About This Course
This introductory Chinese language course will emphasize basic language skills for everyday life in Mandarin speaking countries.
The course utilizes pinyin, the standard system of Romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese, so learners will find it easy to understand and study the language.
The course is composed of several parts: Dialogues (taught through pinyin), listening comprehension exercises (in real-world situations), Chinese characters (frequently used in daily life), Mandarin songs, and Tea Time (tips for self-study).
This course is for anyone interested in learning Mandarin Chinese, especially if you plan to work or study in Mandarin-speaking countries. The course is also a good start toward the HSK Chinese proficiency test.
Requirements
None.
Course Staff
Xia Ding
Professor Ding received his M.A. from Peking Univeristy. He is currently a professor at the School of Humanities, Tsinghua Univeristy, and he was previously deputy director of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, director of International Chinese Language and Culture Center and director of Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University. Professor Ding has been invited to be visiting professor and scholar to various universities in Hong Kong, the United States and Japan. His research interests are classical Chinese literature and teaching Chinese as a second language. He published more than 10 works include: Poems of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Classic Chinese Poetry in All Ages, Progress of Mandarin and Tsinghua Mandarin etc. He also taught 'Studies of Ancient Chinese Fictions,' 'Ancient Chinese,' 'Advanced Chinese Reading,' and 'Reading and Writing' at Tsinghua University.
Xiaoning Wang
Wang Xiaoning received her M.A. in Modern Chinese at Beijing Normal University in 1991 and M.Phil. in Politics at Hong Kong Baptist University in 1998. She is currently an associate professor teaching and conducting research on Chinese as a second Language in the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University. Since 1991, she has given various Chinese courses including Listening, Conversation, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Chinese Characters and HSK Intensive Preparation to international Chinese learners, undergraduates, postgraduates and taught in exchange programs in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
She has published over 30 Chinese textbooks such as Experiencing Chinese, Chinese Sentence Patterns, My First Chinese Book, Theme-based Dictionary for Composition Writing, Theme-based Dictionary for Sentence Building, Chinese Idiom for HSK, and HSK Training Skill for Listening. In this course, she will guide you into the world of interesting Chinese characters.
Li Lu
Lu Li is an associate professor at Tsinghua University. She received her B.A. from Shaanxi Normal University in 1986 and then taught Chinese as a second language at Xi'an International Studies University. She has been teaching Chinese as a second language at Tsinghua University since 1993. In 2011, she received a Master’s degree from Tsinghua University.
Lu Li also taught at Samsung Electronics Co. in South Korea for six months in 1998, for an academic year at the College of William and Mary in USA in 2003 and for six months at Ferris University in Japan in 2013. She has taught primary and advanced speaking, listening and comprehensive Chinese language courses to both beginners and graduate students. Lu Li has published four textbooks on Chinese as a second language and two books on Chinese language teaching in collaboration with colleagues. Three of these six books have been classified as "outstanding" by Tsinghua University in 2012.
Yuan Li
Ms. Yuan Li is a lecturer at the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University. She is fascinated by exploring various methods of teaching Mandarin Chinese. In her 12 years of teaching, having a deep love to her job, she insists on employing various games and other teaching methods in her class, which makes her a very popular Chinese teacher among students. She was thus invited to the Confucius institute for Business London twice to teach Chinese. To the present, Ms. Li has taught over one thousand foreign students from all over the world and she would like to remain friends with them forever.
