Comprehensive Chinese (Mandarin) I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus a Culture Booklet.
Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will be able to:
* initiate and maintain face-to-face conversations,
* deal with every day situations -- ask for information, directions, and give basic information about yourself and family,
* communicate basic information on informal topics and participate in casual conversations,
* avoid basic cultural errors and handle minimum courtesy and travel requirements,
* satisfy personal needs and limited social demands,
* establish rapport with strangers in foreign countries,
The pimsleur foreign language knowledge usage is a language learning system designed by Dr Paul Pimsleur. The scheme is based on four key ideas : anticipation, graduated period memory, main vocabulary, plus organic learning. The Pimsleur system is an audiobook approach, in which the listener builds sentences or repeats from memory along with a recording. Language courses regularly entail a learner to go over subsequent to an lecturer, which Pimsleur stated was a passive tactic of learning. Dr paul pimsleur developed a "challenge and retort" technique, where a student was prompted to translate a phrase into the learned language, which was then confirmed. This method produces a more dynamic way of remembering, making the student to cogitate before responding. Pimsleur thought the theory of anticipation mirrored real-life conversations in which a speaker must summon up a saying quickly.
The Dr paul pimsleur scheme focuses on teaching universally used words in order to lead to a comprehensive appreciation of a "primary vocabulary". However, word-frequency text analyses point out that a comparatively small basic vocabulary accounts for the preponderance of vocabulary spoken in a actual language. For instance, in English, a set of 2000 words composes about 80% of the entire printed words. Therefore, an comprehension of these 2000 words would lead to approximately an 80% word understanding grade.
About Mandarin Chinese
In everyday use, Mandarin refers usually to just Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu). In its broader sense, Mandarin is a diverse group of related dialects, some less mutually intelligible than others. It is a grouping defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Sichuan dialect or Northeast China dialect, and consider it distinct from ‘Standard Mandarin’ (putonghua); they may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of ‘Mandarin’ in a broader sense. Nor is there a common ‘Mandarin’ identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects, because of the wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of its speakers. Moreover, it is of note that despite its wide use in the Occident, most native Mandarin speakers are reluctant to recognize the term 'Mandarin', since the word does not reflect any Chinese origin. Instead, they would rather call the language simply 'standard Chinese'.
traditional Chinese is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
In English, Mandarin can refer to either of two distinct concepts:
* to all of the Mandarin dialects spoken in northern and south-western China. This group of dialects is the focus of this article.
* to Standard Chinese or Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu/Hanyu), which is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin functions as the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, the official language of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the four official languages of Singapore. ‘Chinese’ — in practice Standard Mandarin — is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Technically, both Putonghua and Guoyu base their phonology on the Beijing accent, though Putonghua also takes some elements from other sources. Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of ‘school’ Standard Mandarin are often quite different from the Mandarin dialects that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect. Putonghua and Guoyu also differ from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and usage.
From an official point of view, there are two versions of Standard Mandarin, since the Beijing government refers to that on the Mainland as Putonghua, whereas the Taiwanese government refers to their official language as Kuo-yü (Guoyu in pinyin).
It is important to note that the terms ‘Putonghua (The Common Language)’ and ‘Guoyu’ refer to speech, and hence the difference in the use of simplified characters and traditional characters is not usually considered to be a difference between these two concepts.
