Checkpoint: recover when plans fail

Start with the guided teaching

Recognize the place you need and ask someone to help you reach it.

药 means medicine; 店 means shop. 药店 is pharmacy. 医院 is hospital. Learn these complete destination words; they are not interchangeable.

Find the pharmacy and ask for help — complete guided explanation

Do the work in five passes

1. Listen and pronounce — 25 min · shadow 6 phrases; compare a recording.
2. Read and recognize — 25 min · complete the guided teaching, then read today’s words.
3. Build and speak — 25 min · build a guided request; then make 10 variations.
4. Solve a situation — 25 min · practice both sides, then hide the hints.
5. Retrieve and review — 20–80 min · due review, quizzes, and a spoken recap.

Completion records effort; quiz results measure recognition. Neither proves conversational fluency. Use the interactive trainer for review scheduling and saved progress.

Today’s sentence machinery

Or in a question: 还是

Use 还是 for ordinary alternative questions. 或者 often gives alternatives in a statement.

Offer two choices and let the listener pick.

Your language for today

Practice the situation

Room problem

Report the fault and ask for a solution.

Outside the trainer: spend 10–20 minutes repeating these exchanges with a Mandarin speaker when available. Ask them to change one reply so you must listen. Fixed audio and scenarios cannot reproduce every real conversation.