This course is designed for beginners. The course aims to introduce students to the pronunciation and basic sentence structures of Mandarin Chinese, as well as the reading and writing in Chinese characters. By the end of the year, students are expected to pronounce the sound of Mandarin with reasonable accuracy, be able to understand and sustain simple conversations in Chinese and develop a general understanding of Chinese culture. Students in Mandarin1 learn to create with sentence level language, ask and answer questions, and handle simple everyday life situations.