Course Overview:

This Mandarin 1 live online course is an introductory course aimed at students with no previous knowledge of the language. The goal of this course is for students to become familiar with Mandarin sounds, tones, pinyin, and Chinese characters. Upon completing this course, students should be able to use basic vocabulary or sentences to communicate familiar topics and accomplish simple social interactions. Students will learn from simple videos, songs, and authentic materials, while instructors will help students understand Chinese customs and increase their vocabulary size. By the end of this course, students should know at least 150 Mandarin words. The central themes of the course are identity, interests, family, jobs and trading. After this course, students should be able to greet one another; introduce themselves and others including their name, age and birthday; tell numbers and time; express likes and dislikes; ask and answer simple questions; describe their family and friends; talk about jobs; and purchase items from stores.

The main grammatical focus of the course is the basic Mandarin sentence structure, how to form yes/no questions, and the use of 了 and 在 for past and progressive tense.