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Back to Learning Chinese : Start From Scratch (零到一學中文)

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Learning Chinese : Start From Scratch (零到一學中文) by National Taiwan University

4.5
stars
491 ratings

About the Course

This is a six-week introductory course in Mandarin Chinese conversation. The course will be taught completely in Mandarin, however students are not expected to have any experience learning Chinese. This course’s main objective is to study practical conversation. By watching videos showing various kinds of situations, learners will recognize and understand vocabulary, pair everyday words together with grammar to form short phrases, and learn the correct way to express words used in day-to-day life....
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26 - 50 of 167 Reviews for Learning Chinese : Start From Scratch (零到一學中文)

By Jennifer

Jul 12, 2021

Very hard course, especially with no background. They assume by demonstrating the words, that you know the meaning but no where do they confirm the meaning so you could be misinterpreting the words. Second is they do no teach characters but other than the first 60 seconds when the characters are shown, you are miraculously suppose to recognize the characters. The quizes include choosing tones but they don't really teach or review the tones. I've take Mandarin before and know some characters. I found this course to be too hard. Do not recommend for complete beginners. Better suited for someone who has learn Chinese and stopped for a while and want to review it again. If you are complete beginner, you will be lost and frustrated, though not because you can't learn but because this course is badly designed for beginners. I will acknowledge that the teachers and students speak very clearly and so that helps.

By Teodor T

Mar 19, 2021

I am a complete beginner and even the first few videos feel very difficult. There are no translations of the meaning of the symbols and one has to infer their meaning from the videos which is often not easy. The in-video quizzes do not work for me.

By MILICENT M

Feb 25, 2021

its not suitable to a beginner.

By Michelle G

Jun 17, 2020

Please unenroll me. thank you

By Camille B

Oct 16, 2020

I want unenroll

By Terence J W

Oct 22, 2018

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!

By dave

Feb 17, 2020

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.

By Nurul R

Mar 5, 2021

This course is an example of learning by comprehensible input. I think using only Chinese for the whole course makes it easier for me to grasp the Chinese sentence structure. Even though I still struggle to make long sentences, I am familiar with how most characters are pronounced now. I believe when learning a second language, it's good to start with listening from comprehensible input, and then start speaking bit by bit. Reading and writing can come a bit later. Of course, this doesn't work if you're taking a course at your university or institution. So this online course is perfect for me who wants to take things easy and progress slowly, one word at a time.

By Liam F

Nov 16, 2020

Great course. I started with some vocabulary already known, but picked up new vocabulary during this course. Being fully taught in Chinese helped me with my listening skills, and being online meant I could always pause, go back, or play slower if I needed to. The clips with the actors and visual aids were very helpful. I found the 'rearrange' questions in the tests the hardest part, and almost always answered these incorrectly. Otherwise, the course was at a suitable level of challenge for me. If there was another course which adds to this I would definitely do it as well.

By John A G C

Oct 28, 2020

Very entertaining and educational at the same time. Thougj there were certain words used that were not introduced as vocabulary, I still find it helpful to take note of them. This course is pretty easy for people who already have a background on the language. But the grammar portion at the latter part is a bit challenging. Thank you for expanding my horizon and helping me review my Chinese language skill.

By Lorena F

Oct 3, 2020

I learned a lot about tones. I listened carefully entire sentences in order to get the main idea. I also enjoyed to discover how some words slightly change their tone into a sentence. Finally, I also loved to see traditional characters. Thank you so much. (P.S. Great job, guys. You're awesome teachers!)

By Paullin B G M

Mar 30, 2022

I like the way the teacher teaches mostly, there might be some rooms for improvement hopefully including vocabularies explanation in English.

I want to recap this course later in my spare time if possible. Really likeable.

Thanks for offering this free and meaningful course for me.

By Ruben F

Oct 28, 2022

The best course for students with no Chinese background. The terms and words teached are the ones used in Taiwan, which makes this course ideal to take when it comes to travel to Taiwan and to be able to handle daily situations without fear.

By Pamela G

Feb 9, 2022

Very good information. I thought the course was very informational and gave me help to know how I best need to continue learning Chinese. I need more practice and probably a work book to support my learning. Thank you.

By Haleemah J

Nov 12, 2020

Really great course, immerses you in Mandarin and forces you to really listen and learn through observation and intuition. Also teaches you words/phrases that are commonly used which is really helpful. xie xie ni men!

By Taiichi S

May 17, 2020

I had so much fun learning Chinese with this course.

The quality of the contents are very high, I could catch a lot of conversations from native speakers.

It was also a great course for reviewing Chinese skills.

By GATEAU

Jun 1, 2021

Quand on a commencé avec le Mandarin, la difficulté vient des caractères qui ne sont pas simplifiés. Toutefois on s'en sort très bien avec Wiktionary. C'est seulement un peu plus difficile à mémoriser.

By Deleted A

Jan 7, 2024

A very good course! However, if you're a complete beginner starting from zero then this course is not for you. In my opinion it's more suitable if you've completed HSK 1 and working towards HSK 2.

By Cherry A T H

Jul 28, 2023

Pretty thorough course for beginner learners, with adequate amount of difficulty, although this course is not enough for learning Chinese, I think this is like a teaser for Traditional Chinese.

By Fernando B G

Oct 2, 2020

I increased considerably my vocabulary. I really recommend you to take this course, the videos that are developed for the course are well done and all of them are really helpful. Nice course!

By Marianna R

Jul 17, 2023

Highly recommend this course for the beginners as there are video dialogues with the situations discussed which is easy to understand and define what are they talking about.

By Mugahed I

Mar 21, 2020

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)

By Ranudi V

Jan 26, 2023

This course was a bit hard for me because I stared learing simplified chinese and this was a bit different from that but it was interesting learning and it was good

By Kevin

Nov 18, 2022

I enjoyed the class and it helped understanding some basic expressions. It was interesting is that that learning could take place with only chinese being spoken.