Customer Reviews

Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)

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Speak Mandarin Chinese For BeginnersThe Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program)Michel Thomas Method Speak Mandarin Chinese Advanced

I am the author of the Michel Thomas courses to learn spoken Mandarin. Innovative approaches to language teaching is one of my passions. So I am always on the lookout for texts and resources to support me in my journey.

I have used most of the Chinese grammars out there. This is far and away the best. The entire series is outstanding. Why? Because it's totally practical without getting stuck in grammatical obscurities. It reflects the actual, contemporary use of the language as it is used by ordinary, educated speakers.

The first half of the book reviews all aspects of the grammar in a user-friendly way. The second half of the volume deals with how to express anything you could wish to say in contemporary Chinese using the patterns of the language as would a native speaker.

Over the time I spent designing cutting edge courses for English ( and now also French) speakers to really learn to speak Mandarin in the least amount of time this book was one of my most valuable resources. I cannot recommend it enough.

What I have found is that I continue to return to Modern Chinese Grammar year after year and am always happily surprised with its simple explanation of potentially complex topics.

There is a recent influx of excellent materials on learning Mandarin Chinese, both conversational and written. This includes audio books and written materials, as well as excellent multimedia works. Computerized instruction is becoming more prominent. One just beginning this subject a number of years ago may have had difficulty finding sufficient instruction on the subject, now that situation may be reversing to where one must instead select from a far larger pool, the most appropriate materials for individual focus.

In most if not all cases, this book is a welcome, perhaps even essential, addition to those instructional materials. The authors are clearly passionate on this subject, and have created a work that is organized, and which spans a wide array of topics expertly. Arguably most beneficial for and targeted to intermediates in the language, this book will also be beneficial for one having only recently started Mandarin Chinese as well.

The first part of this book is 17 chapters in length, and overviews the ubiquitous Pinyin romanization, followed by lessons in the important similarities and differences in word order for typical sentences in Mandarin, in comparison to English. There are a surprising number of similarities, along with significant and noteworthy differences. After this, various parts of speech are detailed, specifically adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, and numerous forms of nouns and verbs. The reason for omitting other parts of speech becomes evident. There is also included in this first part a large chapter on numbers, one that goes into far more detail and explanation of different usages than most books do.

The second part of the book, the 43 remaining chapters of the 60 total in this book, provides a plethora of scenarios and common situations. This includes greetings and introductions, name usage, modern communication including internet and telecommunication, speaking in different tenses, questions and negation, discussing time, transportation and travel phrases, cause and effect and conditionals, guest and host scenarios and etiquette, expressing concerns desires and needs, requesting permission, and invitations regrets apologies and wishing others well, among other topics.

Every one of the nearly 400 pages is filled with practical sentences used in daily discourse, along with new vocabulary, pinyin as well as Mandarin characters, and well thought out explanations of and elaborations upon the examples provided. Common error avoidance and helpful hints for a typical English speaker are provided throughout.

There is a separate workbook available, associated with this one, that quizzes understanding of each of the chapters. Additionally, there are two books published earlier by Schaum's, one by one of the authors (Claudia Ross). Perusing the table of contents of both, it appears that this work is a confluence of the best of both of those earlier texts, and can be considered a new edition of that earlier grammar book.

The look and feel of this book is excellent. The typefaces used and occasional diagrams provided are elegantly done and are a pleasure to read. The paperback edition has a solid and sturdy feel to it, and the thick paper used gives the impression this is meant to be used as a long term reference work. Each chapter is clearly separated by page as well as visually, and is further subdivided and organized into smaller subsections, also made visually prominent within the chapter.

A very highly recommended work, focusing primarily upon intermediate level subject matter, yet presented in such a way that beginners can get an admirable jumpstart from it as well. The grammar rules of the language, along with sentence level word positioning in Mandarin, are presented in meticulous detail. This can easily supplement any of the typical beginning audio/visual or written instructional materials available on speaking conversational Mandarin Chinese.

Like a previous reviewer, I had had the Schaums book earlier and left it in another state, so picked this up to replace it based on the positive reviews, along with the workbook. All in all, I'd have to say I liked the Schaums better because the chapters built on each other and the examples and questions were substantially more intense. This book takes the path of explaining each topic independently. However there's very little in terms of building up to something greater. You see something once, you see one or two example sentences, you do a couple trivial questions in the workbook, and then you never see it again. I found it hard to really remember much (and in general with foreign languages, find it hard to remember much) if there's not constant building, repetition, and review. Some people might like this format, but it wasn't to my liking.

Personally I'd say the New Practical Chinese Reader series is the best, as it has grammar, vocab, and interesting dialogs to help you understand intuitively how the language is really used.

After having used previous Chinese grammar books, such as those from Yip Po-ching, I found this one to offer a better organization of grammar patterns. The book is split into two sections. The first focuses on grammar patterns and the other which focuses on situational aspects of the language. These two approaches works great when learning how best to put together sentences.

The book presents the material in Simplified/Traditional/PinYin. I also went ahead and got the workbook for this text and was also greatly pleased with the exercises presented.

I would follow up your Chinese studies with a character dictionary (focusing on the 2000 most frequently used characters), and a vocabulary book such as those offered by HSK. With these resources you'll likely succeed in your Chinese studies. Oh, and don't forget ChinesePod; it's a great resource for Chinese listening comprehension.

As a American student of Chinese living in Beijing, China I would have to say that this book is absolutely and wonderfully amazing in content, depth and most of all in it's ability to be CLEAR AND UNDERSTANDABLE. Most of the books produced here that I have seen that are for foreigners learning Chinese are unfortunately in my opinion produced by people who are educators and NOT learners of the Chinese language. I say this because most books apparently assume that the learner knows things that they do, BUT THEY USUALLY DO NOT. I say this because as a teacher of English as well, it is apparent that I am guilty of this as well and often over look very very basic grammatical points in my teachings because I "assume" the student will know certain things.

As a student of Chinese I have been constantly frustrated by textbooks supposedly produced for Chinese learning which always do not include basic information and grammatical points making it difficult if not impossible to learn the language. More importantly many of these books do not include English in it's explanations of the grammar increasing the difficulty of learning the language. This book allows novice students such as myself the ability to find the necessary information they need quickly, simply, and clearly without getting lost. It is also a book I can see using for a very long time during more advanced studies of the language.

In studying Chinese I have yet to find a book solely devoted to understanding the basic grammar structure of Chinese. The few ones that I have found are often written ironically in Chinese which makes it doubly difficult to understand the structure of the Chinese language by someone who has no knowledge of the language.

I wish this book was used as a required reference for all learners of Chinese. There is nothing that I have seen (and I have reviewed and used alot of Chinese textbooks) that comes evenly remotely close to the quality, depth, scope, and most importantly usefulness of this book. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN CHINESE.........BUY THIS BOOK !

I just started to learn Chinese a couple of months ago, when I felt the need for a grammar book.

This book uses very simple vocabulary, which I can already understand. The grammar is explained with sample sentences all the time. The sample sentences are 'written' with both simplified and traditional characters.

PartB is the really rich part, where not only additional grammar is presented (past, future, location, etc.), but also common and everyday expressions and situations (phone, agreement, etc.) are also explained.

In my opinion it is very comprehensive, not only on beginner level. The grammar terms are simple - not like an 'official', heavy grammar book, which makes it easy for a beginner, but it is far from shallow for an advanced student either.

I can only recommend it!! Currently I don't think I'll need any other Chinese grammar book in the near future...

If you are studying Chinese then you really need a grammar book as a companion to your other course materials. This will serve as a good reference which can be referred to when needed. The fact that the second half of the book focuses on functional (i.e. situational) grammar makes it easy to find the relevant grammar pattern. I won't go into too many details - you can read that in the review(s) below. I still have some grammar questions that the book doesn't answer but it is the best I have found so far. One area where the book is weak is on directional complements which can be unnatural for the western learner. Good luck on your learning!!

I've had one semester of 'conversational' Mandarin, and started in on some flashcards to learn some characters after the class was over. I was studying the Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar also by Claudia Ross, and I set it down somewhere and lost it. I found this book when I went to order another one.

It is much greater in depth and in scope than Schaum's, but very easy to understand and use. Occasionally vocabulary becomes a problem, but that's a normal part of learning any language. I'm glad I got the more complete book, as I intend to continue my study of Mandarin.

One thing missing that was nice in Schaum's is the plethora of tests, which make for easy self study. I haven't had a chance to get that far yet, but I like the way the book is divided into two major sections: the classic textbook section, and the situational section. The first is as expected going over verbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, etc. The situational section describes language used for various purposes (greetings, talking about past, present, or future events, commanding or permitting, compliments, congratulations and so on). The second part makes it more useful to beginners than a plain textbook.

A very good book - highly recommended.

This book is awesome. Purely awesome. It's easy to use. It's index is lush. Everything's well-organized. It's explanations are clear, concise, and thorough.

It uses Simple AND Traditional Characters, along with Pinyin and English Translations

I will warn you: You probably want a year of Chinese under your belt, maybe a little more! This is a reference book at heart, and it functions best if you've been exposed to Chinese in other formats first. This book is for the people who are learning Chinese by some other means, and need a better Grammar tool.

If you have a question about Chinese Grammar- if you're struggling, knowing that you know all the correct words, and yet baffled as how to put them in the correct order- this book is for you.

I've also used the workbook, and I will highly recommend that as well. You never really know grammar until you use it- and, well... there's your chance to use it!

If you're hesitant about buying it, go find a nearby library that has it. Pour through its glorious pages. Know that you too can understand chinese grammar. And then buy it because the library wont let you check it out for long enough.

/Every/ time I have a question about Chinese grammar, this book has been able to help me. And Chinese is so under-studied in the united states that really you can't find any of this information online- at least not like this. If you buy this book, you will not have wasted your money.

For your info: I'm using this book alongside the New Practical Chinese Readers books. New Practical Chinese Readers are really good about vocab, native language, idiomatic expressions, etc, but the grammar they teach is very scattered and haphazard. You could never possibly locate a grammar rule in that book. This book fills that niche /perfectly/.

Claudia Ross improves and expands the work she did for Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar with a thorough and easy-to-use grammar guide for both beginning and intermediate learners. Chapter titles separate the language into clear and concise entires that are easy to navigate and provide hundreds of example sentences. "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar" is exhaustively cross-indexed by chapter number to help learners distinguish between multiple uses of the same word/character. Overall, an excellent resource for serious students of the language!


Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color