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Chinese has a reputation of being a hard language to learn. However, that’s largely due to its writing. Since Chinese also has a writing system, which uses “English” letters, you can focus on spoken Chinese first and learn writing at a later point. This is how native speakers learn their own languages.

Spoken Chinese is actually a very simple language. Its grammar is very simple and even when you make mistakes people can likely understand your meaning. That is, as long as you learn to speak with a clear accent.

• Chinese has a very small number of sounds to make up its words. A listener determines the meaning of the sounds based on 4 tones and on context. Therefore, it’s very important for you to work hard on developing clear Chinese pronunciation.
  
  
• All schooling and broadcasts in China are done in standard Mandarin so unless a Chinese person never went to school, he/she will be able to speak Mandarin. However, Chinese people living in many parts of China have very poor pronunciation and may even speak completely different dialects. So, Mandarin is actually their second language.

Living in Harbin will go a long way towards helping you develop clear Mandarin because Harbin has the most standard Mandarin in China.

As part of our course, you will have 60 hours of classroom Mandarin study. This is equivalent to 2 terms of language study in university. Plus we will make available audio materials for you to study on your own. Of course your best Chinese study tool will be the practice you get when shopping and going about your daily life in Harbin.

Some people achieve a high level of fluency in 6 months while others learn only the basics. How good your Chinese becomes will depend largely on your attitude and goals.