43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Think twice before buying workbooks, December 26, 2005
This review is from: New Practical Chinese Reader: Workbook, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
I recently purchased textbook 1, textbook 1 audio CDs, and workbook 1 for this series. Although the quality of the textbook lessons seems excellent, and the audio CDs for the textbook are very clear, I wish I had not purchased the workbook.
The workbook has various exercises such as matching the pinyin to the sound, matching the characters to the pinyin, writing the characters, completing sentences, and such like. The first puzzlement came when I listened to the audio CDs I bought with the textbook; there is nothing on them that resembles the "match the pinyin to the sound" exercises. The second puzzlement came when I tried to find the answer key in the workbook. After more research on Amazon and elsewhere, I was able to piece together what you would need to make a complete set just for book one:
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1, $19.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1 Audio CDs, $29.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1, $12.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Audio CDs, $16.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Instructor's Manual, $14.95 (Amazon has it, but it's hard to find)
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Instructor's Manual Audio Tape, $9.95 (Amazon doesn't have this; I found it at www.chinabooks.com)
I have nothing negative to say about the quality of the lessons, but I wish I had known how many things I needed to buy to make the workbook usable.
It would be good if Amazon would disclose this somewhere in its editorial descriptions of the books.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't buy the workbook, October 21, 2008
This review is from: New Practical Chinese Reader: Workbook, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
The PCR textbooks are excellent when used in conjunction with a good high school or college curriculum. However, the accompanying workbook for Volume One is too expensive and not very useful.
The listening and speaking exercises at the beginning of each lesson are too brief, and they require the purchase of a CD set which is also overpriced for the length and quality of the audio. Anyone who's learned a foreign language knows that listening practice requires much more than a few minutes of taped conversation or vocabulary drills.
The audio exercises are followed by writing exercises, which you can do from any number of online sites or by simply practicing the new vocabulary from the main textbook on a sheet of paper. The workbook exercises are just an add-on to thicken up the book, and they add little to improving your Chinese.
Depending on the chapter, the reading and writing exercises are followed by sentence completion, true-false questions, translation, or short essay summaries. The most useful exercises, translation/reading a passage/writing a summary, can be done using the main textbook. The others are just filler.
The original PCR series was created as a cheap curriculum for intensive or college level Chinese classes. They've evolved into a complete marketing package that has improved the quality of the basic instructional texts but has also added on needless study aids that you can get elsewhere, that you can augment with classroom practice, or that you don't need at all.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Used for my evening class, December 3, 2010
This review is from: New Practical Chinese Reader: Workbook, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
OK for a class setting. Doesn't get into essential stuff like counting, travel type conversations like 'Where is the bathroom?', 'Take me to the airport.' etc. Emphasis on long-term learning. Used by many higher ed institutions though. CD recording is good and helpful.
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