The Chinese Program at SAIS offers Novice, Intermediate and Advanced courses. The Novice course provides students with the essentials of pronunciation (using the Pinyin system of romanization), basic grammar rules, sentence structure and the writing syste (simplified characters). Students acquire the ability to discuss, read and write about simple, everyday topics.

Intermediate courses offer consolidation and improvement in skills that students have begun to acquire in their previous studies. Students gain further knowledge of sentence structure and expand vocabulary in the subject matter of Chinese history, geography, society, politics, economics and international affairs.

Reading comprehension and aural/oral skills are further developed through work with authentic newspaper texts and selected news broadcasts. At the conclusion of the Intermediate courses, students will have mastered between 1,800 and 2,000 characters and are expected to have achieved an Intermediate-High level of proficiency in reading and an Intermediate-Mid level in listening and speaking. Post-proficiency courses allow students to maintain or even raise their level of proficiency.