Chinese Mandarin Beginners

Course fee

This course offers a course fee subsidy through funding from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) for NZ citizen and permanent migrant adults, their partners on work visas or visitor visas, and refugees. To qualify, registrants should be over the age of 16 years and not currently enrolled in a secondary school.

We need to collect extra information such as age, ethnicity, educational achievement and gender for statistical purposes. You must also provide evidence of NZ citizenship, residency or refugee status if requested. A condition of accepting a course fee subsidy is that you commit to at least 80% attendance of your course.

Course outline Chinese Mandarin Beginners

This course is appropriate for learners with no knowledge of Chinese who wish to gain an ability to understand and produce simple everyday expressions in Chinese. This course will provide a useful foundation for those travelling to China to be able to greet others courteously and introduce themselves.

The course covers:

• an introduction to the Chinese pronunciation system
• introducing yourself and basic communication for travel and everyday living
• telling the time
• numbers
• an introduction to simple Chinese characters.

Vocabulary and phraseology covered in the course includes:

• conversation about self, introductions, family
• time, weather, directions
• travel, accommodation and food
• introduction to basic reading of Chinese characters
• introduction to basic writing of Chinese (Pinyin and simple characters)

Expected learning outcomes

On completion of this course, we expect learners to be able to:

• understand some simple Chinese words and phrases related to travel, work and everyday situations
• have basic understanding of the Chinese pronunciation system
• count low numbers, tell the time and give the date, count money
• introduce themselves and their family and give some basic personal information
• greet others politely in Chinese
• recognise some simple Chinese characters

Lessons are two hours in duration, once a week, over an eight week period. To achieve the learning outcomes, students are expected to undertake some simple homework exercises each week including a few minutes practice each day.