Mandarin IA is a basic introductory language course. The course begins with an introduction of the phonetic and writing systems of Mandarin. This includes consonants, vowels, tones, the logic used in the creation of Chinese characters, the movements of writing strokes, and the rules of stroke order. Students will be able to hold conversations on the following topics at the novice-low to novice-mid level: greeting, introduction, age, nationality, school, grade, family members, address, days of a week, current date, favorite food, and ordering in a restaurant. The vocabulary learned in the course is approximately 300 characters.