Chinese Elementary

This course is aimed at developing students’ abilities to express their intentions and feelings, to give advice, to make comparisons, to understand classroom interactions and to respond accordingly. This course presupposes completion of Chinese Beginners 3 (or the equivalent) and familiarity with around 350 everyday words in Chinese characters.

With the help of communicative activities and tasks, students learn some fundamental grammar rules and use them in simple discussions. A comparative approach between English and Chinese is adopted so that students gain a clear understanding of Chinese speech patterns and structures.

By the end of the course, students are able to understand and use resultative and directional verbal complements, ‘ba’ structures and comparative structures, allowing them to describe and comment on leisure activities. Students are also given more insights into the Chinese way of showing politeness in daily life. Around 150 new words are learned in this course.