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Modules follow a prerequisite path. Modules on the same tier can be learned in either order; no historical dates are assigned.
This course develops a compact set of useful Mandarin skills for short, familiar exchanges. You will learn to greet someone, introduce yourself, exchange basic personal details, work with numbers and times, order or buy something, ask where a place is, make a small plan, and communicate one immediate problem. A1 is not unrestricted conversation. It gives you dependable phrases, listening habits, and repair moves for the situations taught here.
The course follows eight towers in a recommended order. Future towers remain visible as locked previews until reached. Enter the next open tower, follow its ordered lesson rooms, read the lesson article, and take its exactly three-question quiz. Previously opened towers and rooms can be revisited.
1. First Contact and Communication Repair opens and closes a brief exchange, handles names and context-sensitive address, confirms name characters, and repairs one missed detail.
2. Personal Identity and People exchanges origin, residence, languages, age, work or study, form details, family relationships, and neutral visible descriptions.
3. Numbers, Time, Dates, and Routines uses numbers for telephone details, clock time, weekdays, dates, opening hours, timetables, and a short routine.
4. Food, Shopping, and Money identifies everyday items, uses suitable measure words, makes a request, answers one service question, understands a price, and pays.
5. Places, Directions, and Transport locates a familiar service, follows a short route, extracts one useful public detail, buys a ticket, and states a ride destination.
6. Home and Everyday Surroundings names rooms and objects, distinguishes what exists from where something is, gives a simple address, and describes a neighborhood briefly.
7. Free Time, Invitations, and Simple Messages names activities, expresses a preference, invites or replies, settles a time and place, and sends a short plan update.
8. Problems, Health, and Help states one need, reports a lost item, uses non-diagnostic health language, requests help, and gives the particular detail a helper asks for.
Spoken examples keep Simplified Chinese characters, tone-marked romanized reading support, one natural English rendering, and the matching audio together. The characters alone are sent to speech synthesis. Reading support remains available throughout A1; it is a bridge to the written form, not a substitute alphabet or an English-style pronunciation guide. Short sound guidance appears inside the practical tasks that need it.
Standard Mandarin as used in mainland China is the primary production model. Other regions and communities use natural alternatives. The course notes a variation only when it helps with the immediate beginner task. Informal and polite address choices depend on relationship, institution, region, and the tone already established; no age or setting alone decides the choice.
Do not treat every word in a short exchange as equally important. First identify the job of the current turn: a name, place, time, amount, choice, or problem. Give the smallest answer that completes it. If one part is missed, ask for that part again. For pronunciation, listen once without speaking over the model, identify the phrase grouping, and repeat the complete short expression.
你好，我叫安娜。 nǐ hǎo, wǒ jiào Ānnà — Hello, my name is Anna.请再说一遍。 qǐng zài shuō yí biàn — Please say it again.我要一杯咖啡。 wǒ yào yì bēi kāfēi — I would like a cup of coffee.Open a module tower to read its orientation, follow its ordered lesson rooms, and complete each lesson's three-question quiz.