Preface
Traditional Chinese Festivals is an e-book developed by the English Language Education Section, Curriculum Development Institute, Education Bureau, in support of the implementation of the English Language curriculum at the primary level.
Aims
Traditional Chinese Festivals aims to
- enhance students' reading skills, develop their multimodal literacy and promote reading across the curriculum through exposing them to reading texts on selected Chinese festivals and relevant short videos;
- promote positive values and attitudes, e.g. respect for elders and ancestors, caring and sharing, through enhancing students' understanding and appreciation of the tradition and culture of selected Chinese festivals, thereby cultivating their sense of national identity; and
- connect students' reading and writing experiences and develop their writing skills.
Content
Traditional Chinese Festivals introduces four Chinese festivals, namely Chinese New Year, the Ching Ming Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival. A core text about each festival and an extended text with additional information related to the festival are provided. Questions are set to help students develop reading skills and motivate them to learn more about the festival. The "Time to Think!" section supplemented with a relevant short video*, which features fascinating stories from China, provides opportunities for students to explore further, reflect, and share their thoughts. The writing task, in which students have to create and describe a new festival, connects their reading and writing experiences. To promote assessment as/for learning, students are required to conduct self-assessment upon completion of their writing and revise it, if necessary.
To develop students' multimodal literacy and self-directed learning capabilities, interactive features are incorporated in the e-book, e.g. the user-friendly layout design, navigation, embedded audio files for reading passages, answer-checking functions and prompts. Apart from descriptive texts about festivals, students are given exposure to other text types in this e-book, e.g. stories, recipes, diaries and emails, to enrich their reading experiences. Graphic organisers, such as flow charts, tables and Venn diagrams, are also included to help students organise and present ideas.
How can this e-book be used?
This e-book can be used in various ways. Teachers could select a festival in the e-book and integrate it into a teaching unit with a related theme, e.g. festivals, to help students develop reading skills as well as positive values and attitudes. The other festivals could be used for extended reading. Teachers could ask students to complete the related learning activities on their own to promote self-directed learning. Teachers could also provide opportunities for students to share their thoughts and learning experiences in class, and guide them to appreciate the tradition and culture of different Chinese festivals.
As for the writing task, teachers could adopt it as an extended activity of a related teaching unit. During the learning and teaching process, teachers could help students connect their reading and writing experiences, illustrate the features of a descriptive text about festivals, guide them to generate creative ideas for writing about a new festival, and conduct self-assessment upon completion of their writing.
*We are grateful to The China Current for the use of the videos on their website https://chinacurrent.com/.