Practical Chinese for Living and
Working in China (Intermediate)
(suitable for lower-intermediate to advanced-intermediate students)
Taught by Anny Li.  Click here for Anny's profile.

This course is intended to continue in the same spirit as the beginner course, with practical conversation as our central focus, building on what has already been learned toward the goal of total fluency.  We will start where the beginner course left off, reviewing important sentence structures involving subjunctives, conditionals, comparisons, etc., as well as time/calendar and space-oriented phrases (in front of and behind, etc.), localities, giving your opinions, and phrases involving difference and degree, such as "It's not..., but...", and "The more..., the more...".

We will then progress toward more-complicated clauses, (if, when, before, after...).  We will employ role-play, games, activities, and interactive exercises involving everyday scenarios, such as chatting in a real estate agency, massage house, communicating with colleagues at work, contracting services (e.g., finding a handyman,  getting your water pipe repaired), and many others.

While this course places a strong emphasis on conversation, we will also undertake an intensive introduction to reading and writing Chinese characters, starting with essentials like reading signs and directions, instructions and notices, correspondences, and other important everyday written materials.

At the end of the 10 weeks, students should have a solid command of about 500 Chinese words, 50 phrase structures and 30 sentence structures; students will become confident in expressing their opinions more clearly and accurately; master the ability to comprehend everyday speech and to express themselves clearly, as well as the skills necessary for reading and writing on a basic level, e.g., read out the road's name in Chinese character.

Topics:

1. Renting an apartment

2. Daily transportation

3. Fixing water pipes, electricity, etc.

4. Massage

5. Fabric market, tailor-made clothes

6. Meeting customers & negotiation

7. Discussing the life in Shanghai

8. Sending gifts for birthday, wedding, etc.

9. Seeing somebody off  at the airport & travel preparations

10. How to learn Mandarin Chinese?

Key language points of each lesson:

1. Making contrast and comparation with "bi" "he" "meiyou" sentence/ "you" sentence for existential sentence

2. Cause & effect clause/ emphasizing sentence structure "shi....de"

3. Hypothesis sentence/ perfect aspect structure: "yijing......le"/ "duo + adj." in How question

4. Ordinal number/ clause of when, after, before

5. Color words/ Making contrast and comparation in detail with adv. "yidian"/ Giving comments with adv. "you dian"

6. Present continuous tense/ Making contrast and comparation in detail with adv. "de duo"

7. Giving one's opinion with "wo jue de"/ clause of while

8. "Zhe" for progression structure/ wherever whatever however whoever... sentence structure

9. Locality structure: "zai...li/shang"/ adv. "jiu" & "cai" for emphasizing

10. Words of time/ "duo + verb to do somethig"/ as much as you can...

Course Title: Chinese Language II
Tuition Fee: RMB 3200

Spring Session 2012: March 7th to May 12th

Section A: Wednesday and Friday mornings (10:00 AM - 12:30 PM)
10 weeks from March 7th to May 11th (Course Code: CL203)
Location: ELC Learning Center

Section B: Wednesday and Friday afternoons (1:00 PM - 3:30 PM)
10 weeks from March 7th to May 11th (Course Code: CL204)
Location: ELC Learning Center

Section C: Saturdays (10:00 AM - 3:00 PM)
10 weeks from March 10th to May 12th (Course Code: CL205)
Location: ELC Learning Center

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE

Registration Procedure:
Please register online first to reserve your place.  You will then receive a confirmation email with further details.  Next, payment must be made on site at the ELC Learning Center during the payment dates shown below (you can come in person or send someone).

Tuition payment for the Spring Session 2012 will take place from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, from Monday, February 20th through Monday, February 27th, 2012.  Payments will be received in the Registration Office at the ELC Learning Center.  Click here for map.

Please note: classes are kept small for the students' benefit (generally between 8 and 12 people).  Register early to reserve your place.  Payment must be received on time to complete your enrollment and maintain your reservation in the class(es) for which you have registered.  (Any course that does not meet sufficient enrollment may be cancelled and a full refund provided upon presentation of your original receipt.)