Amazing subject! Very informative but not too content-heavy and moved at a slow-enough pace for everyone, even the most lingual-challenged, to keep up.

useful and practical foundational unit

For beginners it is a great subject to start with. It will start with Pinyin which is the foundation for the pronunciation. But in the end, you'll still need practice to improve the main four aspects: Speaking, Writing, Listening and Reading.

This is a very comprehensive Chinese beginner's unit - the goal is to rapidly build vocabulary and flexibly integrate these to form sentences, develop understanding of concepts - particularly with relation to grammar structures and their variations and also realistic dialogue patterns and situations. The course directly targets the 4 main components of learning Mandarin - speaking, listening, reading and writing. To break this down: Speaking - In a lecture, you may be collectively asked to repeat words and phrases, either after the teacher, or by translating English passages. In a tutorial, you may also be asked to individually read from a passage, translate a phrase, or collectively repeat after the teacher. Tutorials often focused on peer interaction - working with other students to read and create dialogues via Q&A. Students were also expected to submit voice recordings of reading from the textbook onto blackboard for weighted homework. Additionally, there were two oral assessments for this unit; one was for a group, the other was for an individual. Listening - Using the resources provided on blackboard, such as the mini drama and the recordings files from the textbook, students were able to refine their ability to detect tones as they were spoken and also deduce their correct pinyin spelling. The mid semester and final exams both included a listening component, which required students to identify the tone and pinyin of words read to them by the exam supervisor. Also, as part of their weighted participation marks, students were expected to complete "mini quizzes" on Blackboard, which involved a similar concept. *In both the group and individual oral assessments, questions were asked in Mandarin by the exam instructor which were likewise required to be answered in Mandarin - utilizing both speaking and listening skills* Reading - The textbook presented students with dialogues both in pinyin and character format, to practice reading of Mandarin in both its forms. In lectures and tutorials, phrases presented in character format were asked to be read aloud. The mid semester and final exams both included reading comprehension components. Writing - The complementary character workbook assigned to this course emphasized repeated practice of writing individual characters, with a demonstration of correct stroke order at the top of every character space and ideal neat arrangement of the character with the grid lines through the character space boxes. The mid semester and final exams both included components of translation of English sentences into both pinyin and character form Mandarin sentences. Overall, this was a very thorough unit, and both the lecturers and tutors were EXCELLENT - friendly and knowledgeable.