Beijing Mandarin Academy

Our most flexible option for learning Mandarin Chinese, BMA is a private Chinese language school with classes beginning every Monday of the year for varying levels. The teachers at BMA all have years of experience and a passion for teaching. They have all received thorough training in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and are officially certified. BMA uses simulated everyday situations as the main teaching approach, enabling students to learn quickly and in a relaxed manner that is immediately applicable outside the classroom and abandons the test-oriented teaching mode, putting a great emphasis on intensive speaking and listening exercises throughout the teaching process. If you only have a few weeks to study abroad in in China, or can only get certain dates off work to come out, BMA will be able to accommodate your schedule.

Located in the center of Wudaokou, BMA is right in the hustle and bustle of the local area. Within a 100m radius of the school, you have restaurants and cafes from almost every corner of the globe, which makes for great exploring and food experimentation! All with the knowledge that everyone you bump into is either Chinese, or studying Chinese to you'll be able to speak Chinese on a minute-to-minute basis. Pop into one of the local cafes at any time of the day to find other students, Chinese and foreign, huddled over their lattes and green teas, studying away! Find aout more about what it's like to live and study in Beijing...

CSA Program Prices: BMA

Click on the "Prices From" links below for housing and program options.

Course Descriptions

BMA offers three levels for short term students.

Elementary Level: The purpose of this course is to lay groundwork for the study of modern Chinese. The course has an emphasis on oral skills with classes in listening and speaking with initial presentation of the written language, both reading and writing.

A large emphasis is placed on mastering the phonetic system so as set a good foundation for further Chinese studies with the correct pronunciation and intonation. While the learning of sentence patterns is a major component of the course, efforts will be made to help students handle simple everyday tasks such as greeting, introducing friends and relatives, identifying people or objects, asking for one's personal information (including name, occupation, nationality, address, phone number), expressing gratitude to someone, sending someone your regard, making a reply to a complimentary remark, talking about your family, your school and your studies, looking for someone, seeing a guest off, asking the time, making an appointment, making an invitation, making a suggestion, asking for someone’s opinion, buying something, and offering congratulations.

Intermediate Level: The purpose of this course is to continue to lay groundwork for the study of modern Chinese by expanding on the base of elementary Chinese. The course will provide instruction in all four language skills of aurally understanding, speaking, reading, and writing.

Many of the grammatical constructions introduced in first year Chinese will be repeated in this course with increasing sophistication in terms of style and usage. While many of the linguistic tasks students will learn to handle are similar to those of first year Chinese, the level of language required to carry out these tasks is more advanced. In this course students are required to comprehend and produce paragraph-level Chinese.

By the end of this course, students are expected to deal with daily-life related Chinese in a target language environment with no difficulty. Topics covered include: buying things, making an invitation, making an appointment, offering congratulations, asking for one's age, asking for opinions from others, presenting a gift, asking the way, making a telephone call, refusing politely, shopping, entertaining a guest, asking for information, complimenting, exchanging amenities, making a plan, asking for permission, welcoming a guest, waiting for someone, proposing a toast (if you are above 21 years old), confirming something, talking about ball games, seeing someone off, traveling, and buying tickets.


Advanced Level: The purpose of the course is to continue to develop their skills of aurally understanding, speaking, reading and writing Mandarin Chinese.

Students will continue to improve their linguistic skills with a manageable degree of challenge. At the functional level, this course aims at helping students solidify their ability to comprehend and produce paragraph-level Chinese. It seeks to enable students to understand face-to-face conversations on most familiar topics, give factual accounts, read materials written in formal expression, and write simple essays, reports and other types of correspondence. There is a heavy emphasis on reading from this level covering topics such as current events, social sciences, history, and literature. Discussions on the reading materials will be conducted regularly to develop students' skills of abstract reasoning, narration and description.

Further Elective Courses: Any students can take these available electives. The speed of the class depends on the students’ ability to comprehend, and the instructor is quite flexible with this. The goal is to ensure the students to learn the most out the classes.

So what's around Beijing Mandarin Academy?

The map placemarkers may take a couple moments to load...

View CSA BLCU, BMA, Peking and Tsinghua Universities in a larger map