Chinese Mandarin Beginners (full syllabus)

Are you fascinated by Chinese culture and traditions? Are you intrigued by Mandarin script and spoken sounds? Learn to communicate in the world’s most widely used language with our Chinese Mandarin Beginner’s course.

Set out over 30 weeks and led by a qualified native speaker, you’ll build a complete and solid understanding of beginners Mandarin through a range of interactive activities in weekly virtual classes.

You’ll start by learning key phrases to introduce yourself, greet others and talk about your daily routine. You’ll be introduced to the phonetic system, Pinyin, and develop an understanding of simple sentence structures and word orders.

As the Chinese language course progresses and your confidence grows, you’ll learn to discuss the weather, describe the seasons and shop for gifts as you practise new and more complex grammatical structures.

Who is it for?

This course is perfect for total beginners looking to learn Mandarin over one year.

Timetable

The full beginners syllabus includes 60 hours of learning and is taught across three terms, starting in October and finishing in July.

October – December (part 1)

One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.

Christmas Break

January – March (part 2)

One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.

Easter break

April/May – July (part 3)

One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.

Missed the October start date? We have other beginners options in January or in April/May.

Benefits

• Most cost-effective and comprehensive way to learn beginners Chinese Mandarin
• We keep our class sizes small so you can benefit from one-to-one support from your tutor
• Awarded an official City, University of London certificate

Throughout the year, you’ll learn to

• talk about countries, nationalities and people
• talk about jobs and occupations
• count numerals
• respond to comments and pay compliments
• talk about dates and days
• discuss your daily routine
• talk about family and ask about someone's family
• discuss your job and workplace
• discuss schooling
• talk about weekly plans
• make an enquiry
• discuss your favourite seasons
• ask for directions
• ask and tell prices and currencies
• buy food
• give suggestions for buying gifts.

Grammar

• pinyin pronunciation
• basic sentence structures and word orders
• particles ma, ne
• other question words nǎli and shéi
• past tense particle le
• common measure words
• negate verbs with méiyǒu/ méi’
• basis speech pattern dàn shì
• question word jǐ and duō shǎo
• sentence structure cóng…dào
• the use of yǒu
• affirmative/negative question structure hǎo bu hǎo/xíng bu xíng
• past perfect tense
• present continuous particle zài
• use huì to indicate future tense
• three particles ma, ne and ba
• question words shénme shíhou and ji hao, xing qi ji
• zài as preposition
• duōjiǔ for time and duration
• use háishì for alternatives.

You will be awarded an official City, University of London certificate on completion of the course if you attend over 70 per cent of the classes. The course is not formally accredited.

Assessment

Any assessment will be informal to help you evaluate your own progress.

Teaching

Learning is designed to be fun and interactive, using a mix of classroom activities and video clips to check your understanding, including:

• work on pronunciation and intonation
• classroom discussion
• pair and group work
• role-playing
• grammar in context.

More comprehensive grammar exercises and reading texts are generally set as homework.

You will receive feedback from your tutor throughout the course and your progress will be assessed on an ongoing basis through homework and performance in class.

You don’t need any prior knowledge of Chinese Mandarin to enrol on this course.

If you have some knowledge, enrol onto part 2 or part 3 and skip the basics.

Check out our other levels of Chinese Mandarin – from beyond beginners to Advanced – if this is still too easy.

English requirements

You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.