Praise for Interactions I & II: "Practical and lively without neglecting the structure and the writing system. The workbook is especially interesting and helpful." —Chauncey C. Chu, University of Florida ". . . by far the best first-year textbooks available." —Sabina Knight, Smith College Connections I & II is the second-year sequence to accompany the enormously popular introductory texts Interactions I & II by Margaret Yan and Jennifer Li-chia Liu. This innovative system makes learning Chinese an interactive, cognitive process rather than a matter of simple rote or drill. Connections is designed to offer intermediate learners of Chinese a complete set of learning tools to improve their language skills and enhance their understanding of Chinese culture and society. Lesson topics revolve around everyday themes and real-world communication among four central characters—a mainland Chinese, a Taiwanese, a Chinese American, and a non-Chinese American—familiar to students using Interactions. Each 10-chapter volume is accompanied by a workbook. Chapters include sections on vocabulary, text, mini-dialogue, characters, grammar, and culture notes, accompanied by engaging graphics. Connections also includes stories and songs, and makes use of a wide variety of texts such as narrative, dialogue, journal entries, riddles, jokes, news headlines, and lyrics.

Praise for Interactions I & II: "Practical and lively without neglecting the structure and the writing system. The workbook is especially interesting and helpful." —Chauncey C. Chu, University of Florida ". . . by far the best first-year textbooks available." —Sabina Knight, Smith College Connections I & II is the second-year sequence to accompany the enormously popular introductory texts Interactions I & II by Margaret Yan and Jennifer Li-chia Liu. This innovative system makes learning Chinese an interactive, cognitive process rather than a matter of simple rote or drill. Connections is designed to offer intermediate learners of Chinese a complete set of learning tools to improve their language skills and enhance their understanding of Chinese culture and society. Lesson topics revolve around everyday themes and real-world communication among four central characters—a mainland Chinese, a Taiwanese, a Chinese American, and a non-Chinese American—familiar to students using Interactions. Each 10-chapter volume is accompanied by a workbook. Chapters include sections on vocabulary, text, mini-dialogue, characters, grammar, and culture notes, accompanied by engaging graphics. Connections also includes stories and songs, and makes use of a wide variety of texts such as narrative, dialogue, journal entries, riddles, jokes, news headlines, and lyrics.

Connections is an innovative program, built from the ground up with a growth-mindset approach to college and career success. Written by counseling psychologists Paul Gore, Wade Leuwerke, and A.J. Metz, Connections shows students from day one how to be learners, whose mindset, drive, and strengths will help them meet any challenge on their way to college, personal, and career success. The expertly designed program is firmly rooted in the most current research in positive psychology, using self-reflection as a tool for goal-setting; goal-setting as a tool for imagining one's potential; and imagining one's potential as the motivation for realizing it. Connections puts students at the center of their own personalized learning path, facilitates their purposeful choice of an academic and career plan, and develops all the skills they need--cognitive and non-cognitive, academic and life--to foster their self-growth and success. Built around the most common issues faced in the classroom, LaunchPad for Connections, Second Edition gives students everything they need to prepare for class and exams, including author-developed digital tools linked directly to the eBook, the ACES student self-assessment (taken at the start and end of term), and our acclaimed LearningCurve adaptive quizzing. For instructors, LaunchPad offers everything they need to quickly set up a course, customize the content, prepare presentations and lectures, assign and assess homework, and guide the progress of individual students and the class as a whole.

Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation. Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally—and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.

For students with some knowledge of the language, the Grammar is comprised of 25 units, all with a particular grammar point and associated exercises. All entries are presented in both pinyin romanization and Chinese characters.

The internet and the mobile phone have disrupted many of our conventional understandings of ourselves and our relationships, raising anxieties and hopes about their effects on our lives. In this second edition of her timely and vibrant book, Nancy Baym provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life Fully updated to reflect new developments in technology and digital scholarship, the book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how our talk about them echoes historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, and new relationships, and to maintain existing relationships in our everyday lives. The book combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as: Can mediated interaction be warm and personal? Are people honest about themselves online? Can relationships that start online work? Do digital media damage the other relationships in our lives? Throughout, the book argues that these questions must be answered with firm understandings of media qualities and the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used. This new edition of Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a richer understanding of digital media and everyday life.

Practice answering questions on U.S. history and government in preparation for the U.S. citizenship test.