BEFORE you learn Mandarin Chinese… learn this first!

As a teacher of Mandarin, I was finding a problem: many students would come to learn with me but had no concept of Chinese Characters, some had studied for two years but never used a dictionary, and others were struggling with the basics of joining up their knowledge of pinyin with characters.

To help address this, years ago I designed a curriculum that I now call the 7 Foundations of Learning Mandarin Chinese.

Dozens and dozens of students have gone through this programme with me.

It contains everything I wished I was taught at the start of learning Mandarin.

And it makes learners independent and confident with literacy – not just speaking and listening, but also in the skills and techniques you need to learn to read and write in Chinese, far beyond any lessons you take with me.

The course covers 7 areas:

1) Use of dictionaries

2) Character Line Direction

3) Character Stroke Order

4) Radicals

5) Pinyin

6) Tones

7) The ‘Tingxie’

If you read through all of those and know a lot about each one, this course is probably not necessary for you.

But if you had a doubt about some of them, it may be helpful for you to learn these things in more detail.

If you’re just wondering what learning Mandarin Chinese is like, take the first lesson and get a quick win in:

In that lesson, in under 30 minutes, you’ll learn to read a short dialogue in Mandarin Chinese characters only – by yourself, and without Google Translate.

This quick win is designed to be the way I would want to be taught Mandarin on my very first lesson, if I was starting from scratch. I want you to feel success right away, have some fun, and to see how it is to be able to read Mandarin Chinese characters from the beginning.

In the rest of the course, you’ll be guided progressively through understanding what I consider the 7 foundational pieces you need to get a solid start and to equip yourself with the tools you need to learn Mandarin.

Have fun!