Course Overview 

Introduction to Mandarin is a Beginners Mandarin course for students who have never studied the Mandarin language before. This is a less intensive course than our Level 1 Mandarin course, allowing you to ease your way into the language at a slower and more relaxed pace. If you’re unsure of your level, then check our levels chart. 

Our Mandarin language classes take place at our school in Covent Garden with a qualified, experienced teacher and fellow students. Evening language classes at IH London are dynamic and interactive as the emphasis is on spoken communication, which is achieved through lots of group work and role-plays. At the same time, there is systematic work on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, so that you can improve on all aspects of the language. Your teacher speaks in the target language throughout, so that you can refine your comprehension and listening skills. 

Course Content

Communicative aims

– Working on pronunciation

– Building up simple sentence structures and gaining confidence in speaking

– Communicating in spoken Chinese within a beginner’s range of commonly encountered situations

– “Hanzi” characters outlining stokes and structures

Linguistic aims

– Greetings; introductions surnames and names

– Talking about someone’s occupation

– Talking about someone’s origins; describe the countries and cities

– Numbers & currencies

Course Information 

• Average class size: 8 (maximum 14) 

• Students must be 18+ years old 
• Existing language ability: this is a course for complete beginners 
• Classes will take place at our school in Covent Garden (16 Stukeley Street, Holborn, London WC2B 5LQ) 

Class Schedule 

• The classes are 1.5 hours per week 
• The course runs for 10 weeks 
• The course takes place on Friday evenings 18:00 – 19:30 
• The possible study options for this course are as follow: 

14th January – 18th March 2022

8th April – 24th June 2022*

8th July – 9th September 2022

30th September – 2nd December 2022

*Due to the Bank Holidays there are no classes on Friday 15th April and 3rd June. The course still consists of 10 classes however, spread over 12 weeks.

This language course includes: 

• Access to our Moodle platform to download lesson summaries, notes and resources 
• Support and advice from Mandarin language teachers 
• Mandarin language study tips