Course description
Chinese classes
Our comfortable, casual environment helps to make learning Chinese fun and convenient. We schedule our classes at times that work for busy adults. Enrich your life as you learn one language or learn many.
For the beginning and intermediate classes, we use "Ultimate Chinese Basic-Intermediate" by Living Language. There is also an optional eight cassette package that accompanies the book. For the advanced classes, we provide handouts at no charge.
Beginning A (chapters 1-4)
Topics - Greetings, what do you do?, the family, and nationalities.
Grammar and usage - Pronunciation, tones, words and syllables, word order, names and titles, adjectival verbs, "to be", pronouns and possessives, particles, direct and indirect objects, negation, question words, phrases of location, numbers, negation, adverbial phrases of time, etc.
Beginning B (chapters 5-9)
Topics - Time, dumplings, houses, taking a taxi, and asking for directions.
Grammar and usage - More numbers, telling time, before and after, days of the week, dates, asking age, measure words, comparisons, giving directions, politeness terms, etc.
Beginning C (chapters 10-14)
Topics - Chinese characters, shopping, at a hotel, sight-seeing, and at a restaurant.
Grammar and usage - Describing an action, estimating numbers, more measure words, money and prices, the particle "le", relative clauses, completed action, ordering food, resultative verbs of completion, etc.
Beginning D (chapters 15-19)
Topics - There's been a robbery!, a wedding, the telephone, at the bank, and at the post office.
Grammar and usage - Resultative verbs of direction, resultative verbs of perception, reduplication of measure words, current actions, interest, ratios, "to be wrong", "to give", methods of mailing, "to be able to", etc.
Intermediate A (chapters 20-24)
Topics - Sports, an appointment, habits, music, and spring festival.
Grammar and usage - Again, additional particle "le", various idiomatic expressions, potential resultative verbs, easy and difficult, talking about years, "every", summary of resultative verbs, etc.
Intermediate B (chapters 25-29)
Topics - Computers, museums, at the airport, giving gifts, and the concept of face.
Grammar and usage - "Why" and "because", "to know", various conjunctions, describing an action, verb reduplication, exclamations, causative sentences, negative suggestions, etc.
Intermediate C (chapters 30-34)
Topics - Visiting a doctor, medicine, holidays, the body, and climate.
Grammar and usage - Passive sentences, various expressions and constructions, multiple negatives, "more and more", compass points, etc.
Intermediate D (chapters 35-40)
Topics - Clothes, a trip to the park, giving descriptions, education, talking about the future, and a banquet.
Grammar and usage - Resultative verbs with long descriptive phrases, more expressions and idiomatic usage, reduplication of measure words, review of the uses of "le", adding to a noun or adjective to make an adverb, indicating future, etc.
Advanced Classes
Topics - Discussion of articles, issues, literature, etc.
Grammar and usage - As appropriate related to conversation topics.
If you would like to discuss material covered in these levels, contact us at our Los Angeles School.
