This is an intensive course which covers the regular first-year coursework in the Chinese program at Harvard University. This course is designed for people with little or no background in Mandarin. The goal for this fast-track introductory course is to help students acquire the rudimentary knowledge and develop a basic foundation in the four skills of speaking listening reading and writing. In addition this course furthers develop students' communicative skills in the listening and speaking modalities and at the same time shift the focus of instruction gradually towards reading and writing. It provides more practice on syntactic structures usage and their communicative functions and prepares students for intermediate-level courses. At the completion of this course students have survival-level communication skills to communicate solely in Chinese in common situations of daily life. They can also write about themselves and about those topics that are of personal relevance. Moreover through learning the language students gain an initial understanding of some Chinese social and cultural phenomena.
