For beginners, a great way to practice a lot of useful Chinese is talking about your weekly schedule. This will help you review many aspects of the language – the days of the week, parts of the day, time, and daily activities. We’ll give you a chance to do just that at the end of the post, but first let’s do a little review:

Days of the Week in Chinese

• Monday (星期一 – xīng qī yī)

• Tuesday (星期二 – xīng qī èr)

• Wednesday (星期三 – xīng qī sān)

• Thursday (星期四 – xīng qī sì)

• Friday (星期五 – xīng qī wǔ)

• Saturday (星期六 – xīng qī liù)

• Sunday (星期天 – xīng qī tiān); 星期日 – xīng qī rì)

Parts of the Day in Chinese

• early morning (早上 – zǎo shàng)

• morning/mid-day (上午 – shàng wǔ)

• afternoon (下午 – xià wǔ)

• evening/night (晚上 – wǎn shàng)

Telling the Time in Chinese

We’ve already covered telling the time in great detail here on the blog, so it’s best if you go back and review those posts if you feel like you need the practice. This post gives you all the basics you need to tell time, while this more advanced post gets into some more detailed grammar that will up your fluency. For some more practice, follow along with this video:

Daily Activities in Chinese

Getting ready to 上课

Like it or not, most of us humans are a rather predictable bunch – we do the same things day after day. Learn the Chinese for 20 common daily activities from a past post and you’ll be well on your way to talking about your weekly schedule. To get a better idea of how to talk about your daily routine, you can watch this video I put together that shows “A Day in the (Chinese) Life:”

Your Weekly Schedule

After reviewing all of the above, you should be ready to talk about your weekly schedule. To make it a bit easier for you, I’ve even gone ahead and created a simple table that you can fill in. Think about what you do each day and write it in the corresponding part of the day. Then, try to use all that you’ve learned when it comes to telling time and discussing daily routines to make complete sentences.

Still need a little bit of help? That’s fine – it’s what I’m here for! For example, see what I wrote in three of the boxes for my weekly schedule:

Now, here are three sample sentences based on the table that you can use as models:

星期二上午我从十点到十二点上课.
xīng qí èr shàng wǔ wǒ cóng shí diǎn dào shí èr diǎn shàng kè
On Tuesday morning I have class from 10-12.

I usually go to the gym to workout on Thursday afternoon.
我一般星期四下午去健身房做运动.
wǒ yī bān xīng qí sì xià wǔ qù jiàn shēn fáng zuò yùn dòng

On Friday night at 8 I drink beer with my friends.
星期五晚上八点我跟朋友们一起喝啤酒.
xīng qí wǔ wǎn shàng bā diǎn wǒ gēn péng yǒu men yī qǐ hē pí jiǔ

So… what do YOU do every week? Leave a comment to practice your Chinese typing skills.