Chinese classes

During the Beijing 2008 Summer Program participants will have a total of 40 teaching hours of Chinese classes. Every weekday, there will be 4 teaching hours of classes, from 8:50 am until noon. Every teaching hour lasts 45 minutes and there will be a 10 minute break after every one and a half hours.

If you want to study more, we can arrange additional Chinese private classes at a surcharge of 15 EUR/hour.

Class size and levels

The number of levels that will be organized depends on the number of students and their Chinese level, which will be tested on the first day of the courses. There will be a minimum of 3 levels and a maximum of 10 people per group. The following levels will be organized:

Absolute beginners level

Students without any previous knowledge of the Chinese language will naturally be placed in this level. After 2 weeks of intensive classes, the students will be able to speak Chinese at a basic level.

Course book:
The course book for absolute beginners is called Everyday Chinese from the "Experiencing Chinese" series published by Gaodeng Jiaoyu Publishing House. The course book is intended for a 40 hrs Chinese course and provides an efficient and easy-to-follow introduction to the Chinese language.

Intermediate level

Students who are able to read between 300-750 characters will be placed in this level. Whereas in the beginners level, the focus is primarily on reading and speaking, in the intermediate level more emphasis will be placed on the writing of the 750 most common characters. 

Advanced level

Depending on the number of students and their level, a more advanced class will be organized with focus on newspaper reading, radio and TV news, oral discussion of current topics related to Chinese society, culture, literature, history, etc…

For very advanced students, a more individualized arrangement will be made: instead of 4 hours of group classes per day, the student will get 2 hours of private classes per day and 2 hours of reading assignments, adapted to his/her level.

Course books:
Since we believe in flexibility when teaching, course books for intermediate and advanced courses may be chosen according to the preferences of the students.

As a guide, we recommend the following course books for intermediate and advanced levels from the series “New Approaches to Learning Chinese” by Zhang Pengpeng:

《集中识字》(Rapid Literacy in Chinese), for the Reading and Writing class.

《口语速成》(Intensive Spoken Chinese), for the Speaking class. The students will learn how to introduce themselves in Chinese, greet people, order food and drinks, buy things, talk about their families, etc… The focus will be on basic Chinese vocabulary which can be immediately used in common daily situations.

《常用汉字部首》(The Most Common Chinese Radicals), will be used mostly as a reference book for students to improve their understanding of Chinese characters and the radical-phonetic system.

The author Zhang Pengpeng (张朋朋) is an associate professor at Beijing Language and Culture University. He has taught Chinese to non-native speakers since 1975 in Beijing as well as at universities in France, Switzerland and Germany. Based on his experiences with non-native speakers, Mr. Zhang developed his own method separating spoken Chinese on the one hand and character recognition/writing on the other hand. Rather than requiring students to be able to pronounce, read and write every single character from every dialogue, Mr. Zhang pays more attention to explaining the form and structure of characters and the radical-phonetic system.

This way, students can progress quicker in spoken Chinese and at the same time lay a good foundation for character memorization at a later stage because they have a more thorough insight in the characters. In addition, Mr. Zhang focuses more on character recognition in the beginning and incorporates writing characters only in a later phase.

All study books are included in the total fee of the program.