Introducing a potential new Saturday Cantonese II workshop / class if there is enough interest from students...

This class will start as a 4 week workshop, but if at least 10-12 students commit to taking the class on a permanent basis, I am willing to teach it for the rest of the academic year until next June, barring any out of town travel that I might need to do.

Here is the course description:

Brendan has offered to teach an additional level 2 Cantonese class this year, starting as a 4-week workshop on Saturdays from 5:30 - 6:30 pm (room to be announced) and continuing as a full year course if at least 10- 12 students commit to attending the class for the duration of the academic year until next June.

This class will not compete with Hung's Saturday Cantonese 2 class (which Brendan will be attending as an advisor / fill-in instructor for the weeks that Hung cannot teach). Rather, it will follow Book 2 of the popular Foreign Service Institute (FSI) Cantonese Basic Course created by the US Government's Department of Defense Language School circa 1970 by Elizabeth Lattimore Boyle, beginning at lesson 16 out of 30 total lessons from the course. The textbook is a free public domain PDF download, as are the approximately 20 HOURS OF MP3 AUDIO that accompany the text. Students are also welcome to purchase used copies of the original textbooks on Amazon, etc.

This class will be taught entirely in Yale Romanized Cantonese -- no Chinese characters -- and our focus will be on the correct pronunciation of hundreds of practical sentence patterns, allowing the student to learn many basic structures into which all kinds of vocabulary words and concepts can be substituted. If this class lasts the entire academic year, students who attend every week and who really pay attention will absolutely be able to purchase items at any Cantonese speaking store in Chinatown, order food at any Cantonese speaking restaurant here and abroad, or have advanced beginner-level conversations with Chinese friends, family members, and extended relatives here and in Hong Kong.

Unlike Brendan's Cantonese 1 class, which will focus entirely on correct pronunciation and tones this year, this FSI Level 2 Cantonese class will take students who can already speak basic Cantonese at an acceptable threshold level of pronunciation and allow them to add hundreds of useful sentence patterns that will begin to lead to real, everyday communication skills in Cantonese.

STUDENTS MUST POSSESS A FIRM BEGINNER LEVEL KNOWLEDGE OF ACCURATE PRONUNCIATION AND TONES, BASIC WORD ORDER AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE, AND A KEEN DESIRE AND WILLINGNESS TO STUDY AND PRACTICE SPEAKING CANTONESE WITH PEOPLE THEY DON'T KNOW, ON THEIR OWN, EACH WEEK OUTSIDE OF CLASS.

I look forward to teaching this class if there is enough interest. I am offering a class that will help any student in our program who can already speak comprehensible basic Cantonese begin to communicate on a daily basis with Chinese people they don't know here in NYC.

AGAIN, YOU MUST MUST MUST BE ABLE TO PRONOUNCE CANTONESE ACCURATELY BEFORE STARTING THIS CLASS, OR I WILL GENTLY BUT FIRMLY ASK YOU TO LEAVE AS SOON AS I HEAR YOUR CRAPPY PRONUNCIATION.

Thanks for your interest!!!