Chinese - Beginners A

A practical introduction to Mandarin Chinese

DetailsScheduleSyllabusStudy Kit

Details

This course is for

Adult students (over the age of 17) whose native language is not Mandarin Chinese and who do not speak or read Mandarin Chinese.

Duration

Spoken Chinese 1: 15 weeks.
Spoken Chinese 2: 15 weeks.

Course structure and goals

The course focuses on speaking in Mandarin Chinese. Students learn basic sentence structures and grammatical rules, and acquire a vocabulary of 400 words used in basic conversation. Course texts are written in Pinyin, the widely-used transliteration system for Chinese characters. This allows students to focus on improving their communication skills, both speaking and comprehension. The class meets once a week and students are required to complete the homework assignments sent by the teacher after each lesson.

At the end of the course the student will

  • Have acquired a vocabulary of 400 basic words that will enable them to conduct basic conversations on a variety of topics, including greetings, shopping, orientation, transportation and more.
  • Know all Chinese tones, which are vital to pronunciation.
  • Be able to construct simple sentences in Chinese using basic grammatical structures.
  • Be familiar with the Pinyin transliteration system used to transliterate Chinese.

Schedule

Course start date: Sun, Oct 17th, 2010
Course end date: Fri, Feb 4th, 2011

Study Kit

Coming soon.