Language is one of the most complex skills that human beings can acquire. This statement is more accurate about learning the Chinese language for an adult person. Though children have innate abilities, they need social context to learn a language. Adults also can learn a second language quickly with social context and three main actions- reading, listening and speaking simultaneously.
However, if you want to learn Chinese, you need supportive interaction where you can act on all three actions mentioned above. ALG class can be the best resource for you where you can do all these actions with a teacher. Another free resource is the Chinese Learning Club. At that club, you also get the opportunity to interact with teachers and peers. After joining this club, you can get excellent resources from your teachers and peers.
If you do not have an opportunity to join the online meeting, you have other ways to learn Chinese. The most exciting thing is that you can use these tools by yourself.
1. Chinese Contextual Sentences
I can bet you will fall in love at first sight with that website of Chinese Contextual Sentences. You will get 12 learning scenarios on the “Chinese Contextual Sentences-Huayu 101” page.
TThose scenarios represent the most basic conversations you need every day. But, the most exciting thing is the functionality of the website. Each sentence is written in Chinese and English with translation. You can listen to a sentence in both male and female voices by clicking on the voice sign.
The scenarios and containing sentences at each scenario are given in the below chart.
| Chapter | Name of the chapter | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greetings | 8 |
| 2 | Accommodation | 17 |
| 3 | Order | 30 |
| 4 | Shopping | 13 |
| 5 | Transportation | 15 |
| 6 | Asking for help | 13 |
| 7 | City tour | 14 |
| 8 | Arts and cultural activities | 12 |
| 9 | Call and reservation | 13 |
| 10 | Exchange | 13 |
| 11 | Making friends | 17 |
| 12 | Hospital and post office | 15 |
So, there you can learn 180 basic sentences from 12 chapters. These sentences are enough to start and carry on the fundamental conversations. As the syllabus is short, you will also get a psychological advantage to finish them.
2. Chinese Courses on Coursera
You already know that Coursera is a good learning platform for learning any subject. The following are two courses you can enroll in for learning Chinese for free.
2.a. Start from Scratch
ThNational Taiwan University offers this course titled- “Start from Scratch.” The course is an introductory course on Mandarin Chinese Conversation. You can learn only Mandarin from this course, not expected experience in Chinese. You may know- Mandarin is one of the Chinese language dialects.
The duration of the course is six weeks. However, you will need approximately 5 hours to complete the class. But, for sure, five hours is not enough to learn a language. You need to practice and practice according to the instructions of your course instructor.
You can learn practical conversations that are used almost daily. There will be present different situation-based conversational videos. You can listen to the words, understand the situation, and learn vocabulary from these videos. Thus you can learn the proper use of words in day-to-day conversations.
2.b Intermediate Chinese
This course uses This course is also offered by the National Taiwan University. However, it is an intermediate-level course. If you have at least preliminary knowledge of the Chinese language, this course will suit you.
The course duration is four weeks, and you need approximately 5 hours to complete the course. The teaching of this course is story-based. There the main topics or discussions are on four beautiful locations of Taiwan. The lessons will depict these places’ history, culture, and current positions. Some fun dialogue of characters will be used to teach realistic conversations.
You can learn vocabulary, grammar, and text comprehension from this course. Ultimately you can boost your language skill as well as learn about Taiwan.
3. Chinese Courses on Taiwan Life
3.a Easy to Learn Chinese (with 300 sentences)
Enrolling in this course, you can learn 300 most common sentences that are related to daily life in Taiwan. Having minimal Mandarin knowledge is better, but you can also start even with zero knowledge! The 300 sentences of the course are categorized into ten key themes or units. This segmentation of units will help you to understand the sentences within a specific situation easily. 10 themes of the course are:
- How Are You?
- How much is it?
- Self-introduction
- What time is it?
- What day of the week is it?
- Directions
- Restaurants
- I’m sick
- Letters and calls
- Well-wishes
InEvery lesson of that course is very interactive. They contain situational animations. Besides, to review your learning, you can test your ability to rearrange phrases. Moreover, you can join three live video chat sessions for more engagement in listening and speaking.
Learning all the ten units, you can easily understand and connect useful phrases and speak Mandarin naturally.
3.b Learn Chinese with Cooking
If you love to cook or are a foodie, this course is for you! You can learn both the Chinese language and cooking system with that course. Let’s see below what the course outline is:
- Introduction of each recipe
- Buying cooking ingredients
- The cooking process and related vocabulary
- Review of the words
4. Chinese Story Book Series
21 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) grantees collaborated Storybooks are a very effective way to remember vocabulary. However, if you want to learn Chinese by reading storybooks, 12 proven picture books are available.
Mia Fulbright, the main character of the whole series, came to Taiwan for a year-loThese 12 books are a series of stories whose main character is Mia Fulbright. She comes to Taiwan from the USA for a year-long exchange. The following twelve books represent 12 themes of Taiwan from 12 months, respectively.
- Taking Hot Spring Baths on Cold Days
- Worshiping the Chinese God of Love
- Going to the Night Market
- Weddings
- Prides
- Tea-Picking Fun
- Traveling around the Island
- The Fun of Kenting
- Sky Lanterns
- Food Frenzy
- Tangyuan
- Celebrating New Year
All these books are written by authors of the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) program of Taiwan. Even these books help educators of Taiwan to teach the Mandarin language to different schools and colleges of the USA.
5. Chinese Textbook on Huayu World: Let’s Learn Chinese
The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission is publishing textbooks to cater to the international trend of learning Chinese. So all you bilingual people have something you can use. Study of these books with supportive interaction will excel your listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Besides, you can learn many things about Chinese culture.
Final Thoughts
If you are a beginner at learning Chinese, you should enroll in the preliminary courses that allow you to start from scratch. In case you want to learn it yourself, you should take the help of interactive learning materials like these video, where real people interact with you. However, you can learn faster if you manage supportive interactions from a Chinese language instructor.