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TEN SECRETS to Improving Your Mandarin Skills (Vancouver)

Without a good foundation, a building will collapse quickly. When it comes to learning a language, a good knowledge of sentence structure is the foundation.

After having taught hundreds of students from all over the world during the last couple of years, I realized that many students struggle with learning the basic Chinese sentence structure. Check out below for my “TEN SECRETS” to improving your Mandarin skills.

SECRET ONE: subject +[specific time+ method+ place] +verb +object

You can make over 80% daily used Mandarin sentences by extending below basic structure.

Basic sentence structure
Subject + verb + object

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He Protected content Protected content .

Extended Sentence structures
Subject + specific time + verb + object

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He Protected content Protected content Protected content .

Subject + specific time + method + verb + object

Protected content Protected content Protected content 饭 。

Protected content Protected content Protected content fàn.

He Protected content Protected content Protected content eat rice.

Subject + specific time + method + place + verb + object

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Protected content Protected content qù fàndiàn chī Protected content .

He Protected content Protected content to restaurant to eat Protected content .

Note:

In Mandarin, 去(qù) /来(lái) /在(zài) (<technical term for these symbol>, something like direction …) usually appear before the “location” and indicate the direction:

“在(zài)” you are at a place,

“去(qù) /来(lái)” you come or go to a place from somewhere else.”

Exercise:

For receiving the correct answers please just send an email to Protected content to check your answers.

1 去 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

Protected content kànshū Protected content Protected content

2 在 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

zài Protected content Protected content Protected content xià wǔ

3 想 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

xiǎng wǎnfàn shénme Protected content Protected content

4 什么 Protected content Protected content Protected content

shénme Protected content Protected content Protected content

5 在北京 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

zài Běijīng ma Protected content Protected content Protected content

6 去超市 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

qù chāoshì zhōumò Protected content Protected content

7 骑车 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

qíchē Protected content kāfēi qù gōngyuán Protected content zǎoshang

8 早上 Protected content Protected content Protected content Protected content

zǎoshang Protected content Protected content nǎr Protected content Protected content

If you are interested in learning more about Chinese culture and language, we can help by offering Online Mandarin course. For more information about our course, please visit Protected content to learn more about us.

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