Mandarin I

Mandarin I is a function-based high school course in Modern Standard Chinese, or Putonghua, as a second language, which incorporates and integrates topics, structures, grammar, and culture information within a framework based on a communicative approach to language learning.

The emphasis throughout the course is on what students can do using the Chinese language and how they can communicate with Chinese-language speakers in various real-life situations. In Mandarin I, students will identify basic characters, including tone and pronunciation, as well as the origin of the characters. Reading comprehension will involve greetings and basic phrases in a conversational role-play setting.

Students are assessed on speaking and listening in Mandarin, and they will give a short presentation mostly in English, with one portion in Mandarin. The course concludes with a final project on which students can demonstrate their progress in speaking Mandarin.