Topics & Vocabulary

• Intro to the Pinyin-Chinese phonetics system
• Greetings in normal and polite ways
• Introduce yourself, introduce others
• Talking about oneself
• Likes & dislikes
• Taking a taxi
• Asking about directions
• Expressing time, days and counting numbers from 0-100
• Shopping, asking about prices, sizes and colours
• Buying tickets for travel; start with “qing wen 请问”
• Talking about jobs, company and business etiquette.
• Asking for help

Grammar

• Basic sentences with to be “shi是”, to have “you有” and to do “zuo做”
• Sentences with stative verb (hen, 我很好)
• Past, and the situation has changed with a functional marker “le”
• Pronouns – subject “wo我”, plural form 我们，你们， 他们
• The possessive word “de的”
• Auxiliary words e.g. “xiang 想”
• Word order in sentences (Chinese sentence orders, difference between English and Chinese)
• Sentence forms – statement, question and negative
• Measure words (e.g. a cup of tea = “yi bei cha” 一杯茶 )
• Particles with “ba 吧” “ma吗”

Cultural Content

• Various forms of Chinese
• Lucky/unlucky numbers
• Handshaking
• Business card
• Chinese tea
• Politeness in Chinese language

Skills Work

• Extensive practice of Pinyin and tones
• Reading phonetics/ Pinyin skills
• Focus on Pinyin, characters are optional
• Listening practice (short simple sentences)
• Recognising reading a few simple characters
• Memorising some frequently used short sentences.