This course introduces students to Mandarin Chinese, the language with the largest number of
speakers in the world. This course will employ a comprehension-led approach to language
learning in which students will first learn to understand concrete “here and now” language and
then learn how to draw upon the language they can understand to express their own ideas
using their own words. Students will learn the phonetic writing system for Mandarin called
Pinyin. Students’ growing familiarity with Mandarin Chinese will be complemented by learning
about Chinese culture.
MDN 101 Mandarin Chinese II (3)
This course is designed to enable beginning-level Chinese students to increase their ability to
comprehend and produce spoken Mandarin. This course will employ a comprehension-led approach to
language learning in which students will first learn to understand concrete “here and now” language and
then learn how to draw upon the language they can understand to express their own ideas using their
own words. Students will learn to read and write pinyin for new vocabulary as they acquire it, and they will
learn to recognize beginning-level simplified Chinese characters. Students’ growing familiarity with
Mandarin Chinese will be complemented by learning about Chinese culture.
