lucky ______ I was able to find

what I wanted.

as a whole

in that

1. Do Parts B1 and B2 on page 93 in

workbook.

2. Do Parts D1 and D2 on page 95 in

workbook.

3. Review words and phrases in this

unit.

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