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China Summer Camp Essentials | Mandarin Course

The Mandarin Chinese course is the most important component of our summer camp.

There are 20 lessons every week, with 4 lessons every day, Monday through Friday. Each lesson is 45 minutes in length. The maximum size of each class is limited to 10 (average 3-6) to ensure every student gets full attention from the teacher and has ample time for practice. Evaluation tests will be given on the first day to place students into the appropriate class. The course is available at all 7 levels from total beginners to advanced to make sure students are placed exactly where they should be.

The carefully designed curriculum emphasizes conversation and communication, so that students may take full advantage of their surroundings and apply what they’re learning by speaking with friends during the rest of the day. The summer camp faculty is experienced in teaching young people of various ages and implements a wide array of techniques and activities that speak to every age group and learning type.

Teachers
The success of all learning efforts depends on a teaching team trained and equipped to motivate their students. To this end, we’ve carefully selected a faculty among all our teachers with rich experience in teaching teens. All of them are Chinese natives with university degrees, experienced and passionate about teaching their native language. Additionally, many of the teachers have considerable life experience having worked in a broad range of areas from the commercial world to the performing arts. All of them speak English or other languages. This adds up to a cosmopolitan team, which is the way it should be for a city like Shanghai or Beijing.

Levels, Placement & Progress
The Chinese courses at MandarinRocks China summer camp are offered at all levels from total beginners to advanced.

We ask students to grade themselves on a 0-9 scale module and provide past learning experience info for our reference. We will further evaluate students on arrival or first day in the form of writing or interview in order to place them into the appropriate class. Besides language level, age is the other consideration.

MandarinRocks organizes Mandarin courses into 7 different levels.

1 Total Beginner
For students who have not received any previous Chinese instruction

2 Beginner
For students who have limited Chinese instruction

3 Elementary
For students who have some previous knowledge of basic Chinese structures.

4 Pre-intermediate
For students who have basics in Chinese characters and command of around 1000-1500 words

5 Intermediate
For students who understand around 1000 Chinese characters and 2000-2500 words

6 Upper-Intermediate
For students who already have a solid grasp of Mandarin and are able to communicate effectively

7 Advanced
For students with a high level of spoken and written Chinese

Teaching Methodology
The language curriculum is designed keeping in mind at all times that we are a Summer Camp. In other words, classes are conceived to be sufficiently interesting and entertaining to motivate students to the fullest, but we simultaneously optimize class time by encouraging conversation and discussion in a serious manner. Our aim is for students to enjoy themselves while learning as much as possible in a short period of time.

The methodology is centered on a communicative approach, utilizing diverse techniques to cover the fundamentals of language learning: grammar, speaking, listening, vocabulary, pronunciation, writing & intercultural competence. For beginners, the teaching content will be conducted in Pinyin while for more advanced students, Chinese characters are an integral part of the learning content.