Understanding Basic Mandarin: A Beginner’s Guide to Learning Chinese

by Charles Liu

For many years now, the world has been insisting that everyone should speak English. But across the world, countries have provided their young with initiatives to learn other languages also. Yet in recent months, Americans have now come to realize that there is now a need for people to able to speak languages that are more specialized. Certainly the fact is that one language which many schools are now considering including within their curriculum’s, not just in the USA, but around the world is Chinese.

Presently, 1.3 billion people speak Chinese around the world, and of this, 885 million speak Mandarin (the official language of China), which also happens to be the most dominant dialect. Currently in the USA, only 24,000 students (Grades 7 through to 12) are actually studying this language, but their numbers are steadily growing.

However, the biggest problem that many educators in the US are facing when it comes to expanding their Chinese programs, is finding people who are actually qualified to teach it. There are only a few Universities in the USA which offer programs to allow people to train and gain their teacher’s certification in teaching the Chinese language. One University (George Mason) included a program which would allow people to gain their teacher’s certificate for teaching Mandarin, and a total of 2 people enrolled on the course. This is where exchange courses come in useful, and are very critical to helping ensure that this language, along with Arabic, can be taught in US schools.

However for those that are interested in learning the Chinese language, you will find it can be very difficult. So you need to be prepared to spend a good deal of your spare time, as you will find it will take some time to learn. However, through this book, we hope to provide you with some useful information that will help you to learn Chinese.

65 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 19, 2011

About the author

Charles Tsun-Chu Liu is an American astronomer and astronomy educator. His research interests include merging and colliding galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and the star formation history of the universe. Liu is one of the original team members of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), the largest contiguous deep field ever observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. He is a former director of the William E. Macaulay Honors College and The Verrazano School at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island. He currently serves as a professor of physics and astronomy at the College of Staten Island, and as President of the Astronomical Society of New York. In 2019, he was named a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.