This paper examines the common errors produced by native Korean and American English speakers who are in the process of learning to use yi 'one'+classifier at the intermediate level of Mandarin Chinese. This paper argues that such errors tend to occur when learners are not trained to observe the discursive referentiality patterns of nominals, which determine when a noun should or can be modified by yi 'one'+classifier. The paper establishes a pedagogical sequence to provide such training and tailors it to native speakers of American English and Korean in intermediate Chinese classes. The pedagogical sequence takes the form of a decision tree. The paper also makes suggestions for further research on pedagogy of numeral classifiers at a higher level.