Introduction

The online tutorials

These online tutorials accompany the texts for Gateway to Chinese Language I & II. They are designed to help students prepare class assignments by providing a focused, interactive environment. Each lesson consists of four sections: Listening Comprehension, Vocabulary (Chinese to English and English to Chinese translations), Illustrative Sentences, and Audio-Only Grammar Exercises (Sentence Patterns, Sentence Building and Questions and Responses.) At the end of each section, students are asked to log in their names so that instructors can keep a record of completed assignments.

• In the Listening Comprehension sections, students will listen to a dialogue and then complete a multiple-choice, self-correcting quiz.
• In the Vocabulary sections, students will participate in an interactive flashcard game.
• The Illustrative Sentences sections provide students with listening exercises combined with the Chinese characters for each sentence and images to aid in comprehension.
• The Audio-Only Grammar Exercise sections allow students to listen to native speakers read exercises while they follow along in their textbook.

Instructions for completing each of these exercises can be found by clicking on the Instructions link at the top of this page.

Click here to review the cast of characters in the textbook.

The text

Gateway to Chinese Language I & II provide a comprehensive package of first-year course material for Mandarin Chinese. This material is based upon and constitutes a logical continuation of the introductory course materials Drills and Quizzes in Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation and Keys to Chinese Character Writing. Drills and Quizzes in Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation is designed to provide learners with an efficient way to master Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. Keys to Chinese Character Writing offers systematic instruction in the writing of Chinese characters. Through this program, students learn the principles that govern the construction, basic strokes, and proper stroke order of Chinese characters. Keys to Chinese Character Writing introduces 125 characters and 115 vocabulary items. Material studied in these packages recurs for review in Gateway to Chinese Language I & II. Gateway to Chinese Language I & II employ traditional characters. The experience of most educators suggests that beginning with traditional characters provides an easier transition to simplified characters.

Gateway to Chinese Language I & II include a textbook, a workbok, and interactive tutorial software. In each lesson, the pīnyīn text appears before the Chinese character text. The pīnyīn text focuses on pronunciation, accuracy of intonation and fluency of speech, while the Chinese character text stresses character recognition and reading comprehension. The pīnyīn text should be used prior to the character text in any given lesson.

Gateway to Chinese Language I consists of ten lessons. Although in each lesson only 10 new characters are introduced, students will actually be learning 20-30 compound words, idioms and/or expressions. By the end of the first semester, students will have learned a total of 225 characters, 347 compound words/expressions, and 117 basic sentence patterns. Using the words, phrases, expressions, and sentence patterns introduced in Keys to Chinese Character Writing and Gateway to Chinese Language I, students will be able to offer greetings and respond to greetings, make introductions and respond to introductions, ask and answer questions, make and respond to requests, express likes and dislikes, understand telephone conversations or written correspondence, and write letters and e-mail.

Gateway to Chinese Language II consists of twelve lessons. A total of 120 new characters, 361 compound words/expression, and 89 sentence patterns are introduced. In all, 345 characters, 694 compound words, and expressions, and 206 sentence patterns are introduced in this set of teching materials. With the successful completion of this set of materials, students will be able to report on events in the past; discuss plans for the future; make comparisons; express cause, effect and purpose; talk about holidays and birthday parties; ask permission; express emotion; give advice and make suggestions.

Lesson content includes dialogues, annotated vocabulary with illustrated sentences, sentence paterns, sentence building, questions and responses, cultural notes in English, and a reading section. Songs, word-play, and tongue-twisters are also provided to enliven and vary the language experience. Each lesson has an illustration to indicate its main point.

The materials in this book focus on student life in the United States, enabling students to practice Chinese within the context of their day-to-day experience of campus life. The workbook includes prepared writing assignment sheets for students to complete and return to the instructor. Vocabulary and sentence pattern indexes are also provided. Separate sets of flash cards are provided for student and instructor. The students’ flash cards include stroke order, and the instructor’s flash cards are larger in size for classroom use.