Chinese Beginner Course HSK 1 Standard Mandarin Course

Explore Chinese syllables built from an initial, a final, and a tone, with one character per syllable and finals as vowels; learn e and ou pinyin rules and practice words.

Learn Mandarin classroom expressions for starting and ending class, taking breaks, and looking at the blackboard; practice reading aloud with 'read after me' prompts.

Learn essential classroom expressions in basic Mandarin, including open your book, read aloud, read together, sing the song, repeat once, and ask questions.

Learn how to form interrogative sentences with the particle ma to signal a question, understand 'ma or not,' and review examples such as ni ma ma and lao ma.

Practice describing people in Mandarin using nationality and occupation phrases through picture prompts, featuring Michael Jordan and Yao Ming, with sentences like I am from the United States.

Differentiate the initials j, q, x from z, c, s in standard Chinese pronunciation using English counterparts and practice tone changes when two third tones occur.

Explore Chinese word order in questions and statements with examples such as she is my Chinese teacher and she is called Li Yu, showing that the question form mirrors statements.

Learn the Chinese subject-first word order for asking who someone is, practice keeping full sentences for beginners, and use the ma question particle to confirm if someone is your classmate.

Learn to differentiate and pronounce the alveolar nasal n and the velar nasal ng. Practice with simple syllable examples to reinforce distinct sounds.

Learn the tone sandhi of yi: a syllable becomes the fourth when followed by tones 1-3, becomes the second after a fourth, and remains unchanged when alone.

Master the pinyin rules for y and w, including using yi or wu after e, turning e into y and wu into w, and changing paired third tones to second.

Learn how numbers below 100 are formed by combining ten with one for 11–19, and by using two tens for 20, with examples like 21, 23, 56, 88, and 99.

Describe pictures using the newly learned language points and words, practice ages, family size, and the measure word ge, with examples of a 10-year-old, a three-person family, and a teacher.

Practice a warm-up that matches pictures to words and phrases, practicing basic Chinese vocabulary such as book, Chinese food, school, dates, and the 25th.

Learn to read and express dates in Mandarin, including month and day numbers and days of the week, with practical examples of yesterday and tomorrow.

Practice saying dates in Chinese by placing the month first, then the date, and finally the day of the week, using 'how' in speech and 'for' in writing.

Learn Chinese sentence structure by comparing English and Chinese word order and replacing the question word with new information to form questions, such as what would you like to drink.

Place the time at the beginning of a Chinese sentence, use xian to express would like to, and practice replacing question words with new information using ge for countable nouns.

master the interrogative pronoun duoshao to ask how many or how much, including numbers larger than ten, with the measure word often omitted, and use it to ask about prices.

Discover how a single-component Chinese character originally meaning one individual person has evolved into a measure word.

Learn basic Chinese location phrases, using na and nali to ask where something is. Notice tone differences and practice the sentence structure for objects like the puppy under the chair.

Learn to form Chinese sentences using the subject plus ci plus a place plus verb, and see how questions become answers with English word order differences.

Explore how Chinese omits the subject when understood, and how yes-no and wh questions keep order using negation or quotation, such as 'at home' and fillers like 'na' and 'nuh'.