GATT Translation Method A translation method incorporating “Word Sequence” diagrams to assist non-native speakers in learning Elementary Mandarin Hoe Foo Terng and Liaw Shun Chone Akademi Pengajian Bahasa, UiTM, 13500 Penang, Malaysia, fthoe@yahoo.com Akademi Pengajian Bahasa, UiTM, 13500 Penang, Malaysia, chone101@ppinang.uitm.edu.my ABSTRACT In Malaysia, Mandarin is mostly taught as a subject in vernacular schools. Under the 9 th Malaysian Plan (9MP),the government has offered Mandarin as an elective subject in all national schools. Mandarin is also offered to non-native learners at local universities. As there is a growing demand for the learning of Mandarin, language instructors have deployed various methods to make learning of Mandarin manageable. Like most language learners at the elementary stage, beginners are eager to learn the language but such enthusiasm starts to wane when they fail to construct sentences accurately in Mandarin. More often than not, they fall back on their mother tongue as a source of reference. It results in flawed sentence structures. Incidentally, this article is a sequel to an earlier paper which was presented here at the 1 st CLaSIC 2004. In this article, the researchers have proposed the GATT translation method which takes into account four simple processes of translating a sentence from their own mother tongue into Mandarin. The translation method has been designed by the