Basic Chinese Grammar and Sentence Patterns (Wp) [Paperback]

Mabel Lee (Author), A. D. Syrokomla-Stefanowska (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: Wild Peony (AU) (December 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0959073515
• ISBN-13: 978-0959073515
• Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,213,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent tool for learning to read Chinese, July 16, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Basic Chinese Grammar and Sentence Patterns (Wp) (Paperback)

Vocabulary is introduced by showing both traditional and simplified characters, in columns, along with pinyin transcription. I found this quite helpful because most individual Chinese study materials feature either one or the other. The sentence examples are in handwritten characters, not in pinyin, which makes you learn the characters much more quickly than you otherwise would.

I'd recommend this book in conjunction with a book-CD combination like Kan Qian's Colloquial Chinese (Routledge). This one focuses on grammar, as the title indicates. A bargain, as well.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good resource for beginners, February 27, 2008

By 

Kristene Collins (Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Basic Chinese Grammar and Sentence Patterns (Wp) (Paperback)

This book is devided into 20 lessions. At the beginning of every lession, as another reviewer said, is a list of new vocabulary words for the lession listing new words/charaters giving pinyin pronunciations, traditional forms, simplified forms (if different from their trad. forms) and finally, the english meaning. Then, on the next page it explains grammatic useages and giving examples of how words are used. Finally, at the end of the lession is a small list of exercizes for the student to do to get the full grasp of the material.

A few notes I have to make: this book focuses on *traditional* characters although it gives simplified forms in the vocab. lists, in the actual lession material it solely uses trad. forms, so if your focus is solely on reading simp. Chinese you may want to try a different resource. However, for those of us wanting to learn both forms or just trad. forms this book is a fine choice.

Also, this book could be in plainer English; it uses a lot of linguistic terms that could potentially confuse the user, although the example sentences tend to clear up that confusion pretty quickly, you may find yourself going "well, why didn't the authors just say THAT in the first place!" quite a bit once you figure out what they meant (and don't worry, you will) which can potentially be annoying though, in my opinion, it does NOT detract from the overall value of this book.

It gives examples of most common grammar useage of the lession topics and makes it easy to pick up the basic grammar (hence the book's name!) and also is a good way to get a jump start on reading the characters as ALL of the example material uses characters with next to no pinyin useage past the vocab. lists (which, imo, is a GOOD thing).

If you want to write out the exercizes at the end of the lessions as opposed to just reading them aloud I reccomend a book like "Reading and Writing Chinese" by McNaughton which teaches stroke order and these two books I have found to be complimentary to each other in helping to learn how to read/write Chinese.

Overall, I give this book 4/5 stars because of the previously touched upon useage of lingustic terms and also, the example text (which is all handwritten and therefore carries a certain charm for that) could be slightly bigger, for such a large book {height} the text is surprizingly small, though still ledgible. Though I DO like this book and highly reccomend it for beginners!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Chinese Characters Not Written Clearly, March 21, 2008

By 

F. Futch (Tempe, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Basic Chinese Grammar and Sentence Patterns (Wp) (Paperback)

I bought this book and was disappointed. The grammar lessons and vocabulary are great. But the use of traditional characters (not simplified as used in China (PRC)), and the fact that these are handwritten and small, make it exceptionally hard to learn the characters or understand the exercises. The same book with all simplified characters, and with the characters larger and uniform as in being type set would have been perfect.