Mandarin Chinese Language and Culture, Level 1 - Beginners.
Tutor: Julia Jiang
Date and time: Thursdays, 6:30 - 8:00pm
From: Thursday 9th October 2025
20 weekly meetings, 1.5 hours each
Price £345 (£315 concessions*)
*If you are a full-time student, staff or alumni at the University of Sussex or not in full-time employment (benefits, unemployed, retired) or an NHS worker you are entitled to the £315 concession rate. Please make sure you specify this by typing the reduced price into the 'price' box before you add the course to your shopping basket.
Terms & Conditions - https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/short-courses/language-short-courses/terms-and-conditions
Detailed Description
This course is an introduction to Chinese everyday language for complete beginners. The primary aim of the course is to enable students to use Chinese to exchange information and communicate basic ideas. The development of communication skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing will include approximately 250 Chinese characters and more than 400 words and phrases including also most radicals of Chinese characters, the phonetic units of the Chinese language and basic sentence structures. A course book will be used to allow students to work independently, for revision and regular practice at home (10 minutes a day) and to form a framework for learning in class. The textbook includes a CD for students to practice aural skills.
The course aims to give you sufficient language skills to be able to deal with simple everyday situations:
- Personal information
- Numbers
- Time of year, month, date and day, hours
- Family / social arrangements
- Directions
- Food and drink
- Weather
- Seasons
- Buying and selling
- Accommodation
You will be given an insight into the culture of China within the framework of your language studies. You will be encouraged to explore and develop your own strategies for study within the syllabus and your own learning needs. There will be opportunities to study personal cultural interests linked to the language.
