Resources
Writing Postcards
Reading and writing activity. Students must read a postcard from two sisters and answer questions on their holidays. The second exercise require students to complete sentences. The activity is written with pinyin and characters. A character only version is also available.
Holiday Grammar Drills
In pairs students must ask each other questions about their holiday based on given vocabulary. Students must then write about their own real, or imagined, holiday. A character only version is also available.
Your last holiday
This worksheet has a mix of pair and individual work. Activities include matching verbs with the correct noun, a fill in the blanks exercise, matching country names to pictures, discussing in pairs their own holidays. A character only version is available.
Online resources
- Chinese grammar wiki: Expressing completion with “le”
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_completion_with_%22le%22
- Past events in Chinese: explaining “过 and了”
http://www.digmandarin.com/all-video-lessons/learn-about-past-tense-in-chinese
- Chinese boost grammar: explaining past events in Mandarin Chinese grammar
https://www.chineseboost.com/grammar/past-events/
the explanation is a little long. But its emphasis on 了structure needs to be highlighted. It says,
“了 (le) is not about the past!
One of the uses of the particle 了 in Chinese is to mark completed aspect. Many learners of Chinese confuse this for 了 being about past events or the past tense. It’s not!
了 will often appear in sentences about the past, but it can also appear with present or future actions. It’s an aspect marker (amongst other things), not a tense marker.
This is quite hard to grasp, but try not to over-think it in the early stages. The best advice is to simply listen to and read as much Chinese as you can (that is nearly always the best thing you can do for your Chinese).”