Purdue offers adult beginner evening class to learn Chinese
August 27, 2014
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Adults interested in learning Chinese for business, travel or fun, can register for an evening class offered by the Confucius Institute at Purdue.
The class, which is 7-9 p.m. on Wednesdays Sept. 17 through Oct. 22, is a non-credit course designed for adult beginners with no or little prior knowledge of Mandarin Chinese. The course is $120 and registration information is available online.
Focusing on spoken Chinese, this course will train the participants' basic conversational skills in Mandarin Chinese with topics ranging from greeting, proper name pronunciation, talking about professions to introducing family and making small talk. Cultural topics such as family, cuisine, tourism, career and education will be introduced as well.
"After this course, participants will be able to function socially in everyday situations when communicating with the Chinese," said Wei Hong, professor of Chinese and director of the institute. "While memorizing the Chinese characters is optional, we will also introduce the essentials of Chinese characters, or Hanzi, to give the learners a full picture of Mandarin Chinese."
The Confucius Institute at Purdue launched in 2007, and has provided instruction in Chinese language, education, culture and business to hundreds of business representatives, government leaders, community members and K-12 students. The Confucius Institute at Purdue is one of 440 such institutes worldwide that are sponsored by the Chinese Language Council International to develop relationships and understanding between countries.
Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu
Sources: Wei Hong, 765-494-3859, hongwei@purdue.edu
Christy Marks, manager distance learning training and development at Purdue Extended Campus, marks32@purdue.edu
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