Customer Reviews

Intermediate Chinese with Audio CD

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This continuation of Yong Ho's "Beginning Chinese" follows a slightly different format, First of all, it does not have the cultural insight digressions that made the first volume so enjoyable (however the useful "Language Points" are still there). Secondly the structure of the chapters are different; this volume has reading and translation exercises that the first volume didnt have (not a surprising development as one progresses in learning the language). Thirdly the quality and organization of the CD is much improved over the CDs found in "Beginning Chinese." The book concludes with a guide on internet resources and computing in Chinese that is very helpful. As is the case for Ho's "Beginning Chinese" and his "Chinese-English Frequecy Dictionary" you'll get some grammatical insights to Mandarin that are difficult to find elsewhere.

The title of this book is a little bit misleading because it is not really an intermediate level book, and for that reason, I am a bit crestfallen, although it looks interesting.

Each chapter consists of the following:
1- dialogues
2- reading in Chinese, usually 5 to 15 sentences.
3- vocabulary list
4- linguistic explanation of focused materials
5- exercises

Nices: It has many more pictures than many other language textbooks would (even though they should), and I think this is very nice; it makes the learning more vivid. Linguistic explanations look very explicit. Some of the supplementary activities look interesting, too. The price is quite reasonable for a textbook with an audio CD. Please note: there is only 1 CD, and not 2. There are reading passages about Chinese culture in Chinese, which I found very useful because when one learns a foreign language, s/he must also learn the culture in which the target language is used (learning a language is not just a task of translating something from one language to another).

Not Nices: It looks like every Chinese character in the book has pinyin on it, and this, for some reasons, annoys me a little bit because it make this textbook full of words. If this book is for intermediate learners of Chinese, we probably do not need pinyin for every word such as "wo (I, me)" "ni (you)" shenme (what)" ... Audio recordings are too slow, too; I edited them using a software programme on my computer, and I played them x2 faster than the original, but they were still slow enough for me to repeat after them without looking at the scripts (perform shadowing). Also this textbook is DEFINITELY NOT for intermediate learners. It would be more acurate to entitle this book "Biginner's Chinese Level 2" or something. If you have mastered the basic grammar rules of Chinese, you will be able to enjoy this book; probably suitable for 2nd semester of Chinese for college students. This book would be for intermediate-beginners.

(For intermediate learners of Chinese, I would probably recommend "Yuandi" published by Department of Chinese, The University of Tokyo. ISBN: 4130821075 without CDs, and ISBN: 4130821156 with 2 CDs. You can get that from Amazon in Japan, not Amazon river, but the bookstore Amazon. Japanese Amazon has a website in English as well, and there isn't much written in Japanese in this textbook; pretty much everything is written in Chinese, but lots of fun readings, enjoyable, juicy!)

But anyways, thank you very much for reading my review until the end.

Please see my review of "Beginner's Chinese with 2 Audio CDs".

"Intermediate Chinese" is even better than "Beginner's Chinese" because the font for the characters is large enough to be easily read. All of the good things said about the first book apply also to this one.

I had some chinese language many years ago and wanted to renew it, and especially to get a handle on spoken chinese, as I can read reasonably well. the dialogues were useful, the grammar lessons and exercises especially good.
I wish there were a third book I could go to from this one.

This book is great material for learning Mandarin. I find the chapters well done, not too long or too short. The topics for each chaper are interesting and the vocabulary very relevant. Exercises and grammatical explanations are very good.

I have recently received this book. Good presentation, good recordings and good vocabulary. Maybe some people think it is kind of basic, but it really helps those focused on listening skill and vocab building. If you want to improve your reading skill, the pinyin subtitles may complicate your way, since it gives you a cheating temptation of reading them instead of the characters.

I recommend. Please publish another one (Intermediate II), following this thematic guidance.

Thank You

I am sure that the author was well-intentioned, but according to my Chinese friends who are on the Mainland, there are numerous errors in the cultural information sections. Also, some of the phrases and usages listed in this book are very uncommon, some were described to me as being flat-out incorrect. I do not know how much of that is publisher/editor error, but the end result is the same.

This is unfortunate, because it could have been an excellent resource, but it does not reflect the language as it is spoken today by educated native speakers in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou (I have friends in all three cities).

I taught an American boy Chinese with this book and found it easy to use.