Just as Mike had to come up with his story, you will have to do the same with your own. The first step in coming up with your own story is to build simple sentences using some of the adjectives and nouns previously learned. If you find yourself getting stuck, don’t worry. You can review past vocabulary lists and consult other means in order to build the story you want.

Start by putting sentences together. Don’t be too worried if they line up perfectly just yet. By the end of the week, you will be able to put a story together. While this activity won’t be graded, you will be graded on how well you can put a story together.

As you are writing the story using pinyin, you may find that it’s difficult to put in the different tone marks. In place of the tone marks, you can write a number after each word representing that tone. See this guide below for better details:

Mā can be written as Ma1

Má can be written as Ma2

Mǎ can be written as Ma3

Mà can be written as Ma4

Ma can be written the same as Ma

Sentences like Gōngzhǔ ài yìzhī māo are written as Gong1zhu3 ai4 yi4zhi1 mao1

*Note: you will notice that some tones do change as in yí or bú depending on the word that follows. Your teacher will be lenient on grading specifics with the tones, so focus more on writing the pinyin and using the correct vocabulary. If your tones are off a bit for now, it will be okay.