Frequently Asked Questions
- How to Learn Chinese
- Mandarin Proficiency Test (HSK)
- PM Courses
- PM Group Classes
- Private Tutoring
- Training for Companies
For our Entry Beginner and Advanced Beginner course, we design it to help you pass HSK 1 test, we almost can guarantee your result if you attend our classes regularly and organize your home study as instructed by your teacher.
For our Elementary course, you will need to complete 2 terms with additional HSK mock up test training and vocabulary revision, which depending on the group’s interest, we can implement into the course structure, or just add additional 3-5 weeks of training after the two terms.
Same rule goes for our Lower Intermediate and Intermediate level, which is relevant to HSK 3 and HSK 4 respectively.
We offer two types of Business Chinese courses.
For our entry level learners, we run the Business beginner course with the goal that you will be able to pass the BCT (Business Chinese Test) at the end of the course – should you wish to take it!
For Advanced learners with HSK 4 level and above, why not try our Advanced Business course. The course runs for 8 weeks and is presentation based. You will make business presentations using the vocabulary that you have learned in class.
Want to learn as a company? No problem – we also run a comprehensive corporate training program. For more information – please see here.
Yes, we do! For those that want to learn quickly before their travels, we offer a one-day survival course to get you familiar with all the useful Chinese phrases. We will teach you how to greet locals, order food, and navigate directions. The course comes with a PM designed phrase book, that you can take with you as you go!
Our signature courses are our total fluency courses. For beginner level, it runs between 5 – 10 Weeks. For higher level, it runs between 8 – 12 weeks (the time is dependant on if you choose a weekday course, or a weekend intensive course).
We have courses running between Monday – Saturday, covering all levels from Beginner to HSK 6 level. You will be able to find a course that suits both your time and schedule.
We generally believe that private tutoring is one of the most effective way to learn a skill, be it Mandarin, piano or physical fitness. You get all the help and instead feedback from your teacher, you will be fully engaged at all time, and the lesson progress is designed to suit you.
According to our experience, it will suit 3 types of students:
– Students with a busy schedule, who requires the teacher to be relatively flexible
– Students who want to customize their learning content
– Students with a short-term training goal, you need to learn something at a timely fashion to be used or to be tested
Mandarin is the standard and official form of language for China, spoken by over 730 million people, the Chinese people would call it “Puton Hua”, while Chinese ie”Zhong Wen” is referring to China and the language spoken by Chinese people. Though China has rather a good number of languages spoken by its people, Chinese is referring to Mandarin, the standard and official language.
All that being said, we could say Mandarin = Chinese in this case. That’s the language you are learning from us.
Yes and No.
YES as we know some students have progress really well with just Pinyin focused study, as well as students who have lived in China for a period of time or who have good exposure to Chinese language through family. Basically they learn how to speak it first, without being literate. If that’s your end goal, we encourage you to learn and get fluent.
However, NO is because learning Pinyin is just Step One of learning Chinese, there are only 409 sounds from Pinyin. Of course you can not speak the language with just these 409 sounds. You need real vocabularies, which are words made up by characters, there are so many logics in the word formation that helps you to memorize and expand your vocabulary effectively. That’s also where you will find fun and true sense of achievement when you read out a Chinese character words in the street!
As we explain above, learning Chinese characters basically makes you literate and it’s the most important enabler for you to progress into intermediate or advanced level of Chinese proficiency. So the answer is rather simple.
For the amount of characters you need to learn to use the language, GOOD NEWS! According to research, 500 most common Chinese characters will enable you to read 75% of everyday Chinese, 1000 characters then you are upgraded to 97%.
Chinese characters are very logical, believe us, even though they might just look like pictures to you now. Well, there is a reason why some characters do look like a picture, these are the words we call Pictograms. There are many others of course, but we will teach you to decode them with a simple and fascinating system.
For part time study, we suggest you progress by adding 300 new vocabularies each year, that’s only less than one a day! That will enable you to progress by improving one level up HSK tests each year. Of course if you have more time to invest, you can accelerate the progress much much quicker. In general, you will need like 3 years of part time study to achieve fluency.
It is not compulsory to take the exam but sometimes it is nice to have a goal to work towards to! As explained, not only HSK certificate is a great add-on to your job CV, it’s also a personal achievement to be witnessed by “having something on the wall”, as the students say. What’s more, most students love setting mile stones, HSK level tests are a great way for you to keep track of your study and your progress.
Of course. Not only we can send you instructions and learning material, mock up tests for your study, you can book private lessons with our teachers. Especially if you are taking the HSK Speaking test, we do recommend you have a good few weeks of private training. We really want you to success!
HSK Level Six requires a command of 5000 words, and it’s designed for learners who can easily understand any information communicated in Chinese and are capable of smoothly expressing themselves in written or oral form.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 5 year before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
HSK Level Five requires a command of 2500 words, and it’s designed for learners who can read Chinese newspapers and magazines, watch Chinese films and are capable of writing and delivering a lengthy speech in Chinese.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 4 year before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
HSK Level Four requires a command of 1200 words, and it’s designed for learners who can discuss a relatively wide range of topics in Chinese and are capable of communicating with Chinese speakers at a high standard.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 3 year before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) is an official examination designed to assess the Chinese language proficiency of non-native speakers from Level 1 to Level 6.
The certificates are the official mean of language proficiency proof for education and professional use.
We’ve created a section here with details of HSK requirements and the correspondent courses we offer in Practical Mandarin.
HSK Level One requires a command of 150 words, and it’s designed for learners who can understand and use some simple Chinese characters and sentences to communicate, and prepares them for continuing their Chinese studies. In HSK 1 all characters are provided along with Pinyin.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 6 months before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
HSK Level Two requires a command of 300 words, and it’s designed for learners who can use Chinese in a simple and direct manner, applying it in a basic fashion to their daily lives. In HSK 2 all characters are provided along with Pinyin as well.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 1 year before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
HSK Level Three requires a command of 600 words, and it’s designed for learners who can use Chinese to serve the demands of their personal lives, studies and work, and are capable of completing most of the communicative tasks they experience during their Chinese tour.
Depending on your learning frequency and personal progress, we recommend a part time study of 2 year before taking the exam from complete beginner level.
On our website. We publish and update new courses on a monthly basis. Navigate to Group Courses on the top menu, find your level, and see all the available courses listed on the page.
For a complete beginner group, we have the curriculum included in our brochure, it’s well-tested foundation training programme with embedded culture awareness training.
For higher levels, we will consult your training goal before designing a bespoke programme to suit your need.
We teach all levels.
At our two centers, we offer group courses for Level 1 to Level 6, for general language fluency purpose, or business purpose.
You can find the curriculum of each course on the respective course page online.
Each course we are using a textbook to set the curriculum, currently it’s Discover China for Beginner courses, and HSK Standard textbooks for Level 2 onwards, BCT Chinese for Business courses, and in-house developed material for Advanced Business course, and survival courses.
It’s your private lessons, we design your learning content around you!
If you are a complete beginner, we suggest you to use our in-house foundation course content, for general fluency, travel or business purpose, but the teachers will add personalized content during the training if necessary.
If you are of higher level, you could choose to follow our fluency skill training curriculum or incorporate your own material, ie your company introduction, product information, files or emails, or industrial news.
It’s your call, set your goal, we will help you achieve the target!
We have a team of 15 teachers to do the job. You can view everyone’s profile here.
Our teachers generally hold M.A and P.H.D in Education or relevant studies and have years of extensive teaching experience in China and the UK. Based on your level and learning goal, we will assign the most suitable and available teacher for you.
Of course not!
Textbooks help PM to set the curriculum especially on progressive HSK levels, however, in our classes, it’s just 20% of your learning time. Presentations, videos, activities, worksheets, and games are designed into our teaching plans to take up the 80%, as our classes are Students Centred.
We have in-house developed and customized materials ready for all levels, in the format of presentation PPT, classroom worksheets, learning content and classroom quizzes uploaded to Phone App.
All material is created by our full-time academic team.
Each level has different training modules to reflect the language skills in use. Beginner is foundational and survival context, Elementary is conversation flow, Intermediate is storytelling, Upper Intermediate is independent speaker fluency.
PM’s philosophy is language is for communication, via adopting active learning, tasked-based training approach.
We have a team of experienced Mandarin language and culture training specialists, working full time or part time with us.
Based on your selected programme, we will propose the most suitable tutor for you and send you his/her profile for approval. All our teachers hold M.A and PHD in relevant academic background and have extensive teaching experience globally.
One of the benefits of private tuition is to save you from travelling.
Our teachers will travel to your preferred location, your work premise or home, as long as it is within zone 1-2. Alternatively, you can also have lessons at our Bank/Monument centre with no increase in rate. We have a big open area for study, and lots of our students love to take their lessons there!
It’s easy to learn Mandarin as a beginner, as you will be learning the very simple phonetic system, which composes only 490 syllabus! That’s why our Beginner students are the most proud of their achievements of their 0 to 1 step in just 10 to 20 lessons.
In your future total language skill training, it gets more challenging. But we know how to help you get there in each step.
There is no age restriction to private tutoring and most of our tutors are DBS certified. However due to Health & Safety regulations, we can only offer private lessons at your own premise for all young learners.
By approving our training proposal, and making full upfront payment to secure your booking. PM will issue VAT invoice for your company once all proposal details are confirmed.
Of course, we are able to do a demo lesson for your staff, let them experience the fun of learning Mandarin first hand!
Please contact us to find out the rate of the demo lessons.
Beginner courses have 10 lessons each term, other levels have 12 lessons each term. The regular courses will deliver 1 lesson per week, the intensive courses will deliver 2 lessons per week, mostly on Saturdays.
Can I learn with a colleague, a friend or my partner?
Of course! We call the 1 teacher 2 students training the diamond methods, there are so many benefits of learning with a partner, to create better engagement and motivation with a discounted price! All private face to face lessons with 2-4 students will be charged at £30 per student per hour. All online Zoom lessons with 2-4 students will be charged at £20 per student per hour.
Absolutely. Our students will speak and use Mandarin for greeting from Day 1!
We take pride in seeing our students speaking the language at work or in life. Students will be given over 80% of the time to speak and practise in class. They can introduce and greet their colleagues in Mandarin after just 1 hour, and able to survive on a business trip to China after our Business Beginner Lite programme.
We run group classes Monday to Thursday evenings between 6:30pm to 8:30pm, and all day Saturdays.
If the timing for our group classes do not suit you, you might like to consider private tutoring. We have tutors available any time, seven days a week.
Our private lessons are charged by the hours you would like to book. The more lesson you book, the cheaper the lesson is per hour!
For Online lessons, the price is between £25 – £30 per hour.
For face to face lessons, the price is between £48 – £55 per hour.
Not a big issue to worry about!
This happens from time to time due to work travels or personal holidays. Besides the materials we offer to students, there is a FREE phone app with all our learning content uploaded for the students to catch up and review at their own time.
You will also be able to use our online learning platform, with interactive games and quizzes to help you practice at home.
We understand your busy schedule and therefore offers good flexibility to help.
Usually, we assign the teacher based on your primary available time for lessons, after organising the first lesson, we will leave it between you and your teacher to schedule in further lessons. You will be able to book the time directly with the teacher, using the calendar booking system.
Our main centre is in the City, close to Monument station by the river, where our head office team works from.
The other centre is at Charing X, seven minutes away from Embankment station.
We will try to be flexible for you. Usually corporate training is running on a weekly basis within an agreed period of time, however should your company has urgent needs to adjust the schedule, we will discuss with the tutor and postpone or reschedule the lesson, if possible, on such special occasion.
This is important, it’s to remind you of your arrangement and to protect the teacher’s time and productivity. Please be considerate to our teachers, who have to travel to the venue and reserved their time exclusively for you.
You will be able to change your booking directly on the calendar booking system with at least 24 hour notice. Lessons cancelled or postponed with less than 24 hours notice cannot be cancelled and will be charged at full rate.
Appointments are available during office hours, between 10:30-6pm Monday – Friday. Please give us a ring first to schedule your visit.
Yes there is, in every programme you choose to study.
We have developed written test and oral test to carry out an assessment at the end of their study. This can also be customised for you as well, based on students’ progress and your package length.
All our private lessons have a validation period which will need to be within a fixed time period.
Depending on the numbers of lessons you book, our private lesson package are available with a 1 – 6 months use by date.
You will receive the lesson Use By Date in the calendar booking email. If you take the lesson regularly, it should give you plenty of time to finish them!
Any remaining lessons after the valid period might not be fulfilled by your teacher without refund.
Should your schedule changes which might require an extension, please do get in touch with us.
Our lessons are priced at £30 per two-hour lesson, each course is either 10 or 12 lessons, you do the math.
Advanced HSK 5 and 6, and Business classes are priced at £36 per two-hour lesson.
You will be able to book both Online and Face to Face lessons via our online booking system. For customised packages, please contact us and we will send you an invoice accordingly. You can pay with your card online securely and swiftly or pay via bank transfer.
We mostly accept payment online. If we invoice you, you can choose to pay with the E-invoice, or via bank transfer. If you would like to pay cash, we can accept that and give you back a payment receipt.
Yes they will.
We are a little celebrity in Mandarin language training in Europe, do you know that? Thompson Reuters has interviewed us to feature on the Chinese state TV channel, many other schools in China know about us, we even helped our student to get scholarship to study in Taiwan.
Therefore, our certificate is of significance to certify your learning achievements, should they pass the final test of course.
To ensure both the student and teacher’s productivity, we do not operate on pay-as-you-go basis. Your tuition will be paid upfront in one go.
You will assign your lessons to the teacher upon receiving your tuition fee.
We don’t accept Pay-as-you-go. It’s a subscription model, as language learning is not a one-off thing. A booked course also ensure students will be working with the same classmates weekly.
If students’ level is from Elementary onwards, we do accept students enrolling during term time. You will only need to pay for the remaining lessons you will be taking.
Because we are good at what we do!
We don’t believe that anyone can speak Chinese can teach you Chinese.
We are the Mandarin Specialists working full time year on year to develop and improve how to teach students to speak this language easily and fluently.
Our training is offered at an affordable price, but we don’t discount any of our effort to deliver an excellent program. Our materials are developed with years of experience and practice.
Our teachers have average 4 years of teaching history. Not anyone who speaks Chinese can train you well! You got to choose the specialists!
Of course! You’re welcome to join any of our current classes for a trial lesson. For higher level courses, we offer a *half priced trial lesson* for your first session. For our beginner courses, we offer a *try before you buy*, where you can take the first lesson before enrolling for the full course.
Because we are good at what we do!
We don’t believe that anyone can speak Chinese can teach you Chinese.
We are the Mandarin Specialists working full-time year on year to develop and improve how to teach students to speak this language easily and fluently.
Our training is offered at an affordable price, but we don’t discount any of our effort to deliver an excellent program. Our materials are developed with years of experience and practice.
Our teachers have average 4 years of teaching history. Not anyone who speaks Chinese can train you well! You got to choose the specialists!
Our in-house training material for FREE, which includes online access to our learning platform, including worksheets and PPTs used in class, as well as a Phone App.
Textbooks are available to purchase from us at a discounted price for our students, but you can also buy your own.
Our beginner classes have only 4-8 students, while other levels could be 3-10.
Group classes of such size are the best way to get involved, get teacher feedbacks, at the same time big enough for you to interact with other classmates, and make some like-minded friends!
Our teachers are native Mandarin speakers who hold a master or a PHD degree in Education, Linguistics, or cultural communication; who have average 3 years of teaching experience; who are Londoners with fluent English and multicultural awareness.
We know sometimes life got in the way. So don’t worry, all of group classes students are entitled to TWO FREE mark up lessons per course with a different group (subject to availability). Just contact HQ and we can arrange one for you.
Alternative options would be to book private make up lessons via Zoom or One to One, or home study with teaching material provided and our online learning platform.
Good question! If you are taking a part-time learning approach with PM, we say 80 lessons upon completion of the Intermediate course to achieve daily fluency. That could be 80 weeks or shorter if you chose to start with intensive beginner courses.
For an independent speaker level of fluency, we say two years upon completion of Upper Intermediate course. Be a good student, and we will get you there!
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Please contact us via email, we’re more than happy to help you.