Customer Reviews

Chinese Primer, Volumes 1-3 (Pinyin): (Revised Edition) (Princeton Language Program: Modern Chinese) (v. 1-3)

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The Princeton series has been well-regarded and justly deserves it. The lessons rapidly progress to colloquial Mandarin, and the red book gives in-depth explanations and examples. Each lesson has many new expressions. They are generally real-life conversations, but the authors have made an effort to make them at least a little humorous and not too dry. The 2007 edition seems to be improved over the earlier (1994?) edition with real typeset fonts instead of typewriter Courier and a better index. The content however is much the same. Besides this red/blue/yellow book group, you should definitely get the green book for the character text (why is it sold separately?) and the video series in which the dialogs are acted out (the audio is the most important, the video part adds some amusement). But not all is perfect: it would be nice if the answers were provided for the exercises in the red book and the practice sentences in the yellow book. Maybe they're in a teacher's edition (but of course teachers don't need it!) Otherwise, this series is quite excellent.

The publishers have confusingly labeled this product, which actually comes as a set of three volumes. I have repeatedly had to cancel when ordering used or "like new" copies from marketplace sellers who did not realize that they were advertising the set ("Volumes 1-3") but in fact only had 1 volume. Amazon has not spotted this, so buyer beware! Write to seller first to clarify.