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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Chinese for Beginners by Peking University

4.8
stars
19,005 ratings

About the Course

Immerse yourself in the captivating world of Chinese culture and language with our ABC Chinese course for beginners. This comprehensive course provides an introduction to Mandarin phonetics and essential daily expressions, enabling learners to achieve a fundamental understanding and confidently engage in basic conversations. Our carefully crafted curriculum covers practical topics and real-life situations, ranging from exchanging personal information and discussing daily schedules to conversing about food, prices, city life, weather, and hobbies. The diverse selection of reading materials and interactive activities ensures a rich and stimulating learning experience, piquing learners' interests throughout the course. No need to worry about learning Chinese characters – this course focuses on speaking skills, making it accessible and enjoyable. Elevate your learning with a thrilling bonus feature: virtually travel to China and hone your speaking skills with our immersive game, playable on a VR headset or desktop. Embark on a scavenger hunt, talk to vendors, encounter fellow travelers, and explore a traditional market, all while applying your Chinese skills in a real-world environment....

Top reviews

SS

Sep 16, 2016

Thanks for this course. I like it and this language really so necessary for me and my job. My company in New Zealand - ESKA Ltd (www.eskaltd.co.nz, eskaltd.com) and we are work with aliens from China.

PP

Apr 24, 2020

She teaching very well! Easy to understand, her accent is very clear to understand, lesson is very useful to and might can use it for real. Thank you for lovely teaching and lovely lesson

Thank you

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4601 - 4625 of 5,314 Reviews for Chinese for Beginners

By Yulia B

Nov 8, 2015

Everything is very well! Ilike the material and the professor who is teaching us. She is very good. Thank you very much. But the only problem for me is that the wrong pronunciation is given by the professor. For me it wasa psycological issue. Because, I would remember the variant how you should not do! AndI think it is better to make an example only the right variant and repeting this several times as a tongue twister. During the course I am trying to avoid this wrong examples, trying to scroll later and not to hear them. Everything else I like very much!

By Cornelia H

Aug 23, 2015

This course includes major topics of daily life. After having completed all lessons with Professor Xiaoyu Liu, the student will be able to express himself/herself in many useful situations. This fast result of some basic Chinese is very motiviating to complete the course and to continue studying this fascinating language. The only drawback may be the lack of some corresponding Chinese characters. However, this may exceed the scope of this Coursera course. Maybe there will be a course Chinese for Beginners 2 in future. If so, I would certainly participate.

By Belinda N

Mar 12, 2022

I absolutely LOVED this course. The only frustrating thing I have experienced is the time when assistance was needed to overcome system errors or help was needed when struggling with submission of some of the assignments. There is no help available and therefore, because I want to complete and not quit halfway, I had to do these assignments over and over and over and over again using various methods, until the system accepted it. But, overall, I am very satisfied with the course and will definitely recommend it to my friends. Keep up the good work!

By Brendan

Oct 6, 2015

Excellent course for a beginner or post-beginner as the fundamentals of pronunciation are dealt with slowly in the first half and then it races ahead with useful language and vocabulary for everyday contemporary situations like talking about hobbies, using the internet, etc etc. Stylistically, the Professor may seem dry and mechanical to some but I liked her. No fluff. She moves at quite a pace. For false-beginners, would have bene nice to ave had access to the Chinese vocabulary during the course not at the end. Looking forward to the next course.

By R. L H M E a R L H E

Aug 6, 2017

This was a great beginner's Chinese course and therefore a great review for me. Although I had studied Chinese before, there were some lessons that I had never learned academically, but had acquired from everyday life living in China, and therefore, those lessons were interesting to sit through to see how the sentences are created This was very useful for understanding the structure, which goes beyond merely acquiring a language through daily conversation. It provides for a better understanding of the functionality of the language.

Thank you.

By Eric L

Dec 29, 2022

An excellent course for absolute beginners like myself. It's very difficult to hear the tones at first and work out how to pronounce the syllables. Getting the numbers form one to ten was tricky and I needed to create my own English phonemic transcription based on what I think it sounded like because I kept tripping over the Pinyin.

PS There's a couple of things I'd like to discuss with Marayam or an active mentor about the course.

I wasn't able to get the textbook for "Chinese Characters for Beginners." Can somebody help me find it please.

By Nina F

Feb 28, 2020

This was an excellent course for learning Beginner's Chinese. I really thought the instructor did a good job in teaching Mandarin. She spoke in a way that could be understood. She pronounced the words in a clear way and did a good job of explaining how to pronounce them. My only suggestions for the course would be to improve the subtitles for the lecture videos and to maybe improve the extended exercises a little bit. Other than that, the course is great. I would totally recommend this course to anyone wanting to learn Beginner's Chinese.

By Alberto F O

Jun 8, 2017

El curso ha sido increíble. Una verdadera aproximación al idioma chino en su sentido mas básico.

Me interesa la filosofía, la historia y las costumbres del pueblo chino. Y este curso ha sido un verdadero regalo.

Aunque los subtitulos los he elegido en español, Xiaoyu Liu se dirige en inglés, lo cual para algunos puede ser un problema, tanto en las lecciones como en los exámenes. En mi caso, me ha servido -además- para mejorar mi idioma ingles -escritura y dicción. La profesora habla muy bien el ingles.

Saludos y muchas gracias.

By Richard T

Dec 22, 2020

Good course but better for review or supplement to a live course or gor refreshing knowledge of basic Chinese; otherwise, some aspects, notably tones, might be difficult using only matetials in this course; course is too short, just 7 weeks; more like a half-course. No final exam to pull all material together. Drawbacks include no capacity to practice speaking except for talking to yourself; you might be saying something wrong, even embarrassingly wrong, or just have unintelligible pronunciation, but nobody can correct you.

By Bianca S

Jun 17, 2017

As a person that has had some Chinese exposure before and after some of these lessons, I find them informative, yet still much in want. Some things the instructor explain was done poorly, others in good understanding. I can't complain about the lack of hanyu writing, but to randomly have them in the notes in the self studies was less than helpful towards the self lessons. Overall, I still consider this a good course to start off anyone and easy and simple enough to break them into bigger and better studies with it.

By Putita J

May 20, 2020

This course is good. I've learned some Chinese when I was in middle school but I almost totally forgot. So I took this course to review some Chinese. This course is well arranged. They gradually add more vocabulary and patterns of the sentence each lesson. They also review some of them in the following lessons. However, there was a little mistake that I found such as in the last review. They forgot to type pinyin for some sentences. It would be very nice if it is improved. Thank you :)

By Mert C

Jan 5, 2022

Actually my review point is 4.5 but since there is no option like that, i will give it 4. Overall, course was good but i didn't like the very last part of the last week. It was like as if they did their best to give us important informations in the last seconds of the class. There is one thing i need to mention, course was good but i would want them to teach me how to use modal verbs in chinese. Because we learned a sentence with (can = neng in chinese) at the end of the course.

By Chanidapa

Dec 14, 2020

It's nice course. Teacher Liu pronounce very easy to listening. Her English is very easy to listen too. (My native language isn't English) But I think this course is too hard for one who doesn't know any thing in Chinese language. In my opinion you have to had some basic knowledge in Chinese language before you can take this course untroubled. (example you'd learn some pinyin speaking before when you study in your school course)

By vray m

Jul 20, 2020

I enjoyed the experience. In teh frist week I really felt that I was elarning some basics, then I get lost. There has been a step that I certianly missed. The written exercise were starting to be too complex, mixing elements learnt in previous courses !

Now, It gave me some elements of how chinese is structured, but I would have like more of those basics explained.

Now the teacher is super friendly and videos are great.

By Armin S

Sep 18, 2015

Good as a standard introduction to chinese. We learnt similar words in our first-semester course at uni.

I'd personally also like to learn the simplified chinese symbols but that's just my opinion.

Weekly deadlines are good but if we keep going I won't revise anything. I'd rather have the course force me to repeat some of the words and constructs I have learnt in former courses. The assignments should be harder too.

By Topie J

Jul 13, 2017

A good course for newbies to Chinese, I enjoyed the simplicity of it. I actually took this course with my 8 year son who said he wanted to learn Chinese, he caught on way faster than I did. I had trouble in some of the tests I found the audio to be muffled and it made it hard to decipher what was being said. I got some questions wrong due to that. But overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others.

By Lesley A V

Apr 22, 2016

After many technical issues I decided to try the course using my phone.... and it worked! I enjoyed the rest of the course immensely! :-) I have given this course four stars instead of five as I feel there should have been a few more interactive quizzes to really imbed the target language. I actually used what I learned to chat to some Chinese people in my area! What a wonderful feeling. :-)

By Luca

Apr 15, 2018

Good introductory course, I took this course after having graduated HSK3 so I found it really easy to complete. Unfortunately there is no real (hanzi) writing or reading activities but the listening parts are still very useful to understand the tones. I'd suggest more of this with longer and richer videos and more difficult quizzes (some are trivial also for the very beginners).

By Nathan H

Mar 6, 2017

I'd say this was a pretty good introduction to Chinese. The main thing this accomplished for me was practicing the tones, which are very challenging. The vocabulary covered was very limited, and the course didn't really stress grammar, so you shouldn't expect to be able to form your own sentences after taking this course. But I think this is at least a good starting point.

By Kelly P

Nov 16, 2016

The course is good for beginners. The lessons are short and the teacher is easy to understand. I really need the characters as well as the pinyin. I had to spend time after the lessons to find the characters. Then I saw the sheet at the end of all the lessons that had characters listed for everything. I wish I had known that. It would have saved me some time.

By Steve W

Oct 8, 2022

Haven enrolled in this short online course in Chinese for Beginners has really helped me. Now a Masters student at BNU, it's easy for me to communicate on campus and even outside campus. It makes it easier for a native to give you help since you can say something in Chinese. I am amazingly thrilled with my ease of lifestyle in Beijing; thanks to COURSERA

By Dira E N M

Jun 22, 2020

Me ha gustado mucho el curso. He disfrutado y encontré muy útiles de todas las actividades, tanto los vídeos, como las lecturas y los cuestionarios. Sin embargo, me hubiera gustado aprender más específicamente cómo pronunciar algunos sonidos (como j, x, zh). A parte de eso el curso fue estupendo. Muchas gracias coursera y la amable profesora del curso.

By Andrew B

Feb 9, 2018

The teacher does a good job at concisely guiding you through pronunciation and vocabulary. Its a good first step towards Chinese proficiency. I didn't like the lack of written notes for me to study vocabulary. I found out at the end (week 7), they provide a comprehensive vocab guide. It may have been nice to have the added incrementally with each week.

By Pitshaporn L

May 5, 2020

The context and the contents of the course are easy to follow. The instructor speaks slowly and clearly. However, even if we don't learn to read and write the Chinese characters since it may be a tad too difficult, I would appreciate it if the course also adds some Chinese characters with the words so the students could try to familiarize themselves.

By Sofiia P

Aug 10, 2016

Very nice course! It was very interesting for me to learn Mandarin as I was totally new to this language. We went through 7 weeks of lectures which don't take much time. Literally 10 min per day is enough. Now i know a lot but unfortunately still can't really talk. I'm looking forward for another course, because these 7 weeks were not enough for me)