Learning Mandarin Chinese

HSK Level 1

The first step is to build a strong foundation by learning pronunciation and basic sentence structures. Sentence structures are important because they can be entirely different from English. At HSK1, I prioritise familiarising students with pronunciation and structures over building the quantity of their vocabulary.

I explain a lot of these concepts in English, in order for students to comprehend the course content easier. Course content is aligned closely to real-life examples so students can immediately apply it in their daily life. After ~10 weeks, students can expect to engage in basic conversation. Students typically feel a sense of achievement given the progress made.

HSK Level 2

HSK2 is where I slowly introduce more vocabulary while the sentence structures remain largely the same as HSK1. Students will focus on expanding their vocabulary and incorporating them smoothly into sentences. They will be able to look at a word and know how is pronounced. Different and more complex conversational topics will also be introduced.

At HSK2, students will begin to use Pleco (recommended Chinese dictionary APP) to look up words and learn how to use them correctly in sentences. This is where students start developing an understanding of 汉字 (Hanzi-Chinese characters). Here, I will also introduce relevant aspects of each character. However, for this level, student's main goal is more to “observe”.

A tip I find effective is for students to type Chinese characters on their computer or phone. These exercises will help students consolidate their pinyin spelling and build up their Chinese characters' recognition ability. At the end of HSK2, students will be able to have much richer conversations and will feel a greater sense of achievement.

HSK Level 3

Once students reach HSK3, I’ll increase the difficulty of Chinese grammar. Students will participate in role-playing to develop their conversational skills. This will train them to listen to each other and extract key information from each other’s sentences/questions while figuring out how to respond. This is where we see conversational ability improving rapidly from level 3 onwards. Further, I introduce similar Chinese characters for comparison, demonstrating that Hanzi is not as complex nor difficult as it appears to be.

HSK Level 4

At HSK4, the form of conversation becomes less reliant on role-playing. Instead, in-class conversations will focus on the ability to express one’s views. I feel it is important for students to preserve their creative thinking abilities in the course of learning a second language. Rather than simply memorising fixed responses from textbooks, I much rather students have the freedom of thought to express their own responses...in Chinese.