Short course
Chinese (Mandarin): Beginners – Part 1
Course status:
Course ended
Dates:
30/09/2025 - 02/12/2025
Study format:
In-person weekly
Fees:
£300.00
Join this interactive course to learn Chinese language and explore its culture.
This 10-week course is for complete beginners in the language and those who have acquired some expressions informally through travel or socialising.
To help develop your fluency in the language, the course will focus primarily on speaking and listening skills, but will also include practice in reading and writing. You will have plenty of opportunities to practise the target language through hands-on collaborative class activities such as conversations and role-plays.
The course is pitched at level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), and completion of the course will help you meet some of the level requirements.
Apply for this course
This is an In-person course which requires your attendance to the weekly meetings which take place in Oxford.
Join the waiting list
Level and demands
Course aims
To enable participants to communicate at a very basic level with speakers of the target language in a limited range of practical, real-life settings.
Course objectives:
- To help students develop the language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing for very basic routine communication in the target language.
- To enable students to use a range of high frequency vocabulary and grammar structures for very basic routine interaction in the target language.
- To equip students with an initial appreciation of the culture and civilisation of the country (or countries) in which the target language is spoken.
Programme details
Course starts: 30 Sep 2025
Our public programme is open access, and most adult language classes are mixed ability. The weekly course schedule below is intended to give an overview of the main topics likely to be covered in each session. Please note that these may sometimes change according to the tutor’s discretion to reflect the interests of course participants.
Week 1: Getting started – Experiencing Chinese
- Introduction to Chinese language – Chinese Mandarin, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
- Introduction to Chinese Pinyin – alphabetic letters, four tones and pronunciation
- Introduction to numbers 1-10
- Some basic Chinese phrases and classroom expressions
Week 2: 你好 ! (Unit 1/L1)
- Exchanging greetings
- Introduction to Pinyin rules
- Counting from 11 to 99
- Cultural corner: Chinese names and their meanings; Chinese and numbers
Week 3: 你好！(Unit 1/L2)
- Greetings, introducing oneself and asking people’s names
- Addressing people with extended vocabulary
- Chinese, computers, and Pinyin
Week 4: 你好！(Unit 1/L3)
- Communicative activities including exchanging greetings, introducing oneself and consolidation of classroom expressions
- Introduction to radicals and Chinese character writing – strokes and rules of stroke order
- Introduction to Chinese word formation and the relationship between radicals, characters and words
Week 5: 你是哪里人？(Unit 2/L1)
- Countries, people and their nationalities
- Asking for and giving information about nationalities
- Asking for and giving information about where people live
Week 6: 你是哪里人？(Unit 2/L2)
- Learn more about people and their nationalities
- Reading descriptions about real people, where they live and where they are from
- Additional classroom expressions
Week 7 你是哪里人？(Unit 2/L3)
- Communicative activities including asking for and giving information about nationalities
- Learning more radicals
- Cultural corner: Chinese dialects
Week 8: 你做什么工作？(Unit 3/L1)
- Jobs and occupations
- Asking and answering questions about one’s family members, their names, occupations and where they live
- Pinyin consolidation
Week 9: 你做什么工作？ (Unit 3/L2)
- Learn more about occupations
- Read about family members and related information
- Cultural corner: How to identify Chinese family members
Week 10: 你做什么工作？ (Unit 3/L3)
- Communicative activities including asking and answering questions about a family member in more details
- Learn more radicals and characters
- Overall revision on Pinyin and language
Key grammar points:
* Basic sentence structure including pronouns as modifiers
* Types of sentence patterns & different types of interrogative sentences
* Usage of some common adverbs including 也/都/不/很/真
* Introduction to parts of speech including pronouns, verbs and adjectives
Key functions:
* Exchanging greetings
* Asking for and giving information about one’s names, nationalities and where they live
* Describing family members and their occupations
* Recognising & writing some basic Chinese radicals/Character
Teaching methods
You will learn through a communicative teaching approach with the emphasis on actively engaging in classroom activities in the target language. These are likely to include role-plays, pair- and small-group work, and conversational practice conducted in a supportive, friendly and informal learning environment.
The course has been structured to help you primarily to develop your speaking and listening skills and to gradually gain an insight into the culture and daily life of your target language. You will also learn and practise new grammatical structures in a communicative context and will be encouraged to develop your reading and writing skills in your own time.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be better prepared to:
- use very simple phrases and utterances to provide basic personal information, such as name, address, family members and nationality;
- interact in a simple way using a very basic range of language in routine everyday contexts;
- understand the gist of very short, simple written texts and audio/video excerpts containing the highest frequency vocabulary items and basic grammar structures;
- produce simple phrases and very short texts using basic structures and vocabulary items.
Assessment methods
You will be set short, optional assignments to consolidate your learning and to allow you to progress at your own pace.
Mrs Zhao Godfrey
Born in the city of Tangshan in North China, Huiqiu Zhao studied English at the University of Shandong. She has been working as a freelance translator, interpreter, teacher and examiner in the UK since 1995.
Certification
Digital badge
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be issued with an official digital badge from the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. After the course, you will receive an email with a link and instructions on how to download your digital badge. You will be able to add your badge to your email signature and share it on social media if you choose to do so. In order to be issued with your badge, you will need to have attended at least 80% of the course.
Fees
| Description | Costs |
|---|---|
| Course Fee | £300.00 |
Funding
If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, you are a full-time student in the UK or a student on a low income, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:
Recommended reading
All weekly class students may become borrowing members of the Rewley House Continuing Education Library for the duration of their course. Prospective students whose courses have not yet started are welcome to use the Library for reference. More information can be found on the Library website.
There is a Guide for Weekly Class students which will give you further information.
Additional reading:
HUANG, Betty Discover China Workbook One (Optional) (Macmillan ISBN:9780230406384)
Oxford University Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary (Optional) (ISBN: 0198602588) OUP, 2000
Textbooks
To participate in the course fully, you will need access to the following textbook:
- DING, Anqi; CHEN, Xin; Discover China Student’s Book One (Macmillan JIANG, Lili (ISBN:9780230405950)
Please use the ‘Book now’ button on this page. Alternatively, please complete an enrolment form (Word) or enrolment form (Pdf).
This is an In-person course which requires your attendance to the weekly meetings which take place in Oxford.