Eg: Yesterday / today / tomorrow I / you / (s)he / it / they go store (ok sometimes we add guo to the verb to emphasize something that happened before or le at the end of the sentence to confirm completion, but that sort of grammar is amazingly simple and straightforward compared to what students of German, English, Spanish, etc. have to face in every sentence they construct. Many things about Chinese are so simple and intuitive (for the western learner) that basic spoken fluency can be achieved quickly, perhaps even as quickly as for a language like Spanish. The early learner of Spanish will speak with very poor grammar while the early (western ) learner of Chinese will speak with very poor tones. This general lack of grammar in Chinese is a major simplifying feature which you should point out to give students more confidence. As for the Mandarin tones, yes they are challenging for us. But they are much easier and more straightforward than those of other Chinese dialects and other tonal languages such as Thai and Vietnamese. For example, I’ve noticed that the so-called low and high tones in Thai are not purely low and high. They have some variance and also depend somewhat on the tones of the syllables which immediately proceed and follow.

I like your suggestion for learning a new language. I believe its very practical and can lead to earlier spoken fluency for the student who is very diligent. In fact, I am in Bangkok right not giving this method a go for learning basic Thai.

OK, that’s it for now.