Customer Reviews

250 Essential Chinese Characters For Everyday Use: Volume 2

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a Mandarin instructor, I am always on the lookout for texts that are easily accessible (content and cost) to students with an English background. This volume, in conjunction to vol. 2, provides a solid starting point for those who are interested in a comprehensive study of Mandarin that includes reading and writing. Preferably used with instructor-led classes for the purpose of learning proper pronunciation, students can observe both the traditional and simplified characters with an abundance of contextual usage for each character, all neatly labeled in Pinyin (pronunciation guide) and simplified Chinese characters.

Opening volume I, one is introduced to numbers 1-10 and the four tones in Mandarin. Subsequent sections contain ten characters in each set, with topics ranging from the basic greeting to more advanced expressions. At the end of each set, the workbook provides a quiz for self evaluation, a great tool for independent study and/or for instructors.

I am giving the series four stars for the following reasons: 1) lack of pronunciation guide/demonstration; 2) dedicated pages for sample dialogues that employ multiple characters introduced in the book within one setting; 3) too many practice squares (about 100) for each character per page instead of utilizing pictorial reinforcement (i.e. origin of the character) as in Fun with Chinese Characters series for those (about 70% of us) who are visually inclined.

This book is absolutely one of the two keys to learning Mandarin. (The other is the Pimsleur programs.) I never thought I'd learn this challenging language, even though I'm conversant in three LOTE already; but this book is helping me learn how to write in Mandarin. It also has each new character or word in various contexts to show shades of meaning, which is really important in a tonal language.

I highly recommend this and its companion volume, 1, along with the Pimsleur program, which I'm sure you can get on Amazon.

Junto con el volumen 1 de esta colección es una herramienta muy valiosa para el estudiante de mandarín para aprender aprenden la correcta manera de los trazos de los caracteres chinos y con los ejemplos que traé también ayuda a ampliar el vocabulario.
El espacio para práctica es muy bueno. Importante que en el caso de que el caracter tenga una versión simplificada y tradicional (utilizada aún en Taiwan y otros lugares), muestra ambas.

Philip Yungkin Lee has done an outstanding job of combining meaningful character contexts, exercises and review material. The book depicts both traditional Chinese characters and the simplified character set. If you have both the time and the patience, you can learn a multitude of essential characters and phrases. One thing I would suggest to Turtle Publishing, is to expand the Student's Guide section dealing with pinyin pronunciations on page xii; add pronunciations of multiple vowel combinations. Outside of this one recommendation, if you are planning a trip to China and truly want to learn how to both read and write "putonghau" Vol.1 and 2 are the books for you.

NOTE: I bought Vol 1 and Vol 2 of these books. I am still on Vol 1 and this review is based on practicing 178 characters so far from Vol 1.

I wish my hearing was good enough to learn a second language but it isn't so the only thing I can do is learn about languages. One of my hobbies is learning other languages' sentence construction, use of phrases, alphabets, etc. Practicing writing Chinese characters and discovering how ideas are assembled with the characters is relaxing.

But I don't understand the order of characters in this book. Were they placed by amount of use or some other reason? I am up to 178 characters out of 250 in Vol 1 and I haven't understood any build up or building on past characters. Maybe I am learning something without realizing it but I wish some goal was more apparent to me.

Perhaps I lack patients as a high school graduate in China is expected to know about 10,000 characters so I have a very long way to go to even by a 1st grader:-)