Chinese Curriculum

The whole curriculum is now composed of Chinese Levels 1-7 and workshop UNLPE preparation. The Chinese courses are usually 16 weeks in length and 3 hours per week.

Students learn Chinese pronunciation and intonation, grammar and vocabulary, fluency in conversation, listening comprehension, reading and writing. The courses prepare students for using language in business, while traveling or working in China and dealing with social situations with Chinese colleagues.

Chinese Level 1

In Chinese Level 1 students learn correct pronunciation/intonation and the basic Chinese grammar in a simple and logical way. They learn how to have simple Chinese conversations, for example how to ask questions about “who, whose, where, what, which” etc. They also learn how to read and write the most important characters and the logic of how to combine them, for example how to understand the numbers from 1 until 999 and all the dates in the year.

Chinese Level 2

In Chinese Level 2 students learn how to make acquaintances, to make small talk about families and how to order food and beverages. They practise making conversation in the class, improve listening comprehension and translate the Chinese conversations of other students. They read many characters, combinations and simple sentences in Chinese.

Chinese Level 3

Students learn in Level 3 how to talk about daily business schedules and how to make small talk about work. They practise slightly more complicated dialogues, which they then adapt to make their own conversations. They learn the important Chinese grammar necessary to make longer Chinese sentences. They also improve their reading and writing skills with Chinese characters.

Chinese Level 4

In Chinese Level 4 students focus on oral communication and make more complex dialogues for specific situations, for example asking for directions, going shopping, and discussing prices. At the end of level 4 they can not only speak Chinese more fluently but also write down many more characters and sentences.

Chinese Level 5

In Chinese Level 5 students focus on vocabulary for working and travel. They practise and create dialogues which take place in the office, make business appointments, talk about traffic and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of transportation. By this point many of them can write in full sentences.

Chinese Level 6

In Chinese Level 6 students communicate mainly in Chinese, with less and less need for other languages. They learn how to talk about charts and figures and discuss business trends. They can make social conversation about hobbies and vacations and make multi-person dialogues. By this point some of them can write whole dialogues.

Chinese Level 7

Students in Chinese Level 7 communicate mainly in Chinese. They can talk about academic and work experience, write Chinese CVs and take part in job interviews. They learn and can discuss the differences between Chinese and western holidays and cultural practices. The students can not only speak Chinese very fluently but also write whole sentences and dialogues in Chinese characters.

UNLPE workshop

In the workshop for the UN Language Proficiency Examination, students learn to deal with more common problems experienced by higher level Chinese learners, such as difficulties in listening comprehension and Chinese sentence structure. They practise advanced reading and listening comprehension and writing about topics which may come up on the LPE exam.

In addition to the handouts, the students also use materials from the following books: “Foreigners speak Chinese” (Sinolingua Press) for the Chinese Level 1 and Level 2, and “New Silk Road Business Chinese” (Peking University Press) for the Chinese Levels 3 to 7 and different levels of the “HSK Official Examination Papers” (Higher Education Press) for the UNLPE workshop.

There is no cost for these materials and no other learning materials are required.