Chinese Summer School blog

Day 2 - Topic 3

Before we go any further we've been learning how to start off a class and finish a class in Chinese. You can listen to the audio file featuring the class trying this out by clicking here. Click on Continue Reading to see the vocabulary.

Day 2 - Topic 2

今天是星期二 jīn tiān shì xīng qī èr. Today is indeed Tuesday and our second topic today is talking about days. Of course days are very easy in Mandarin because you only need one word - 星期 xīng qī - which is followed by the numbers. There's one exception to this - Sunday. We've also been doing the months too. Click on "Continue Reading" for the vocabulary list.

Day 2 - Topic 1

We learned numbers 1-10 yesterday and these are the basis of every other number in Chinese. Here are the numbers from 11 to 100.

Day 1 Podcast

Access today's listening below:

High quality mp3 (for broadband - 6.9mb)
Low quality mp3 (for dialup - 1.7mb)

Day 1 Homework

We've already spoken about your homework, but here's a reminder. To complete today's learning you should write a short introduction along the lines of "Hello, my name is X. I'm Scottish", etc., adding in any other information you know.

You can post in Chinese, Pinyin with accents, or Pinyin with numbers, eg:

我是苏格兰人。
wǒ shì sū gé lán rén.
wo3 shi4 su1 ge2 lan2 ren2.

Don't forget to do your character writing homework too!

Day 1 Test 1

Test your knowledge of the words and phrases included in today's lesson here. In each case translate the phrase in Chinese into English, or the English phrase into Chinese. To complete the quiz, click on "Continue reading" below.

Day 1 - Topic 4

Numbers time! Here's a recording of the class repeating the numbers: Download Day1_Numbers.mp3

Day 1 - Topic 3

It's important to be able to cope in situations where you don't fully understand things. We've been learning how to cope this afternoon with language difficulties.

Day 1 - Topic 2

Moving on, we learned to give more information about other people. Again, to see the vocabulary, click on "Continue Reading" below.

Day 1 - Topic 1

Day 1 has begun! We're blogging live from the class and this morning we've been working on introductions, talking about ourselves and about other people. We've also learned how to ask the question "how are you?" and learned various responses.

To see the vocabulary for this morning's lesson, click on "Continue Reading".