Course Description in Brief
Overall speaking, all these three Mandarin and communication skills programs are designed on learner-centred, interactive approach and includes the four language skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, these are integrated in the setting which would involve some kind of simulated task and communicative learning activities allowing optimum student interaction.

Elementary Mandarin and Communication Skills
This is a very basic Chinese language course tailor-made for beginners without any prior knowledge of Chinese language. In this course, learners would learn to write the 54 basic radicals in order to acquire the technique to outline the most frequently used 250 Chinese characters.

The Chinese phonetic system (Pin Yin) will be introduced to learners for helping them to articulate the pronunciation of each Chinese character accurately. Authentic, simple reading materials will be adapted in this course for stimulating the students interest to develop the skill in reading Chinese writings.

Some topics or theme-based activities included in this course are:

• Greetings
• Making friends
• Introducing family members
• Describing one’s occupation / school
• Locating where China is

Lower Intermediate Mandarin and Communication Skills
Further developing from the Elementary Mandarin and Communication Skills, this course aims at increasing the student’s total number of Chinese characters from 250 to 550 and helping learners to compose some simple expressions verbally and in writing.

By making use of the Chinese phonetic transcription (Pin Yin) and with course tutor’s supervision, learners should be able to master the pronunciation of Chinese vocabulary accurately and also be able to type out some Chinese characters on computer.

Some topics or theme-based activities included in this course are:

• Naming different colours
• Describing various clothing
• Chatting about weather
• Talking about one’s hobbies
• Using the telephone

Upper Intermediate Mandarin and Communication Skills
Having reached the lower intermediate level, learners would further increase their total number of Chinese characters from 550 to 850 after completing the Upper Intermediate Mandarin and Communication Skills. They should be able to write some complicated phrases and sentences, and verbalize more complex expressions when using Mandarin in real life situations.

Some lengthy authentic materials will be used for helping learners to develop some advanced skills in reading Chinese.

Some topics or theme-based activities included in this course are:

• Seeing the doctor
• Eating out
• Shopping
• Bargaining
• Moving home