Chinese
Mandarin Chinese/Standard Chinese (Putonghua/Hanyu) is spoken by 70% of the people of China. Standard Mandarin (Beijing Dialect) is the lingua franca in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, 56 distinct ethnic groups and 292 living languages. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The written form is based on pictogram known as Hanzi (中文zhōngwén).
Learning Mandarin Chinese will give you opportunities to experience 5,000 years of Chinese history, 9,600,000 square kilometres of land, delicious food and many interesting customs and traditional festivals.
Improved career prospects
You will increase your employment prospects.
Additional qualifications
You have the opportunity to gain an extra qualification alongside your degree.
Enhanced experience
You will develop communicative as well as linguistic skills and a better understanding of other cultures.
Increased choice
You have a wide variety of languages and courses to chose from.
And it's fun!
You have the chance to learn in an atmosphere which is professional but also relaxed and enjoyable.
You may choose to enrol for one semester only or take a number of modules for more systematic language learning and the opportunity to achieve an Enhanced Degree Title or a record of achievement on your HEA report.
The Language Centre offers up to 12 levels (stages 1 - 12), from absolute beginner to post A level. It is important to select the appropriate level based on your previous experience. To help you decide please click here for a helpful guide or contact our administration team (languages@keele.ac.uk) who will be happy to discuss this further with you.
These stages are comparable to the Common European Framework Reference (CEFR) for further details please see Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Times for classes are dependent on the Keele undergraduate timetable and may be any time between 9.00 am and 7.00 pm Monday to Friday. Times will be available from the beginning of each semester. Please note that a number of language classes will be timetabled on Wednesday afternoons to avoid clashes with core modules.
Every effort is made to minimize timetable clashes for students. However, as each language module caters for students from all years of study and all three subject timetable blocks this is not possible in all cases. If an unresolvable timetable clash occurs your core module takes priority.
What our students say
Here's what some of our previous students had to say about our Chinese Modern Language modules:
"I'd just like to highlight the enthusiasm and optimism of my Mandarin tutor and thank her for her seemingly infinite patience."
"My tutor was very inspirational and has made me want to learn Chinese at a greater level."
"What a fantastic 3 years of language learning, it has been the highlight of my three years at Keele."
"Feedback simultaneously built confidence and issued points for improvement."
"I enjoyed the media used to help familiarise us with the pronunciations. I would like to see some more of them in my later Chinese learning."