It’s really up to you, the student, how much you’ll learn. Learning Mandarin is a time-intensive process. Many hours of hard work are required, practicing character writing and learning new words. Each student’s progress is highly dependent on how much time is put in outside of the classroom to practice what is taught during class.

As a general guide, over the course of a semester, we would expect the average student to learn and master approximately 800 new characters (roughly 100-200 characters per calendar month of study.

To put this into perspective, mastery of:

• By knowing 200 characters, you’ll know enough to survive at a fundamental level on a daily basis, i.e., introduce yourself, give directions to a taxi driver, order basic food and drink.
• Knowing 800 characters allows you to hold a basic conversation in Mandarin Chinese, for example talking your likes and dislikes, about the weather, shopping and almost effortlessly getting around town.
• Knowing 1500 characters enables you to read a newspaper; although you may not recognize every character, you’ll be able to understand the overall meaning of an article.
• When you know 2500-3500 characters, you’ll generally be around the same level as a local Chinese high school student. At this point, you’ll be able to read and understand newspapers and television programs and converse easily on a wide range of topics.
• By mastering around 4500-5500 characters, you’ll be at a similar proficiency level as a local Chinese university student. At this point, you are expected to be able to speak fluently in any situation, be able to do the translation, as well as understand and speak as a well-educated ‘local.’
• Reaching the level of 20 000 – 30 000 characters will put you within a tiny group of academic linguistic experts who command a rare knowledge of all nonstandard vocabulary and subtleties contained in Mandarin Chinese. Not many people, foreign and even local ever reach this level, but there is no harm in trying!

We encourage our students to study as much as possible, especially as learning Chinese is a time-intensive process. Practicing Chinese Characters and memorizing your new words will lead to faster, more ideal results.