Atlanta International Language Institute

SYLLABUS

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Prerequisites: none, for people with no experience with the language

Materials: Let’s Talk Mandarin; Handouts

Course objective:

• Learners of this level, by the end of the10-week section, should be able to exchange greetings, give their identity, and name a number of familiar objects from their immediate environment.

• Learners should be able to ask and answer sample questions regarding nationality, language background, time of a day, month and year, day of a week, and several time related subjects.

• Learners will be introduced to around 50+ Chinese characters in both of their simplified and traditional forms.

Typical lesson:

20 minutes – Review

80 minutes – Dialog/New material/Vocabulary/Grammar etc

20 minutes – Writing/Questioning

Welcome note:

您好 nin2-hao3 ‘hello!’ Welcome to this new, exciting and cultural journey. Here are some extra activities you can do to better facilitate the learning process. One of the keys in learning a new language is to immerse yourself in the environment of the target language. Although this class is distributed in a weekly basis, the following activities are designed to provide you with ways of “using” the newly acquired language, Chinese, in your daily life.

• Watch Chinese TV dramas on YouTube at least once a week. This will awaken your innate second language learning ability.

• Go over and handout(s) at least every other day; read these Chinese words aloud and in a “dramatic” manner. This will familiarize you with the newly acquired “tones” and unfamiliar “phonemes” in the Chinese language.

• Three words or three phrases a day. This will give you the strength in lexicon and writing.

• Constantly thinking about Chinese. Every time you say “thank you”, “sorry”, “nice to meet you”, and so on, translate them into Chinese at least in your head. This will enhance your durability with the language.

• Red Light Challenge. This will ensure that you will never forget how to count in Chinese 