Mandarin Language Courses for Adults General Mandarin Courses (Listening & Speaking Skills) - Overview These courses are designed for non-chinese speaking adults who want to be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Mandarin in a broad range of everyday situations. Focus is placed on developing the key language skills of listening and speaking for use in a wide variety of real life situations. Pinyin Romanization and useful vocabulary are taught with an emphasis on sentence structure. In class, there are plenty of opportunities to expand your vocabulary, learn new conversational expressions, compose sentences, and practise the language through interactive situations and role-play scenarios. In addition, you will have the chance to learn some of the more common Chinese characters and interesting aspects of Chinese culture. General Mandarin Courses - Listening & Speaking Skills HKIL Level Entry Level Exam Option Foundation Complete Beginners Elementary False Beginners Intermediate About 1 year of Mandarin Upper-Intermediate About 2 years of Mandarin Advanced About 3 years of Mandarin Crash Course (Recommended if you are planning a trip to China) Conversation Course Each course follows a dynamic, up-to-date Mandarin coursebook, and incorporates supplementary materials to make your learning experience more varied and interesting. Our classes adopt a modern communicative approach, providing a progressive and comprehensive programme from Foundation through to Advanced Level. In class you will have plenty of opportunities to practise new language skills through lively, interesting oral activities and role-plays. You will be given regular feedback on your progress and will receive cassette-tapes or CDs so you can enjoy plenty of extra practice at home to consolidate what you have learned in the classroom. In order to ensure the fastest possible progress, the medium used during the lessons is Mandarin, supplemented, whenever necessary, with English or French for explanations and instructions. NEW! Mandarin Language Workshops Now when you register for any one of our Mandarin courses, you can also enjoy free access to our language workshops. These are held on a regular basis in the evening and provide you with a chance for further Mandarin practice in a friendly and relaxed environment. Workshops will change from month to month, and will include activities such as discussions, debates, quiz nights, board games, films, language lab practice, free talk, karaoke, and more! Please ask your teacher for details; if you wish to take part, please register first by phone on 2877 6160 or by email at info@hklanguages.com
General Mandarin (Listening & Speaking Skills) - Course Outlines GENERAL MANDARIN - FOUNDATION LEVEL Questions & Answers / Contemporary Chinese 1 Our Foundation Level course is specifically designed for people who have little or no previous knowledge of Mandarin. The course introduces basic everyday language and expressions, simple sentence construction, as well as Pinyin (Mandarin phonetic system) and pronunciation differentiation. While the focus is to equip you with useful and practical language that you can put to use right away, its main aim is to provide you with a clear understanding of the uniqueness of the structure of Chinese language and correct pronunciation, while building a sound foundation on which to base further studies. Lessons concentrate on developing speaking and listening comprehension skills, with a view to being able to hold simple daily conversations on a range of topics - including greetings and introductions; courtesy expressions; countries, nationalities, and languages; numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and dates; shopping, prices; and going places. They are organised to be lively, fun and immediately useful. Grammar and vocabulary are introduced and reinforced through extensive oral practice, including listening comprehension activities, guided conversation and re-utilisation of sentence structures, and role plays. Pinyin and pronunciation, fundamental elements if you ever want to fully master Mandarin, are covered in each session. By the end of the course, you will be able to socialise with friends, colleagues or clients, and to meet most of your basic daily needs, such as: meeting people and exchanging information; making appointments; welcoming and entertaining guests; giving directions to taxi-drivers; and communicating in the shops. GENERAL MANDARIN - ELEMENTARY LEVEL Questions & Answers / Contemporary Chinese 1 Our Elementary Level course is designed for false beginners who have a basic foundation in Mandarin. Lessons are designed to help you refine your pronunciation, including correct use of the four tones, increase your listening comprehension and speaking skills, and to boost your confidence when communicating in Mandarin. The main focus is on active communication in real-life situations, with the learning of new functional expressions, additional vocabulary, and more complex sentence structures, all practised through interactive situations and role-play scenarios. The ultimate objective being for you to be able to obtain any information that you need, and to communicate what you want as quickly and as effectively as possible. Topics include: meeting people; the family; telephoning; travel and transportation; asking for and giving directions; sightseeing; telling the time; making appointments; daily routines, leisure activities and sports; shopping and clothes; food and drink; eating out; likes and dislikes; expressing preferences; jobs and occupations; describing feelings and personal attributes; seeing the doctor; and polite social talk. By the end of the course, you will be able to communicate effectively in Mandarin in a broad range of everyday social and work related situations.
General Mandarin (Listening & Speaking Skills) - Course Outlines GENERAL MANDARIN - INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Contemporary Chinese 2 Our Intermediate Level course is designed for students who already have a good foundation in Mandarin, and wish to build upon the skills they have acquired at Elementary Level. The focus is on extending your knowledge of vocabulary and further developing your listening comprehension and speaking skills, enabling you to communicate with greater fluency and confidence in everyday situations as well as in more challenging contexts, in order to meet most of your social and work related demands. Topics include: personal identification; describing home and family life; education and work; leisure, holidays, and travel; courteous expressions and their appropriate use; interacting in social and work environments; giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing; expressing comparison and similarity; polite requests and offers; expressing satisfaction and dissatisfaction, as well as giving reasons; describing location and surroundings; talking about the weather; talking about environmental protection; making encouraging and positive remarks; describing personal attributes and qualities; entertainment; emergency situations; special Chinese occasions; and Chinese etiquette. By the end of the course, you will be able to communicate confidently in Mandarin, using the appropriate level of language, for most social and work related aspects of your daily life. GENERAL MANDARIN - UPPER-INTERMEDIATE & ADVANCED LEVELS Contemporary Chinese 3 & 4 Our Upper-Intermediate Level course is designed for students who already have a solid grasp of Mandarin and are confident in using it in everyday contexts. At this level, lessons focus on extending your fluency further with idiomatic expressions, topic-specific vocabulary, and more complex sentence structures. The result is a higher level of proficiency and conversational skills that allow you to use the language you know in a fluent, accurate, and appropriate way while gaining a deeper knowledge of Chinese culture. The content of the course revolves mostly around culture and customs and explores such areas as travelling; cultural differences and lifestyles; traditional legends; Chinese culture, traditions, and myths; do s and don ts; and taboos. At the Advanced Level, classes focus more on group debates and discussions on chosen topics and contemporary social issues, with the aim of encouraging everyone to express his/her views confidently and coherently, using the right level of language and the appropriate vocabulary and gain ever greater fluency. By the end of the courses, you will be able to deal with more complex issues, and to conduct conversations with a high degree of fluency and confidence in most social contexts. Additional reading and writing courses are also available (see Reading & Writing Skills section).
General Mandarin (Listening & Speaking Skills) - Course Outlines GENERAL MANDARIN - CRASH COURSE Have you ever found yourself somewhere in China and wished that you could speak at least enough Mandarin to communicate with the locals, or to socialise with potential business partners, colleagues or clients? Have you wanted to take lessons before, but never got around it? If so, this is the course for YOU! At HKIL, we have made it easy for you to do something about your desire to start learning Mandarin; we have designed a special course to suit your needs and time constraints! The main focus of our crash course is on active communication in real-life situations, through learning functional vocabulary, daily expressions and practical language that can be put to use right away. The ultimate objective being for you to be able to obtain any information that you need, and to communicate what you want as quickly and as effectively as possible. Topics include: meeting people and greetings; countries and nationalities; numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and dates; telling the time and daily routines; interests and hobbies; likes and dislikes; describing feelings; jobs and occupations; telephoning; going places; directions and transportation; eating out; shopping; sightseeing and staying at a hotel; and polite social talk. In class you will have plenty of opportunities to practise your language skills through lively, interesting oral activities and role-play scenarios. In addition, you will have the chance to learn to recognise some of the more common Chinese characters and discover interesting aspects of Chinese culture. By the end of the course, you will be able to socialise with friends, colleagues or clients, and to meet most of your basic daily needs in areas such as: meeting people and exchanging information; making appointments; giving directions to taxi-drivers; sightseeing; ordering meals in restaurants, and communicating at your hotel and in the shops. GENERAL MANDARIN - CONVERSATION Our conversation programme is designed to provide you with the opportunity to improve your fluency and increase your self-confidence when using Mandarin, through a wide variety of interesting and enjoyable, communicative activities. You can choose either to join the programme to complement your general Mandarin course, or as a standalone course. Different levels are available to match any level of ability from Elementary 1 through to Upper-Intermediate level. Textbooks are abandoned so as to create a Mandarin club atmosphere where everyone is encouraged to use his/her Mandarin to speak about a wide range of topics in a friendly and supportive environment. At the basic levels, classes include a mix of activities ranging from listening comprehension exercises, roleplays and topic work through to group discussions, all designed to improve your oral Mandarin communication skills and confidence. At the higher levels, classes focus more on group interaction through debates and discussions on chosen topics and contemporary issues, with the aim of encouraging everyone to be more vocal, while learning to express his/her views fluently and coherently.
Mandarin Language Courses for Adults General Mandarin Courses (Reading & Writing Skills) - Overview These courses are designed for non-chinese speaking adults who want to be able to speak, understand, read, and write Mandarin. They are available either as a complement to our general conversational courses (see Listening & Speaking Skills section) or as a stand-alone course. The aim of these courses is to present the Chinese language as it is: a world of signs with their origin and the logic of their composition, represented by those most frequently used. Through a variety of routes (etymology, semantics, linguistics, graphics, and culture), these courses will not only teach you how to read and write the language, but very importantly, will also enable you to embrace Chinese culture and traditions, and help you to better appreciate the Chinese people s way of thinking. There is much controversy as to whether or not a non-chinese speaker should start studying Chinese characters at the same time as learning how to speak. At HKIL, our experience shows that if serious character study is included from the beginner level, when not in an intensive course structure, it will considerably slow your overall progress in the spoken language. This is why we have designed separate programmes for Listening & Speaking Skills and for Reading & Writing Skills. If you are a complete beginner, we recommend that you postpone serious character study until you are reasonably proficient in the spoken language, that is to say until you reach the end of the Elementary Level. If you are at Intermediate Level and wish to seriously pursue your learning, we recommend that you start to also study how to read and write as this will help you to better understand the nature of the Chinese language and therefore progress further. To this end, we recommend that you join our Reading & Writing course as an additional component to your Intermediate Listening & Speaking Skills core course. If you are really proficient in the spoken language, and would like to focus mainly on the study of the characters, then we recommend that you join our Reading & Writing course as a stand-alone course. Mandarin Courses - Reading & Writing Skills HKIL Level Entry Level Exam Option Level 1 About 1 year of Mandarin HSK (Basic Level) Level 2 About 2 years of Mandarin HSK (Elementary & Intermediate Levels) Our courses make use of practical, easy to follow, and most importantly, proven textbooks that offer a step-bystep approach to written Mandarin. Each new chapter incorporates a short, clear commentary on the cultural and historical background of China to help you to better understand what the Chinese would say in a given situation, as well as why and how. In addition to your coursebook, you will receive a wealth of supplementary materials to make your learning experience more varied and interesting. The medium used during the lessons is Mandarin, supplemented whenever necessary with English or French for explanations and instructions.
General Mandarin (Reading & Writing Skills) - Course Outlines LEVEL 1 A Key to Chinese Speech & Writing I Exam Option HSK (Basic Level) Level 1 is aimed at those students who would like to be able to not only speak the language but also to read it, and eventually write it. It is primarily designed for students who have reached a proficient enough level in spoken Mandarin, and who are keen to embark on a more in-depth study of Mandarin, and/or who aim to be able to sit for the HSK (Han Yu Shui Ping Kao Shi) examination. It includes an introduction to simplified Chinese characters, and comprises such aspects as a presentation of the different types of characters; their origin; the order and orientation in which strokes should be written, as well as strategic ways to best memorise them. By the end of the course, you will have acquired a fundamental knowledge of how Chinese characters work, will know at least 400 of the most frequently used characters (or about 1,400 words), and will be able to recognise about 70% of the characters used in books and newspapers. LEVEL 2 A Key to Chinese Speech & Writing II Exam Option HSK (Elementary & Intermediate Levels) Our Level 2 course is designed for students who have a good foundation in Mandarin and its writing system, and builds upon the skills covered at Level 1. The focus is on extending your knowledge of Chinese characters and the words formed with them, attaining sound reading and comprehension abilities, as well as acquiring greater expressiveness in writing. Equal emphasis is placed on both reading and understanding Mandarin. With an additional 500 characters, this course will equip you with the skills required to read about 4,000 words, guiding you from only being able to read the words, to trying to guess their meaning, and ultimately onto completely mastering them. The content of this course is diverse and includes extracts from literature; ancient tales, poems, and proverbs; excerpts from newspapers and advertisements, that lend themselves naturally to both oral exploitation and extensive practice of more complex sentence patterns, as well as forms of expression and address appropriate to a variety of social circumstances. Through this course, you will acquire not only the ability to read and write but also to better appreciate the richness of the Chinese language and literature, and gain a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and traditions. By the end of the course, you will know at least 900 of the most frequently used characters, introduced in the wider context of about 4,000 + words formed with them, and will be able to recognise about 90% of the characters encountered in everyday modern reading. The end of this level corresponds to two years of university studies.
Mandarin Language Courses for Adults Business Mandarin Courses - Overview These courses are designed for non-chinese speaking business people, administrative personnel and professionals who want to learn Mandarin for use in business contexts or to open up doors to new business opportunities. China is one of the fastest growing business markets in Asia. Learning the language will not only show your business contacts that you appreciate and respect their culture, but will also help you to develop long-lasting business relationships and as well as facilitate your access to the negotiation table. We offer courses from Elementary to Upper-Intermediate levels with an emphasis on acquiring both a solid foundation in Mandarin and the in-depth knowledge to allow you to communicate confidently in common everyday business situations in the office and on business trips. Lessons are arranged to be practical and interesting with plenty of opportunities for language skills practice. The ideal solution for increasing your knowledge and confidence in Mandarin for business purposes! Mandarin for Business HKIL Level Entry Level Level 1 Complete / False Beginners Business Chinese Elementary Level 2 About 1-2 years of Mandarin Business Chinese Intermediate / A Business trip to China 1 Level 3 About 2-3 years of Mandarin Business Chinese Advanced / A Business trip to China 2 These courses are designed for business people and professionals who need to improve their language skills to carry out business in China. They aim to develop the level of proficiency required to conduct business and handle a wide variety of business situations, from the proper learning of words and pronunciation to the correct way to express what you really mean, using the appropriate level of language. They include practical language specific to the situations that you will encounter while carrying out business in China and concentrate on equipping you with both the language and behaviour skills that will earn you respect from your business contacts/associates and potential customers. Lessons include frequent role-plays, case studies, and conversation-based activities, designed to help you relate the language being learnt to your own work/business experience. Special emphasis is placed on listening and speaking skills. Topics include: meeting people; describing jobs and companies; exchanging information; describing comparing products and services; making telephone calls and arrangements; sales and marketing; initiating contacts; company visits and business travel; tackling problems; attending and hosting meetings; presenting facts and figures; negotiating, as well as entertaining and socialising. Note: We are also pleased to tailor-make any courses on request. For details of our in-house corporate training services and programmes, please contact our Head of Corporate Training, Angela Woo, on 2526 9100.