Customer Reviews

Elementary Chinese Readers (Volume I)

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The ELEMENTARY CHINESE READERS were originally published by Foreign Languages Press in 1980. In spite of the name, it is an introduction not only to the Chinese writing system, but also to Chinese grammar in general. The twenty-six chapters of the first volume will take the student from just saying "Hello, how are you?" to talking about his sightseeing activities as a tourist in China.

Technically the book has everything one needs for autodidactic learning. Each chapter presents new vocabulary and then gives a series of rigorous drills to ensure the information sinks into the student's head. There are also casettes available for the text, which mean that one is not depend on the abstract phonetic descriptions of Chinese sounds in the book. However, if you are planning to teach yourself Chinese from scratch, there are much friendlier books available, such as TEACH YOURSELF CHINESE or Routledge's COLLOQUIAL CHINESE. The ELEMENTARY CHINESE READERS are really meant for classroom use where instruction is given by a native speaker. Indeed, each grammatical point is accompanied by a Chinese explanation in Chinese characters, so that the instructor, who might not necessarily speak English, can make their alongside the students.

There is a class of students for which the grammar will be useful outside of the classroom. If you already know the basics of Chinese grammar and can read pinyin, this book can help you learn your first couple of hundred characters. All new vocabulary is given in pinyin and Chinese characters, and at the end of the chapter the stroke order of each character is given in a very clear manner. And though simplified forms are used, traditional characters are occasionally given too.

But I wouldn't recommend necessarily this book for learning to read Chinese. There's another book called PRACTICAL CHINESE READER, published by Commercial Press in 1986 that follows the very same format as the ELEMENTARY CHINESE READERS. It seems like a knockoff or imitation, but it is in my opinion rather more engaging, and its dialogues involve a story over several chapters that keep the reader's attention. It's also considerably larger, 551 pages as opposed to the 294 pages of the book I'm reviewing.

So, bottom line: if you just want to start learning characters and have some grounding in the Chinese language, the ELEMENTARY CHINESE READERS are useful. However, if you can find the PRACTICAL CHINESE READER instead, it might be a more economical and interesting purchase.

I picked this book up in a Seattle used book store in September, and as of November I have now arrived at the last chapter. I've also read several other Chinese books but have never gotten through them cover-to-cover, so this is a good thing. My background is that I have a girlfriend who I chat with constantly, practicing new and old stuff with so I am not a beginner. That said...

...I would say this is a great book for a person like me who knows the basics and would like to review them as well as learn new vocabulary. The chapters are broken up very well, I split them up over 2 days and do them leisurely. Previously introduced vocabulary is employed often in later chapters in different contexts. There are a variety of exercises to avoid stale-ination.

What I like about this book is that you can leave it to the book to repeat the vocabulary, as opposed to you writing it down and having to do it for yourself, a la spaced repetition. I also like that they give just enough new words to not overwhelm. It's a comfortable pace, as opposed to learn mandarin in 21 days kind of thing. The dialogue is mildly interesting as well.

If you are self-learning, without further resource, I would say this is not the book for you. If you are already familiar with Mandarin, I would definitely recommend for the basic mandarin student. (Advanced students will of course have no need for this book.)

I studied in China last summer and this is the book they started us on. It has stroke order examples, a pinyin chart, along with pronounciation diagrams for the first few chapters, and it has an alphabetical listing of all words learned. I own all the books in this series, they are great! A friend wrote a computer program to go with this book it displays characters for review in a dos enviroment, It is free if you want it.

I purchased this book because I thought I was making pretty good progress with Rosetta Stone, Mandarin I, Pimsleur I and II, and the Schaum's grammar book. I was wrong, and after 10 months of self study, I can't really understand this at all. I think this is meant for true Chinese elementary school students, as I showed this to one of my Chinese friends, and she told me that it was way too hard for someone at my level.

Recommendation:

To learn to read, start at the beginning, and the best book I've seen so far (and I own 9 books on reading and writing characters) is Tuttle's HSK A book. I'm usually the last person to endorse a product, but I'd have to because it works for me. The other thing that helps me is a website called InstantSpeakChinese. It's a little Salty, but the native speakers do a good job.

Also, on Amazon.com, you can find a Taiwanese drama that you like, maybe along the lines of Devil Beside You, It Started with a Kiss, Huan Huan Ai, or my favorite, Hana Kimi (Mandarin Version). Watching the 'mini-series' in Chinese with English and Chinese subtitles was a real boost. It's as close to total immersion as you can get, unless you adopt a few Chinese friends and hang out pretty regular. Some new taiwanese dramas to hit the scene recently are MoMo Love and Rolling Thunder. You really do get sucked into these things, and before you know it, you're responding in Chinese to someone when they hassle you, or if you want something really really bad from your parents, you find yourself using Chinese strategy to get it. IF you are serious about learning Mandarin, understand that there is no instant learning tool. But using the right tools in the right order can make it all happen much much quicker. And actually, every book or item I got came from Amazon.com just because the prices combined with shipping were better than other place, or they were only available at Amazon.com.