Customer Reviews

Conversational Chinese 301 (Chinese and English Edition) (English and Chinese Edition)

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The idea behind CC301 are the 301 basic conversational sentences, which are (as the authors intended) pretty quick to learn. The textbook then builds on these basic sentences via substitutions, expansions, and sample conversations. I've tried a lot of textbooks and CDs and, so far, I've made the most progress using CC301.

This is the 2nd ed. of CC301; currently there is a 3rd. ed. (which splits the 1st ed. book into two halves) but I've found this text book works just fine with the two 3rd. ed. CD sets (essential!) covering the 1st and 2nd halves of this 1st ed.

The CDs are essential to learning the sound and correct pronunciation of the language.

Most visitors to China who are there for a considerable length of time eventually feel slightly insulted by always being called "foreigner" every day.

I spent my first year trying to explain this to my hosts and suggesting "vistor" or "guest" with no results. I find it somewhat unprofessional and insulting to see this on the front of a book that touts itself as the "most popular textbook".

It is very difficult to determine what the overall objective of the authors is. The first 2 text pages are entirely Chinese characters and one wonders how this encourages the new student to go further.

Years ago I often saw documentaries of Chinese students holding books only inches from their face with their eyes all screwed up, perhaps it is because they used books such as this with unreadable fonts that are so small I have trouble seeing them with 2X glasses I bought in China so I could read the book. It behoves me to understand why an author would make their book unreadable because of this. On some pages there are 5 colours of blue with the type set on blue and the type is grey or light blue. This book includes the smallest sized printing I have ever seen. And in the lightest coloured print, why?

The index of the book is entirely in Chinese Characters? How are students to read this? There is no index to look up the meaning of any of the characters?

Then there is the chart labeled "The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, which includes "V" which is not in the alphabet used for Hanyu Pinyin. And the chart uses the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet with its bizarre structure to confuse students. Then there is the "written forms" with some odd font style. What is all of this supposed to mean? Anyone who buys this book reads English, has no idea what the IPA is or how to use it, and has never seen this "written forms" before, which is incidentally, all wrong.

The authors makes no attempt to explain the grammatical terms they use. Most students would not know what an "adverbial adjunct" is.

Then there are the phonetic drills in Pinyin, which you will never understand as they do not have translations.

Throughout the book there is extensive writing in Chinese characters that goes unexplained and there is no index to determine what all these characters are.

Then there is the "Vocabulary" chapter at the back of the book. It does not have English, so how are the English readers supposed to know the meaning of the listed characters.?????

This book is typical of books from Beijing Language and Culture University Press. They are written by Chinese speakers who do not understand English and then translated. The translators do not understand the limitations of non Chinese students. So there is lots of Chinese writing that you will never understand. It also suffers from unreadability, micro fonts and inappropriate use of colours that obscure readability. I was given this book as a gift and it is nothing but frustrating. If you want sore eyes and a headache, buy it. You will need magnifying reading glasses and an accessory light to illuminate the near unreadable type.

I have no issues with the content that I can read, with great difficulty. But a book that you must struggle to read because of poor design is useless. I give this book the lowest rank because it is a struggle to use it.

Addendum: I enquired of a Chinese printer-publisher that I know, as to why so many Chinese books use light grey and blue coloured fonts. the reason is that so Chinese students do not photocopy the books. A money saving device well known throughout the academic world. Odd behaviour, the authors sacrifice readability in a huge way to stop students from copying their books. Odd, behaviour given that China copies almost everything and you can buy copies of any book, beer, liquor in China tha makes money. "Lonely Planet China" is availale in copied form all over China.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find the book difficult to use. I can only assume that the sentences written in Chinese symbols or characters correlate with the few instructional sentences written in English. This is definitely not a self-study book. I took a conversational chinese class, but the instructor did not think it important we learn what sentences meant, but focused on pronounciation. It seems kind of pointless to read a sentence in Chinese and have no idea what it means. Maybe Google can help.

As a student of Spanish and German, Chinese is without a doubt the most difficult of either of those. But, I am determined so I was able to find the set of cassette tapes to go along with the book. Of course, the tapes are also completely in Chinese! What fun! Hopefully, I will be able to pronounce the words correctly, though! If you don't mind a challenge buy the book, and check Google.