Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: BASIC WORD ORDER
1) Basic Word Order 2) Action and Location 3) Action and Time 4) Word Order for When Something Happens 5) Duration of Time
6) Placement of the word “Why?”

CHAPTER TWO: TIME EXPRESSIONS
1) When/While…
2) Days, Weeks, Months, Years

CHAPTER THREE: NOUNS
1) Plurals 2) Counting Things 3) “This” and “That” 4) Nouns for Nationalities and Languages
5) “All” of some Noun
6) Indefinites 7) Not Even One Bit of Something 8) Location Words

CHAPTER FOUR: VERBS
1) Past Tense 2) Present Tense 3) Future Tense
4) The Word “It” with Verbs
5) Helping Verbs 6) Going, Coming, Returning
7) The “Ba” Pattern with Verbs 8) The “Shi…de” Pattern with Past Tense Action Verbs
9) Passive Voice

CHAPTER FIVE: ADJECTIVES
1) General Rules for Adjectives?2) How to Translate “Bad”?3) “Not Bad”?4) “Nice”?5) “Pretty”
6) Positive Comparisons 7) Negative Comparisons

CHAPTER SIX: USES OF THE PARTICLE “LE”
1) Action Verbs in Past Tense 2) Change of Status with Adjectives 3) Imminent Action
4) “Not Any More”

CHAPTER SEVEN: USES OF THE PARTICLE “DE”
1) Uses of ?(de) 2) Uses of ?(de) 3) Uses of ?(de)

CHAPTER EIGHT: CONJUNCTIONS (AND; OR)
1) “And”: Connecting nouns; verbs and adjectives 2) “Or”: In a statement; in a question
CHAPTER NINE: SUBORDINATE CLAUSES
1) Connecting sentences with “who”/”that”?2) If…then?3) As soon as>?4) Even>?5) Because>?6) No Matter Whether>?7) Besides?

CHAPTER TEN: How to Express the verb “can” in Chinese?1) Know how to (hui)?2) Physically able (neng)?3) May/permitted (keyi)?4) Resultative Endings?

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Word Choice Issues with Certain Important Verbs?1) To “be” (“shi” vs. “zuo” vs. “dang”) ?2) To “know” (“zhidao” vs. “renshi”)?3) “Like” vs. “Would like to” (“xihuan” vs. “xiang”)?4) “To think/to feel” (“xiang” vs. “juede”)?5) “To ask”?6) “To tell”?7) “To seem like” (“haoxiang” vs. “xiang”)?8) “To receive”?9) “To be afraid”?10) “To worry”?11) “To help”?12) “To take”?13) “To lose”?14) “To produce”?

CHAPTER TWELVE: Word Choice Issues with Adverbs?1) “from”?2) “first”
3) “actually” 4) “although” 5) “almost” 6) “unless” 7) “every time”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Letter Writing Issues 1) Greetings and Salutations
2) Writing to one’s Parents
3) Closing the Letter 4) More on Ending the Letter 5) Social Niceties