Chinese Beginner 4 Course Training
Course overview
Chinese Beginner 4 course has 10 lessons, to be taken over 10 weeks in any weekday evenings or over 5 weeks in an intensive course on Saturdays.
Our Chinese Beginner 4 course is designed for students with good Pinyin foundation, and ideally with knowledge of 200 or more vocabularies.
In this course, students will continue to further their Pinyin training to achieve natural pronunciations and tones. A total of 25 single component Hanzi and its use to create new Hanzi and words will be introduced in this course. In each of our lesson, the strong focus is on conversational skill training talking about your travel plan, work schedule, describing people and telling your own story in a timeline etc. Our key grammar points covered include the continuous status using 着, how to make comparison using 比and 没有, multiple use of modal verbs like 要，会，能，and multiple use of the modal particle 了。
Lesson Topics
Lesson 1 – Ice breaker, review and practise
Lesson 2 – Travel plan
Lesson 3 – Compare
Lesson 4 – Difference
Lesson 5 – Sick leave
Lesson 6 – Mid course review and practise
Lesson 7 – Describing people
Lesson 8 – Continuous aspect
Lesson 9 – My story
Lesson 10 – Total review and practise
Understand the students
Students at this level have become quite good beginners. Because our pace has been set right at the first two courses, they shouldn’t feel like they couldn’t quite catch up.
The grammar points in this course are interesting and will enable students to talk a bit more. With their foundation, it’s easier to play language games with them, like Shiraz, Bingo etc.
The main problem with students of this level is that they worry they couldn’t memorise all the words learnt from the lessons. There are in total over 400 new words introduced, so yes, many students feel like they don’t have 400 words in their heads. Remember to tell them that, these words are the basic words, they will keep coming up again and again, so only by continuous learning, you will be able to memorise them. Do not encourage students to take breaks to consolidate what they have learnt, in fact, revise right after the lesson if possible.
Lastly, remember to ask students to use Quizlet flashcards, and our review podcasts after class to revise. And encourage students to submit audio homework each week into their class group! This is very motivating to the class as a group.
We use our own course books for students. Make sure to read and understand all our material thoroughly before each lesson. This process will equip you with the required subject knowledge and confidence.
1) Fluency coursebook: Book Level 1C last seven lessons, we also call it Discover Chinese 3
2) Pinyin coursebook: Pinyin 2 Naturize My Tones, this is optional, as it’s tone pair practise, not so easy for Beginner 2 students, perhaps Beginner 3 or 4.
3) Hanzi coursebook: Hanzi Level 1 Book B last 5 lessons.
4) Printouts: including flashcards, activities, and worksheets mostly for review lessons
5) Digital material: Fluency book Kahoot, Pinyin Kahoot, Hanzi Quizlet, Review podcasts.
Please refer to the detailed curriculum to manage the right pace for the course.
Understand the Materials
course Introduction – Beginner 4
- Course curriculum
- Typical lesson plan
- How to use the course books including fluency main book, Pinyin & Hanzi books
- How to use other digital resources
- How to teach a student-led classroom including lesson time control, varieties of interactions, ie T-SSS, S-S, S-TSS
- How to use enough Mandarin in class
- How to bring your personal touch bringing culture and personal stories or interest
How to use Kahoot
- We use Kahoot as an interactive assessment tool to test the students, best after students learn grammar or when they need a bit of fun to lift up the mood! In general, students love it!
- It takes normally about 10 mins for 10 questions.
- Access to each lesson Kahoot links below, you will need to create your own account to use our Kahoot links.
Book 1C kAHOOT By Lesson
How to use quizlet
- Sign up to this course Quizlet class first, you and your students will need to request for full access, headoffice will approve when we receive the email notification.
- Look at the video, learn to use Quizlet functions, especially Live Group Game. It’s competitive and fun! However, it requires a minimum of 4 students to start the game.
- Encourage students to use Quizlet to review words after lesson on the phone. It’s effective and fun!
Games & Activities
- There are games and activities designed to go along with the courses in a goodie bag in the office .
- For Pinyin, we have Spelling Bee for the last lesson.
- For Hanzi, we have two sets of 我有…, 谁有…game.
- For every other lesson, to jazz up the atmosphere, we have 听力抢答 and 惩罚卡.
- For each review lessons, we have worksheets, please ask Learning team for printouts if they are not in the goodie bag already.
- There are also 词汇卡 vocabulary flashcards in the goodie bag for your designed games of charades etc.
Before & After Class
- Ask your student to join your WhatsApp group: “Please join our class WhatsApp group, it’s a study group created for us, I will be sending you learning material lesson by lesson, review podcast after each lesson, and your homework submission would be within the group too. It’s also useful when we need to ask for a leave, running late or need help with opening the door etc. “
- It’s highly recommended to send students homework and the lesson Review Podcasts right after the lesson. Most students wouldn’t necessarily download the podcasts themselves, also it helps students who are absent to make up the lesson. By sending it right after the lesson, it helps the students to create a habit to listen to it. It’s proven to HELP them a lot to retain the words learnt, and listen better.
- We encourage students to submit audio homework at beginner stage. Give them encouragements when they do. As teachers, you will find yourself super proud of their progress each time you hear their homework.
Term start & term end
- For Entry Beginner term start, we’d prepare the books and a name list for the teacher.
- For term end, the graduation test is at the back of the books, you can do that in 20-30mins.
- You can also use the culture experience as a graduation ceremony or ask head office to prepare a little graduation gift for your students.
- We also encourage you to take students out for a graduation meal where your meal will be reimbursed (£20 per class).
- Make sure to make the graduation rather ceremonial, exciting! Take tons of photos and video please!
Understand
Understand the nature of active learning, is always by finding out “why” rather than hearing “why”.
Shift
Teacher shouldn’t be the busy person in the room, time and space should be given to the students to learn, practise and present.
Stand back
Except for tutorial part, most of the other activities should be done by students, become a facilitator, move closer to listen to students and help.
Class Management Tips
Class Dynamics
To warm up a group of strangers in the room, the teacher has to be the facilitator and set the tone.
Class WhatsApp
To maintain students sticking to the class, encourage them to share homework to their WhatsApp group.
Do things Together
The group bonds when they share good times together, learning in class, joining our workshops or going out together.
Trouble Shooting
How much English should i use?
English would still need to be used in the classroom to organise the teaching and learning, to explain the grammatical points, to do translation exercises, to make jokes and etc
Use simple English as a lot of our students are not native English speakers
Use simplified Mandarin, in terms of the choice of vocabulary and complexity of grammatical structures. Try to communicate your ideas in simple language that can be understood by your students as much as possible.
My students 水平不一样！
Try to maintain a balance of time allocated to each student in the classroom. Choose questions suitable for the slower students’ level and ask them to answer them directly. This would help them to build confidence. Be careful to call students out when they are not confident and might struggle to answer the questions. They will find it humiliating. (We had quite a few complains)
Teaching Prep by lesson
Beginner 3 Lesson 1
Beginner 3 Lesson 2
Beginner 3 Lesson 3
Beginner 3 Lesson 4
Beginner 3 Lesson 5
Beginner 3 Lesson 6
Beginner 3 Lesson 7
Beginner 3 Lesson 8
Beginner 3 Lesson 9
Beginner 3 Lesson 10
Demo Lesson Clips
book 1C Lesson 3
The only thing to point out would be – sometimes could be too chatty. Some students if they don’t jell well with the class, teacher has to give extra effort to bring him / her into the group. The overall goal is always to keep the whole class happy and happy with learning.