Customer Reviews

250 Essential Chinese Characters for Everyday Use, Vol. 1

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I used this book to supplement a college class. It is excellent as far as the set of characters it contains (most common), and in teaching proper stroke order. It is far better than the $100+ of textbooks I had to buy for the class.

Note that you have to learn proper pronuniciation through some other method. No book can explain what a sound is like, although all the chinese books try! This is the first review I have written, and I hope it helps those who follow. I have purchased many Chinese language books, and this is the best. Use it along with a Pimsleur audio course, and you will be on your way.

Wayne

2 months ago I had no knowledge of Chinese at all, and now I can recognize more than 150 characters easily. The only material I studied so far was this book, and it has been an excellent start for someone who wants to learn how to read Chinese by himself.

I decided that the first step I would take to study Chinese would be to recognize characters and its meanings, and only later to study grammar in detail. To recognize characters is not enough, since most of the Chinese words are formed by 2 characters, but if you know their meanings well, it will be a lot easier to learn the words later.

Another plus is that this book is based on the simplified characters, which are used in mainland China. Take care when you select a book, because a lot of them are based on the full form characters, which are used only in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

I have been living in China for 9 months and have been learning conversational Chinese. I decided that I should start learning the characters, as well. I have just started using the book, and it does seem that the author has chosen the most used characters. I would definitely reccommend this volume and the next. I think that if you can understand these characters in these 2 books, you can go a long way to understanding and figuring out a lot of everyday Chinese writing.

My only issue with this book is that it is almost completely redundant with the flash cards (Chinese In A Flash) offered by the same author and publisher. I have found the flash cards to be a much more effective way to learn Chinese characters, and so am disappointed about having also purchased the book. Although the book does sometimes include a sentence or two about a character's origin, which could in principle be useful for remembering that character, these sentences usually refer to the traditional character rather than the simplified one, and are usually too brief and simplistic to be of much use anyway. So my advice would be to buy the flashcards instead of the book - they contain the identical information, but in a more compact, easy-to-use format.

As a linguistic slow-learner, I have found this book to be a GODSEND! I LOVE IT!!! The big blank spaces for practicing are awesome! The little mini-tests throughout the book really challenge you to know your stuff! Combine this with the matching flashcards and you can learn your Putonghua in a jiffy! :)

I bought volume 1 and 2 of this book when I first started learning characters and found that it just didn't work very well for me.

What I didn't like about this book:

1) It introduces characters strictly by frequency. In many cases the more complex characters are introduced without teaching the meanings of the simpler character components.
2) For characters with different simplified/traditional forms, memory hints are geared towards traditional characters with the occasional negative comments regarding the changes done in the simplification process.
3) The character compounds that are introduced with each character are often combined with characters that have not been learned yet.

What I did like about this book is:

1) The character writing/review sections
2) The large stroke order diagrams

That being said, I found that, personally, my retention using this system was poor. I stopped using it completely once I discovered Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters, also printed by Tuttle.

The overall size of the book and the fonts chosen make this book easy to read. The book is surprisingly riddled with errors. I was surprised to find this in an academically written book.

Examples:

pg vii stroke SP, is identified as P
pg viii stroke SZG, is named WG
pg viii several strokes do not follow the ISO name taxonomy
pgxii the pronunciation of x is given as "see"

There are also stroke order errors.

Examples:

page 111 character #98
page 136 character #116
page 278 character #236

The grammar examples are certainly not beginner level and many are not typical of Standard Mandarin Chinese. Many of the characters and associated Hanyu Pinyin are not referenced and the reader is left guessing as to the meaning. A beginner would have a better learning experience with Topic/Comment grammar construction and placement of temporal adverbs in the sentence initial position.

Particularily lacking are common verbs. Three of the most common, "give", "take" and "want" are not given as examples. I would have thought the 250 characters would be drawn from the commonly circulating list of the 3000 most common characters.

The translations take great liberty and scramble word order frequently. A beginner would not be able to intuitively construct novel sentences from this book's examples.

There are diacratic tone marker errors on the Hanyu Pinyin.

The main problems with this boook that prevent it from being useful are thus:

1) Most of the characters and Pinyin used are not indexed and the reader has no idea what the example sentences mean or what the individual characters mean.

2) The rules of stroke order are inaccurate and include, the examples are named wrong, the named strokes wrong, not using ISO taxonomy for naming strokes.

3) The example sentence are very inaccurately translated.

4) Perhaps the first drill which uses the character for number one typifies the entire book.23 character are introduced and in the entire book there is no reference for what they mean.Oddly the index only cross references Chinese Characters and Pinyin, with no English meaning.

This book is of no use to a beginner. It covers all the essentials very superficially and inaccurately.It would take a dictionary and a half day to translate the first practice drill.

I love this book. If you're looking to get started on the written Chinese language, I really can't think of a better source of instruction. Each page consists of one single character. For each character every stroke is broken down, the character is explained and half the page is empty squares of practice space. You can also buy flash cards that go along with the book. Writing in Chinese is the best thing ever and if you've wanted a good starting spot then here it is. After you finish this one there is another book of 250 more characters. I like this, it's good and it does me well.

I love this book.

I am learning conversational Chinese and pinyin, and even gaining a basic knowledge of the Hanzi adds a whole new dimension.

Not only do I find learning the charaters fun - they really are quite beautiful things - but quite often I have 'penny dropping' moments where something about a character fills a gap in my understanding and things make more sense. As an aside, I am amazed at how logically Chinese works, and am so glad I don't have to learn English.

To be clear, I would not recommend this to someone with NO knowledge of Chinese. You need to HEAR the language and pronunciation first and foremost.

But even at my basic stage (around a 450 word vocab), starting the Hanzi is wonderful. I had actually picked up the 'first' 100 or so just by studying pinyin and looking at the Hanzi supplied, but being given the stroke order is a major help.

One small suggestion for the author or editors if they ever read this: Adding some arrows on the diagrams to make it 100% clear which way some of the smaller strokes should be drawn would make it even more helpful.

xiexie Mr Lee.

This book will give you a very good start to character literacy. It should be used in conjunction with a program that gives you practice in pronunciation. (I've not found one shoe that fits all.) I'd recommend buying this book and v.2 along with the separately published Pimsleur CD's.