Instructor: Jingjing Ao (Lector of Chinese, East Asian Languages and Literatures)
Target language: Chinese
Level: Any (the activity described below is designed for Intermediate Chinese courses for non-heritage learners)
Objective addressed: Using the target language to describe a person
Summary:
In this 15-minute task-based activity, students practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills through an integrated digital task that uses E-writing methods (such as typing Chinese characters and voice input). The goal is to help students apply vocabulary and grammar patterns in a real-life communicative context—introducing a person—while strengthening their descriptive language abilities in a practical, meaningful, and engaging way.
The activity also serves as a lesson wrap-up, allowing students to review vocabulary and sentence patterns, apply what they have learned, and refine their accuracy and fluency through multimodal interaction.
Task: Introduce a date to your friend
Instructions:
- Interview (Speaking, Listening & E-Writing – 5 minutes)
Ask your classmates about their ideal partner. Include details such as appearance, height, body figure, clothing style, personality, school, and other features. Take notes in Chinese as they answer. - Write (E-Writing – 5 minutes)
Organize your notes and write a short paragraph introducing your friend’s ideal partner using the target language. - Generate and Share (Voice Input & E-Writing – 2 minutes)
Read your paragraph aloud to ChatGPT and ask it to generate an image based on your description. Upload both your written paragraph and the generated picture to Padlet. Focus on pronunciation accuracy during voice input. - Interact (Reading & E-Writing – 3 minutes)
Read and comment on your classmates’ posts. If an image does not match the written description, suggest edits to make the text more accurate. Then, revise and read the updated description to ChatGPT to regenerate the image.
