Mandarin courses for foreign adults

[gladtobemom]

I am keen on learning Chinese - to be able to converse in the language as well as to read it. Do you have any recommendation on where I can learn it?

[Jennifer]

There are conversational Mandarin courses offered at community centres.

[gladtobemom]

Thanks, but I do want to be able to read and write as well. I'm hoping to at least be able to read my children's school textbooks

[fristrom]

I don’t know how old your kids are, what is their level of mandarin, how much you know already, and how much time you have to learn.


If you are very motivated and have time on your hand, I would suggest you get a private tutor for 2-3 times a week to learn pinyin and conversational mandarin. Once you get comfortable with pinyin, you can convert your kids textbook into pinyin, it should not be difficult to "read" the books within a couple of weeks. And you can practice you conversational mandarin with your kid if he/she is speaking.

Writing is going to be difficult. Not sure whether you really need it, if you intention is to help your kid with his/her mandarin.

[Jennifer]

gladtobemom:

Thanks, but I do want to be able to read and write as well. I'm hoping to at least be able to read my children's school textbooks

I attended a conversational Malay at a cc some years ago. We were supposed to be able to read the words on the worksheets.

Hence I suppose a conversational Mandarin course wld also hv worksheets with characters. So can learn to read and speak at the same time.

[gladtobemom]

fristrom:

I don't know how old your kids are, what is their level of mandarin, how much you know already, and how much time you have to learn.


If you are very motivated and have time on your hand, I would suggest you get a private tutor for 2-3 times a week to learn pinyin and conversational mandarin. Once you get comfortable with pinyin, you can convert your kids textbook into pinyin, it should not be difficult to \"read\" the books within a couple of weeks. And you can practice you conversational mandarin with your kid if he/she is speaking.

Writing is going to be difficult. Not sure whether you really need it, if you intention is to help your kid with his/her mandarin.

Hmm...my kids are 16, 13 and 11 years old. All are doing higher Chinese. I know very little Mandarin, but I can converse in Cantonese with my in-laws. A private tutor may be the best, but I guess it's going to be pretty expensive. Need a lobang...

[fristrom]

gladtobemom: I dropped you a PM.

[Advisepls]

Hi. My stepfather is foreign and I would like to know whether there are any mandarin courses for him to take part in. My mother is trying to teach him since she is a chinese teacher but it isn’t very effective because he has never been exposed to chinese since he grew up in Hungary, a distant land.