Chinese I

Description

Students join various native speakers of Mandarin Chinese as they give a lively introduction to the language and its rich culture. Set in their everyday environment, the native speakers take students through different daily scenarios and give them the necessary skills to read, write, and speak Chinese. In this course, students learn the basic Chinese language. At the very beginning, the course starts by introducing students to a general knowledge of Pinyin, Mandarin Chinese, Chinese dialects, and Chinese characters. After one semester, students will be able to engage in conversation in Chinese including greeting people, introducing themselves to others, and exchanging basic information with others. Students learn to count from 1 to 1000 and make simple sentences in both spoken and written Chinese. They also learn 160 "magical" Chinese characters and use them on a variety of topics. As students walk through the units step by step, they get to know not only the language itself, but also the culture in which the language takes place and keeps developing. 

Major Topics and Concepts

Semester 1:



Vocabulary

• Greetings
• Nationalities
• Numbers 1-1000
• Family Vocabulary
• Introductions (names, age, address)
• Roads and Streets
• Pets
• Talking about Friends
• Telling Time
• Calendar (Days of the week, months, year)
• Seasons
• Holidays and Celebrations

Culture

• Major Cities in China
• Chinese Names
• Chinese Families
• Chinese Zodiac
• Chinese Festivals

Grammar

• Chinese Characters
• Pinyin
• Basic Sentence Structure
• Forming negations
• Verbs: jiào, yŏu, hái, xing
• Prepositions
 

Segment 2



Vocabulary

• Food and drinks
• Table settings
• Colors
• Clothes
• Hobbies, games, and sports
• Directions
• Making appointments
• Ordinal Numbers
• Another way to state the days of the week
• Art
• Movies
• Music Instruments
• Business
• Asking and describing prices and brands
• Currencies
• Electric Appliances

Culture

• Chinese Cuisine
• 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
• Traditional Chinese Art
• Chinese Movies, actors and colors
• Chinese Companies and Products
• Shopping in China

Grammar

• Describing people and things (adjectives)
• How to state likes and dislikes
• Verbs: able to, can, háishi (had better), guò (action happened)
• Forming Questions
• Measure words
• Expressions: hé…yiqĭ(together with), néngbùnéng (could you?), zuì xĭhuān( like…the most)
• Adverbs
• Possessives or properties (de)