Frequently Asked Questions

The My First Chinese Words series usually takes approximately five 45-minute classes or two 90-minute classes for 1 lesson. For younger learners, we recommend supplementing with additional cultural modules and games for each lesson (you can find suggestions in our teacher's guide) which can take roughly 1 year to complete 12 to 18 storybooks.  

The My First Chinese Reader usually takes five 45-minute classes or two 90-minute classes for 1 lesson. However, for the younger learners, you would design additional cultural and language modules and games related to the lesson (you can find suggestions in our teacher's guide), which can take approximately 1 year to complete 1 volume. 

The Discovering Chinese Pro series usually takes five 45-minute classes or two 90- minute classes for each individual lesson. Middle school students usually take about 1 year to complete 1 volume while high school students typically spend about 1-2 semesters per volume. 

The Magical Tour of China series typically requires five 60-minute classes for each individual lesson. Middle school students usually take about 1 year to complete 1 volume while high school students typically spend about 1 semester per volume. 

The Modern Chinese series takes approximately four 60-minutes classes for each individual lesson. It is designed to be a 2 year program, where each volume will take about 1 year (Each volume has 2 parts A and B) to complete. Some school take a year to complete each part.

We offer returns for most items within 15 days of receipt of shipment. However, multimedia products, book sets, game/flash cards, worksheets and assessments cannot be returned once they are opened. No returns on online subscriptions and promotional items. In order to receive a full refund, please return your product(s) to the following address.

Better Chinese

1949 Lundy Ave

San Jose, CA 95131

Please include a copy of your invoice and mark the item(s) you want to return and the reason for your return. Once we receive the product, we will refund you the amount minus the shipping fee, if the items meet the above criteria and fall within the 15 day return window.

Yes, go to the page below:

https://www.betterchinese.com/pages/user-guides

You can also locate this page on the Home page under tab "Service & Resource "

Two reasons can trigger this problem.

1. Your browser blocks our access to your microphone. Here is how you can grant us access to your microphone:

Chrome:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2693767?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

Safari:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-your-microphone-on-mac-mchla1b1e1fe/mac

Edge:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4468232/windows-10-camera-microphone-and-privacy

2. The microphone settings of your computer fail to meet our recording requirements. 

a. Check that the system volume is on by making sure the mute boxes are unchecked in the Volume Control Panel.

b. Check to see if you have a built-in microphone or test your new external microphone:
Go to "Start" -> "Programs" -> "Accessories" -> "Entertainment" -> "Sound Recorder"
Click the record button (red circle) and start speaking
If you see the green line move as you speak, then your microphone works


c. Clear cache in your Google Chrome browsers

Click the "Tools" menu (the wrench in the upper-right hand corner) -> Select "Options" -> Click the "Under the Hood" tab -> Click "Clear Browsing Data" -> Check "Empty the cache" box

d. Make sure Adobe Flash is up-to-date 

The Better Chinese online story library contains over 1400 stories categorized for beginner, intermediate and advanced Chinese readers. Access to our story collection is based on your language level interest and priced as an annual subscription:

1. Online story libraries for schools - (available at the beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels): 1 year subscription for a particular level is available for $89.95 per user.
2. Individual Online Story Collection: these are 1-year subscriptions and to see individual prices.

You can sign up for a free trial here.

Below is the English translation for the My First Chinese World 36 storybooks set and also the I Love Chinese 12 storybooks set:

My First Chinese Word (Letter Format)

My First Chinese Word (A4 Format)

I Love Chinese (letter Format)

I Love Chinese (A4 Format)

You can also requested a physical version (stickers) of the English version where you can place on each storybooks. Please send your request along with your shipping address to us here.

To access your Modern Chinese Teacher’s Guide, go to College.BetterChinese.com. Create a new account or log-in with your current online learning system login credentials. Go to the tab labeled “E-Books” and look for your digital copy of the Modern Chinese Teacher’s Guide.
Contact usa@betterchinese.com for more information.

The online learning system needs to run on a browser where Adobe Flash is enabled. In order to play animations, you need to make sure that it enables flash player in your browser. 

we recommend Chrome for PCs and Chrome/Safari for MACs. If you want to view contents on an iPad, please make sure you download and login through a flash supporting browser (e.g. Puffin Pro). 

Please refer to the tutorial links, showing how to enable flash in updating chrome and safaris:

safari

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/enabling-flash-player-safari.html

chrome

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/enabling-flash-player-chrome.html

Strongly informed by CCSS and various state standards, our experts have identified topics of relevance and interest to students. We took pains to select contents that are respectful of the intelligence of young learners, and mindful of their unbound curiosity of the world around them.  We believe this is how children learn best

Equally important, we wish to provide texts that can assist the teachers to build background knowledge, to access other content areas, to facilitate in the front loading of language that is meaningful.

More authentic texts that pair with each week’s topics are available for purchase. 

《中文游》的选题设计借鉴了共同核心教育标准和其他州立标准以及结合了学生的兴趣。 为了挖掘学生的潜能和满足他们对世界的好奇心，我们致力于挑选最合适的教材内容。我们相信这才是学生用最好的教材达到最佳学习效果的方式。

同样重要的是，我们希望我们的教材能够辅助老师老师建立丰富的背景知识，获取其他的学科内容，也可以让学到的语言知识更有意义。

At the same time, is it too difficult for learners with no Chinese language foundations?

BetterImmersion is designed for both one-way and two-way programs, the goal of which is to ensure that a foundation higher than world language programs is built for students of varying demographics.

There are differentiated teaching strategies laid out in the Teacher’s Guide to address various needs. Additionally, there is a native extension track to meet native speakers’ needs and CLD materials to further scaffold language learners’ needs.

Our goal is “Getting off to a solid start” (Building a solid foundation).

For the K level, teachers are encouraged to pair My First Chinese Words with the Immersion texts.  The advantages are two-fold: its repetitive language and predictability offer additional language scaffolding for beginning and intermediate level learners; it further offers a set of core socio-emotional phrases which are developmentally appropriate to this age group.  For advanced level and heritage speakers, the additional paired books offer a wider-scope of reading experience.  

同时，《中文游》 对中文基础比较差的学生来说，会不会太难？

中文游课程同时适用于One-way和Two-way的沉浸式中文学习项目，它的难度高于中文外语学习课程。它的设计目标是为了帮助不同背景的学生建立夯实的语言基础。

在《中文游》的教师指引中，为了满足不同学生的需求，我们设计了很多差异性教学的活动和指导策略。另外，老师们还可以在教师指引中找到为高程度学生设计的“母语延伸”活动，还有各种各样的辅助学生学习的语言学习材料。

我们的目标是： 从一开始就打下夯实的基础。

对于幼儿园的教学，老师们可以把《快乐幼儿华语》作为《中文游》的配套材料使用。这样做的优势有两个重要层面: 对于初级和中级学习者来说，《中文游》的重复性和可预测性的知识结构以及它涉及的具有社会性、交流性并符合特点年龄层的核心表达都为这个层级的学生提供了良好的语言辅助。对于高阶和母语延伸的学生来说，额外的配套图书为他们提供了足够的阅读体验。

First, we ensure there are ample topics for teachers to choose from.

Grade level CCSS standards are addressed repeatedly in our materials. Language points,
appropriate content knowledge and essential questions are also addressed in a spiraled fashion across grade levels.

A note of caution, while the curriculum covers extensive content knowledge, it is not to replace
other core subject instructions.

首先，我们设计了丰富的课程话题来供老师选择。《中文游》各年级学习材料的设计都遵循了共同核心教育标准。另外，语言知识、相关的学科内容和核心问题在整个中文游项目中（幼儿园到五年级）也以螺旋模式不断被重复及深化。

但需要注意的是：虽然《中文游》中涵盖了大量的学科知识，但是我们不提倡用《中文游》完全代替其他核心课程的教学。

Content can be perceived as challenging due to two reasons:

1. an increase of content specific vocabularies;
2. more themes that meet state mandate for subject curriculum to support content learning;

In the response to the challenges and the unique demands of the immersion education, for language support, teachers can find 4 levels of differentiated teaching strategies and instructional tips in our Teacher’s Guide to make complex texts accessible to students. 

Additionally, Better Immersion takes the spiral-up approach to build up the foundations progressively and reinforce the language knowledge constantly. In a broad sense, Better Immersion transits learners from one level to an upper level both in language foundations and academic knowledge. Specifically speaking,  Better Immersion achieves the transition from instructional focus on vocabulary texts to thematic texts, or that from conversational or foundational language to academic language.

BI的内容之所以被认为有挑战性，主要有两个原因：

1.  学科词汇不断增多；
2.  为了支持学科内容的学习，符合各州学科课程标准的相关的主题也不断增多；

而这两个层面恰恰是沉浸式教育需要面对并做好的。

正是因为上述沉浸式教育的挑战性和特殊性，在语言教学方面，我们在教师手册中增添了针对四种语言水平的差异化教学策略和指导内容，从而使学生更有效的学习《中文游》中文体丰富、学科知识充实的主题文。

另外，《中文游》采用螺旋上升的教学模式从而不断构建学生的语言基础并一次次地强化学生的语言知识。从广义来说，《中文游》使学生在语言和学科能力上都不断有所提升。具体来说，它实现了从生字文到主题文的教学核心过渡，即实现了从发展基本交流的语言能力到培养综合的语言、学科素质的学习目标过渡。

You can download the Better Chinese product catalog to view Better Chinese’s complete curricular offerings. Our products are broken into 5 main series that teach students Chinese from the preschool through college level. For an overview of each of our series, go to: 

Preschool through 1st grade (Introductory Level): My First Chinese Words

2nd grade through 5th grade (Introductory to Intermediate Level): My First Chinese Reader

Middle/High School curriculum (Introductory to Intermediate Level): Discovering Chinese Pro

High School curriculum (Intermediate to Advanced Level): Magical Tour of China

College Curriculum (Introductory to intermediate Level): Modern Chinese

For the program series, My First Chinese Reader, Discovering Chinese Pro, and Magical Tour of China, and Modern Chinese, they are each divided into 4 volumes/books. As student’s progress through each book, the language level progresses in difficulty. Each volume is also accompanied by a workbook, Teacher' Guide, Worksheets and Writing Exercise Sheets, Assessment Pack, audio-CD, animated lesson CD-ROMs, and online modules. Download a sampler pack to see examples of each of these products for 3 lessons.

My First Chinese Words Sampler Pack

My First Chinese Reader Sampler Pack

Magical Tour of China Sampler Pack

Modern Chinese Sampler Pack

If you are with a school and would like to preview our online materials, please sign-up for a free trial of our online learning system, story library and lesson planner Register a new account.

We also offer a variety of supplementary materials on Chinese idioms, cultural stories, fables, DVDs and more. 

We have a special examination deal for schools who are interested in reviewing our products in any of the series. If you are interested in taking advantage of this offer, please Contact Us!

Better Chinese has been working with schools teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language since 1997 and understands the importance of engaging students with context-rich materials, facilitating teachers’ lesson planning process, and getting parents’ involvement to extend learning beyond the classroom. 

Since 2008, nine U.S. states have conducted formal reviews for Chinese language materials that must align and correlate to their state standards. We are happy to announce that Better Chinese's curricular materials have been adopted and approved by all nine states: Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. 

State-Adopted status is an additional recognition and a testament of the quality and appropriateness of our materials for students learning Chinese as a foreign language. Currently, we have over 1400 schools (link to customer list) around the world using our materials. From large state-wide adoption such as Utah to world renowned independent school, Punahou School (President Obama's and Dr. Sun Yet-Sen's alma mater) in Hawaii, to progressive school districts such as South Washington County Schools and San Francisco Unified School District, we strive to better serve students, educators, and teachers.

The My First Chinese Words series usually takes approximately five 45-minute classes or two 90-minute classes for 1 lesson. For younger learners, we recommend supplementing with additional cultural modules and games for each lesson (you can find suggestions in our teacher's guide) which can take roughly 1 year to complete 12 to 18 storybooks.  

The My First Chinese Reader usually takes five 45-minute classes or two 90-minute classes for 1 lesson. However, for the younger learners, you would design additional cultural and language modules and games related to the lesson (you can find suggestions in our teacher's guide), which can take approximately 1 year to complete 1 volume. 

The Discovering Chinese series usually takes five 45-minute classes or two 90- minute classes for each individual lesson. Middle school students usually take about 1 year to complete 1 volume while high school students typically spend about 1 semester per volume. 

The Magical Tour of China series typically requires five 60-minute classes for each individual lesson. Middle school students usually take about 1 year to complete 1 volume while high school students typically spend about 1 semester per volume. 

The Modern Chinese series takes approximately four 60-minutes classes for each individual lesson. It is designed to be a 2 year program, where each volume will take about 1 year (Each volume has 2 parts A and B) to complete. Some school take a year to complete each part.

We do provide professional development training for three categories: Best Practices, Leveraging Technology and Immersion Training.

Please visit Professional Development for detailed information.
Or email usa@betterchinese.com for more information