Follow spoken directions

Start with the guided teaching

You want beef noodles, know the price, and need to answer a follow-up about spice.

Build a food word from pieces: 牛肉 = beef; 面 = noodles in this menu. 牛肉面 = beef noodles. This helps with familiar combinations; a dish name cannot reveal every ingredient or cooking method.

Read a menu and order a meal — 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

A little and again

一点 softens a quantity or adjective. 一下 makes an action brief. 再 asks for another attempt; 一遍 is a complete repeat.

Please + again + say + one complete time.

Your language for today

Practice the situation

Get to know someone

Move past greetings into a real exchange.

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.