Beginner Conversational Chinese

A Practical and Effective Course to Start Speaking Mandarin

This course focuses primarily on the spoken language of Mandarin Chinese. At the end of this course, you will be able to conduct basic conversations on a variety of everyday topics in Mandarin Chinese!

The course features some of the most basic topics such as greetings, self-introduction, numbers, dates, time, as well as more advanced themes such as professions, hobbies, pets, talking about vacation plans and making plans. It also incorporates some super useful yet less commonly seen topics such as talking to a stranger, describing objects, and asking for help. Each lesson features a series of phrases, which I curated to ensure that they are applicable to you and easily adaptable to fit different situations. I use fun mnemonics to help you remember vocabulary. With pronunciation, I provide not only clear instructions but also animated videos to help you visualize how a sound is made. I explain complex grammar structures in simple terms and compare and contrast them with structures in English.

At the end of each lesson, there is a review session which goes over the key phrases of the lecture. Following most review sessions, you will also find a practice conversation segment where I ask you questions in Mandarin and then explain the answers. You may also choose to wait to test yourself on the review and practice questions after you have committed that lesson to memory.

For each lesson, I have also compiled a Quizlet flashcard set to further help you absorb the phrases and vocabulary. The link to the flashcards as well as a tutorial video on how to use Quizlet are available in Section 1 of the course.

The last section of the course is a series of dialogues designed to test you on how much you’ve learned. I recommend waiting till you’ve finished the entire course to try them out as they often incorporate materials from multiple lessons.