I am a first-time learner of Chinese, with no background knowledge. While the material itself is not difficult, I found this course incredibly difficult due to the teaching format.

New vocabulary is introduced in-context, however the video role plays in which they were introduced were at times very unclear, and in many scenarios I could not hear the audio clearly. I had to pre-teach new vocabulary to myself using other resources before beginning the lesson to comprehend what was happening. Each lesson teaches about 40-50 new words, which I found to be overwhelming with not enough tasks provided to really practice the new words. This course also teaches traditional characters, not simplified ones, which made memorization very difficult, and reading a struggle that, in the end, made me lose motivation. As a first-time learner, I do not know if this is how Chinese is usually taught, or if it was a choice made by the course instructor. I also would have appreciated some time dedicated to learning correct stroke order.

While the teacher is clearly very passionate about teaching Chinese, and the course uses many interesting and at times funny video role plays, I found the course difficult for the above reasons. I will continue to learn Chinese, but perhaps through another platform. I hope some of the information I learned in this course with help me in my studies.

Thank you to the course creators for all their hard work making this course, and I hope I provided some helpful feedback for future courses.

Some really nice elements. Good structure and examples. However, sometimes it's really hard to guess what something means without translation and then you're lost. Some parts are a bit fast and it requires a lot of manual work with external tools to keep up.

some grammars and characters are not taught during the course but still appear in the tests

great videos and easy-to-understand materials

little difficult for a beginner

Far from suitable as an introduction: the immersion technique alone would be overwhelming and demotivating for complete beginners, but there are also problems with the synchronisation of video clips and questions. However, this course is suitable for revision: the video clips contain natural, comprehensible speech and the characters introduced should mostly be at a suitable level for anyone using it for that purpose, as I did. It's also good to find usable vocabulary for online messaging and texting - something often omitted from other courses. To become an effective introduction to the language, much, much more repetition would be necessary.

A great course, however, a bit advanced for those that are completely new to Mandarin Chinese. English translations within the video as well as in the transcripts would be very helpful. Also, some of the end of week quiz questions are confusing because the don't provide any context for the question (for example, a question of "what is the boy doing" without any text or pictures to provide context, but answers that are are all plausible such as 'taking a walk', 'reading a book', 'eating a snack').

The visual aids for learning what each character means are really inconsistent and there is no explanation of how grammar works. They teach you a few words and then in the tests ask you to make sentences from those words. I'm glad I went into this already knowing a bit of Chinese or I would have been completely lost.

Course is good but for a person who understands only english, there should be english subtitles for every word spoken in chinese in the videos. Subtitles are available for what tutor speaks but there is no subtitles for conversations between students in videos. i expected full subtitles.

It is purely in Chinese language so difficult to keep invested although subtitles are there but very small. Also the quiz questions are also not good and repetitive

instructor from start speaks in chinese. who would be able to learn chinese when you from start are not able to know what she is saying

The framework and teaching methods seem very well done. Unfortunately, it's lacking in English subtitles and/or materials, which I was desperately trying to volunteer and add. However, I can't seem to add "English" into my translation account profile. I've already added Chinese (Traditional).

In the interim, I've added some translations into the respective forums which I hope other students will find useful.

The instructor has excellent pronunciation for all the words presented. The additional staff add interesting and sometimes hilarious skits to introduce new sentences to Chinese learners. (Kudos to the American staffer/actor. His Chinese pronunciation is awesome!)

Hopefully, this course will be updated and pass QA before the next iteration. Thank you and hopefully more will follow!

Suggestion - As an option, please include ZhuYin phonetics in the course. Thank you!

great way to learn chinese. a bit higher than beginner level, but worth the effort to take this course, you will learn quite a bit of characters. i didn't see many traditional character courses, but even if there were other courses i'm sure this one would still be one of the best ones. use of nontraditional methods of learning with video examples, dialogue, and online games is really thinking outside of the box compared to other courses. i've signed up for other coursera courses and probably never completed them. this class and another one are the only ones that i have completed, so keeping the learner interested in the material, and the instructor are the factors that i believe helped me complete this course.

Bien écrit, merci pour les sous-titres. Les vidéos sont excellents, particulièrement les acteurs, qui sont adorables. Merci pour vos efforts, vive le mandarin de Taïwan!

really nice and smooth course, if it have english subtitles it would be great, also i managed to understand most new words without translation(only symbol and meaning)

Clear videos with slow explanations, ideal for beginners. Some misunderstandings in the order of sentences part of exams and the in-video questions.

希望可以繼續下一個部份

The Course are fun and easy to understand. It really match for a person that are new in Mandarin. Great Course! Thanks for having me in this course!

Great course. The videos were hilariously entertaining. I learnt a lot and had a great time doing the course. Thank you.

Very intensive yet enjoyable course. Set out in a way that is easy to understand. Highly recommended.

The course was amazing and very informative. Thanks a lot to National Taiwan University.

very useful for those who are studying mandarin for the first time.

xie xie

Thank you so much! You made a very interesting and helpful course.

Thank you . I love Chinese and teacher

谢谢老师。

Thanks for the course. It really helped me.

Awesome basic level chinese course! 謝謝你們!