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Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition)
 
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Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition) [Paperback]

Madeline K. Spring (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Price: $44.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
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Book Description

June 1, 2002 0887273653 978-0887273650
Listening comprehension is a vital part of language learning--but one that is frequently under-emphasized in Chinese textbooks except at the advanced level. To help fill that gap for beginning and intermediate students, here is Making Connections. It offers students an early start to develop strategies that will improve their listening comprehension.

The dialogues in the recordings are all natural and unrehearsed conversations by native Mandarin Chinese speakers; each dialogue has extensive written exercises that guide students through the conversation, and focus on particular aspects of the language that surfaced in the dialogue.

While this audio-and-book set is suitable for users of all first- and second-year textbooks, it will be especially helpful to users of the bestselling Integrated Chinese series. This is because in Lessons 1-23, Making Connections offers listening comprehension material that corresponds to the topics that are covered in Lessons 1-23 of Integrated Chinese ("Greetings," "Family," "Dates and Time," and so on).

The second part, starting with Lessons 24 through 46, offers topics that are varied and situational. Since they are arranged in order of difficulty level, these lessons can be used totally independently or concurrently with Lessons 1-23. As the conversations and exercises become increasingly challenging, intermediate-level students will be able to strengthen their listening abilities dramatically.

Whether it's used alone, with the Integrated Chinese series, or with other textbooks, Making Connections is the ideal resource for improving listening comprehension for beginning and intermediate students.

Simplified or traditional characters, with pinyin and English


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Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition) + Integrated Chinese: Level 2, Part 1 (Simplified and Traditional Character) Workbook (Chinese Edition) + Integrated Chinese: Level 2, Part 1 (Simplified and Traditional Character) Textbook (Chinese Edition)
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Product Details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Cheng & Tsui (June 1, 2002)
  • Language: Chinese
  • ISBN-10: 0887273653
  • ISBN-13: 978-0887273650
  • Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,395,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars nice try, November 25, 2004
By 
B. Polk (Beijing China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
This book could have been a great help to Chinese language students. However, the author took the easy way out by providing conversational Chinese on CDs with no text in Chinese, pin yin, or English translation.

The Chinese dialogue is done in a normal (fast to the non-Chinese ear) speed with many words merged together which makes it difficult for a student to distinguish which word and tone is being spoken.

The author could have included the dialogue in Chinese and pin yin, with an English translation at the back of the book. This would give the student the opportunity to check his understanding when working alone.

The author admits that lacking the above helpful aids may be "frustrating." What an understatement.

I eventually had a Chinese friend transcribe the conversationsal dialogue into Chinese. From this, I was able to get a clear understanding of the CDs. For those who do not have this option, the CDs without corresponding text is not very helpful.

Either laziness, poor judgement, or lack of money prevented this text and CDs from being a better tool for learning Chinese.

Unless one's aural Chinese is very good, you can skip this text and CD. A better buy is the "Integrated Chinese" and CDs by Yuehua Liu and Tao-chung Yao from www.cheng-tsui.com.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent - buy it!, March 18, 2007
By 
This review is from: Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
This book's purpose is to improve listening comprehension at an early level rather than waiting until later, and it fulfills that purpose nicely. The dialogues are enjoyable to listen to, and are at a normal speaking rate without being too fast or using too large a vocabulary. The text is used to test listening comprehension. Basically, this is how Chinese is really spoken, and if you want to advance to the next level you would do well to buy this book/cd package.

If the author had provided transcripts, it would have been too easy to cheat, and you wouldn't really gain, because of course you can easily follow along if the words are right in front of you right? And in that case, this book would be like many others already out there and really add nothing new to the genre. The dialogues weren't left out due to laziness, after all this is a 300-page book already.

I found this to be a great book and the dialogues really are not that difficult, and provide a nice challenge for the level. Glad I bought it.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Underrated Resource for Beginning and Intermediate Level Students, September 10, 2008
By 
D. Millar (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Making Connections: Enhance Your Listening Comprehension in Chinese (Traditional Character Edition) (Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
It's unfortunate that there are only two (now three) reviews for this book/CD set, because it really does fill a much needed gap in resources for beginning and intermediate level students. I consider myself an low-intermediate level student; I lived in Taiwan and China but not long enough to really gain "fluency." The thing is, normal people in China don't talk like your textbook; in fact, there is much more of a spontaneous flow to conversations including pauses, affirmations, comprehension checks and etc. I do sympathize with the person who wanted a text version of the listening, but think of it this way: this much more accurately reflects the actual experience of speaking and listening in China-- except you get the option of listening to it again!

Highly recommended. It would be nice to see a text version put out over the internet, though.
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