Mandarin · For teachers
Every Mandarin printable, chapter by chapter
The whole Mandarin curriculum in one place, mapped to its 33 chapters and 878 lessons. Each lesson lists its downloads inline - worksheets with answer keys, infographics and PDFs - and each chapter's words fold out into their own per-word printable sets, so you can open and print any sheet for a class without hunting through the site.
Chapter 1 · Foundations
Chapter page →- Introduction to MandarinIntroduction
Read this first. The orientation: how Mandarin works, what it costs in hours, what the apps get wrong, and how to use this curriculum.
Four pitch shapes and a light, unmarked neutral tone. Change the tone and you change the word: mā is mother, mǎ is horse.
Where pinyin puts the tone mark, and the one sandhi rule you need on day one: two third tones in a row, the first one rises. The page keeps nǐ hǎo; your voice says ní hǎo.
- First words for sentencesVocabulary
10 words · A pronoun, a few verbs, the things they act on. Enough to build a real Mandarin sentence by the end.
Hello, goodbye, thank you and sorry - nǐ hǎo, zàijiàn, xièxie, duìbuqǐ - so you can greet a real Mandarin speaker before you have learned any grammar.
Sentences for a first conversation: what's your name, my name is, I speak a little Chinese, and the most useful one a beginner owns, 我听不懂 (wǒ tīng bu dǒng), I don't understand.
- Word order in MandarinGrammar
Subject, verb, object - and the moments Mandarin bends the English order.
- More people, more wordsVocabulary
14 words · Subject pronouns for everyone else, plus the rest of the vocabulary you need for your first story.
也 goes after the subject and straight before the verb, never at the end like English 'too': 我也去, I am going too. With 不 it is 'not ... either'.
都 sums up the group on its left: 我们都去, we are all going. 也 comes first in 也都, and 都不 (none) is not 不都 (not all).
- Your first story in MandarinGraded-reader story
Every content word in this story comes from the lessons you've just finished. No lookups required.
- The sounds of MandarinPronunciation
Retroflex against palatal, and the ü. The tongue positions pinyin never shows you, drawn and animated.
Tones are a listening skill before they are a speaking one. Ten minutes on the tone trainer, and what to listen for in each of the four.
- Mister, and ChinaConversation
Eight lines with a man who means exactly what he says.
- Arcade reviewReview games
Replay this chapter's words as games - a different kind of repetition, and it counts.
Word printables
Per-word sheets24 words · a worksheet, infographic and listicle each
