Chinese classes

Every morning we had Chinese class with Lillian. Lillian is a great person. She managed to teach us a lot of things in a short amount of time.

Except for Lisa and Alexandre, none of us could speak Chinese before the trip and we were a little bit skeptical: we thought that 10 days were too short to have knowledge of a hard language like Chinese. Actually thanks to the Units which Lillian had prepared for us, we could communicate and understand a little bit even though it was not easy.

Lillian gave us a lot of vocabulary, she insisted on the pronunciation (tones are very important!) and made us participate a lot. (All this in a very playful atmosphere)

Now we have basis in grammar, we can make a basic courtesy speech, introduce ourselves, ask time, direction…

Anchor 1

Program of classes:

Unit one: “Hello!”: we learned phonetics (really different than French language!) and to make short sentences. We also learned to count.

Unit two: “What time is it?”: Lillian taught us to make a question and to answer to it. She also gave us lots of vocabulary: “now”, “early morning”, “noon”, “yesterday”, “today”, “tomorrow”… We made translation and short dialogue.

Unit three: “How much does that sweater cost?”: new useful words to manage to buy something, to describe what we want, etc.

Unit four: “I’d like a fried diced chicken with peanuts”. Lillian insisted on this lesson with a lot of new words and new grammar.

Unit five: “go straight ahead”: we can ask our way and manage in a big city like Shanghai (well… technically…)

Last Unit : “Where is your new home?”

Unfortunately we are going to forget what we learned if we don’t continue practicing it, but now we are aware of the importance of China. The French expatriates of the Round-Table told us this country is almost inevitable for business, and it is a real advantage to be able to speak Chinese.

Lillian was helping us.

Thank you Lillian !