This course is designed for students who need a more flexible approach to language learning than that offered in a standard classroom course. It is a Chinese language course designed to help beginners develop communicative competence in the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing the Chinese language. Basic vocabulary and sentence structures for use in essential daily-life situations, as well as cultural information, are taught through the materials and assignments. Materials are web-based, with extensive use of Internet technologies for research, writing and communication. There is a required weekly class meeting for training and for group activities, and weekly individual meetings with a tutor or the instructor for conversation and practice. Elementary Chinese I Online at Carnegie Mellon is a LearnLab course for the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. This means that researchers are attempting to improve language instruction by studying experimental approaches. Students in this class should be prepared to participate in such studies in the course of their classwork. Prerequisites: No previous study is required. If a student has studied Chinese before, then s/he must take a placement exam. Instructions for the placement exam are available in BH 160.