Each chapter includes hundreds of interactive tasks designed to help you take your first steps in learning Chinese with confidence.

How Does the New A1 Professional Chinese Curriculum Work?

In this A1 Professional Chinese Curriculum, you'll learn the building blocks of the Chinese language. This will follow the A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). And we've focused on vocabulary that is particularly useful for professional settings.

The curriculum is broken down into several modules that include warm-up, learning, practice, review pages, and quizzes to make sure that you truly understand the material before moving onto the next module.

The Warm-up serves as preparation and provides context for the main content of the module.

The tasks in the warm-up will either introduce you to new vocabulary for the first time, or review content you have already learned that will be used in the current module.

Below is an example of what you will find in the lessons.

Each task will have an accompanying question that will help you practice the content. If you don’t know how to answer a question or need more details, you can check the explanation section.

After the Warm-up, you'll head over to Learn. This is where you'll see the new words you've learned in action! You'll listen to short sections of monologues or dialogues and answer questions about them to make sure you understand their meaning and how they're used in real conversations. This is also where you’ll learn some theory when needed.

The curriculum also has fill-in-the-blank questions that will help you practice writing using Pinyin and Hanzi.

After Learn, you'll move on to Practice where you'll complete more open-ended tasks that test your comprehension and your ability to write using Pinyin and Hanzi.

At the end of each module, there is a Review section with grammar highlights and a glossary of the main points and concepts covered. You can use these review pages to help you study for the quizzes.

The last portion of the module is the Quiz. Quizzes are designed to test your understanding from the material covered in the module.

Throughout the certification, each chapter will have these quizzes. You’ll need to complete them in order to qualify for the exam at the end of the certification.

The certification exam will be the final item released for this certification. We are currently publishing the first three chapters, and future chapters will be released progressively as they are developed by our instructional design team. Once all the chapters are available, we will release the certification exam.

Contributors recognition

We'd like to shout out to the following contributors for their help in developing the curriculum:

• Krzysztof G.

• Chen Guo Zheng

• Steven Ding

We'd like to extend a special thanks to S1ng S1ng, who has recorded the monologues and dialogues audios, and has also recorded instructional videos that vividly demonstrate Pinyin pronunciation. These Pinyin videos will be gradually added to the curriculum throughout the coming year.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is all of this really free?

Yes. freeCodeCamp has always been free, and we've now offered free verified certifications for more than a decade.

Can I study the Chinese curriculum in languages other than English?

We aim to make every course available in all supported languages on freeCodeCamp. Check your account settings to see if the course you are studying is already offered in your preferred language.

What language skills does the Chinese curriculum cover?

The languages courses currently cover listening, reading and writing. We have plans of adding speaking later on.

Are the audio in the language courses and exams recorded by native language speakers?

Yes. All the audios present in the language courses were recorded by native speakers of that language.

I am Deaf or hard of hearing. Can I still study the language courses?

Yes! All audio lesson have closed captions and transcripts available for reading.

I am blind or have limited vision, and use a screen reader. Can I still study the language courses?

Yes! freeCodeCamp courses are designed to be accessible, and you can study the language courses using a screen reader. If you run into any accessibility issues, you can report them on our GitHub repository so the community can address them.

What are the letters and numbers beside the curriculum names? (For example: A1, A2, B1)

These labels refer to the CEFR levels, which is an international framework used to describe language proficiency. A1 and A2 represent beginner levels, B1 and B2 represent intermediate levels, and C1 and C2 represent advanced levels. Each level indicates the skills and knowledge you are expected to have at that stage of your language learning journey.

Anything else?

Good luck working through freeCodeCamp’s languages coursework.

Happy learning!

In this podcast, we'll bring you the inspiring learning and career development stories of developers, technical content creators, and other tech professionals We'll also share their insights into the world of tech with you.

This week we'll release the first three episodes:

Liu Rui with his daughter

Ep. 1 - Liu Rui: Enjoy Coding and Live with Developer's Mindset

Liu Rui is an engineer with 15 years of experience in Java development. Over the past few years, he has published many articles and video tutorials on the freeCodeCamp community publication and YouTube channel.

When Liu Rui was in junior high school, he was inspired to learn about computers and coding because of his father's enthusiasm for teaching himself coding. Then Liu Rui taught himself Java in university.

In this episode, he shares how he grows from a developer without confidence to a software architect, and how he lives with the wisdom he's gained from coding – not wanting to repeat himself, accepting imperfections, and compromising wisely. He also talks about teaching his daughters to code :)

Papaya Huang

Ep. 2 - Papaya Huang: Coding is My Hogwarts

Papaya taught herself to code in her thirties. Now, she is a front-end developer working with a remote team.

She is big fan of Harry Potter, and she feels that the process of exploring the world of code is quite like going to Hogwarts: even though there's a number of obstacles, she keeps solving problems and having fun in the process.

She talks about her love for coding in this episode, and how she has overcome various challenges as a learner. She also shares a bunch of useful and interesting books, video tutorials, and APIs.

Ep. 3 - Chen Zhicheng: Front End Development vs Back End Development

Zhicheng is an experienced full-stack engineer. When he was in junior high school, he worked with his father to develop a grade management system for his school using Visual Basic. And while he was at university, he worked with his teacher to build a Q&A platform to answer all kinds of questions from students.

In the first few years of his work, he always worked overtime, and his work and life were out of balance. So, he quit his job and became a "digital nomad".

After understanding the meaning of life a bit better, he completed all the freeCodeCamp certifications within one month, systematically studied front-end development and NodeJS, and got a job at a big company. Now, he works as a technical lead at a start-up.

In this episode, Zhicheng shares his learning and working experience, his insights into front-end and back-end development, and how he's exploring his life's mission.

See You in the freeCodeCamp Chinese Podcast

We plan to post one episode every Friday.

If you enjoy these episodes, please share the podcast with your friends. It will help us a lot.

We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a 5-star review on the platform where you listen to this podcast. Your support is valuable to freeCodeCamp and will help us provide more coding education resources for free.

Start your coding journey at freeCodeCamp and share your stories along the way. If you'd like to share your own story in our podcast, please email us at chinese@freecodecamp.org.

Happy coding!