Practical Chinese Reader, IV [Paperback]

Beijing Language Institute (Editor) (Author), Beijing Language Institute (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1987

Volumes 3 and 4 are intended for intermediate level Chinese study, introducing 2000 more characters in 30 lessons. Topics include history, education, sports, newspapers, marriage and family life, and more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 381 pages
• Publisher: The Commercial Press; First edition. edition (August 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 7100000912
• ISBN-13: 978-7100000918
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,469,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars wonderful for self study, May 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Practical Chinese Reader, IV (Paperback)

This book is unique among the other chinese learning books I've seen in that the stories are written without pinyin. This forced me to actually read the characters, instead of just using the pinyin as a crutch. The text is also reasonably interesting. The only problem I have with this book is that the vocab lists for a single lesson are really long (more than 70 words per lesson) Otherwise, it's a great book. (P.S. Canada rules!)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A big leap., June 16, 2003

By 

"sjj17" (York United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Chinese Reader, IV (Paperback)

Having studied PCR 1, 2 and 3 I found that there was a large leap up to PCR 4. The main problem being that all of the grammar explanations are in Chinese with no English translation, this can make it rather hard to get the gist of some of the examples. Another problem is the HUGE vocabulary lists, for the first lessons alone there are 72 new vocab words and 26 new words for the grammar notes. This all makes it rather hard to get through the text and understand it as the density of new words is rather high. Having said that the stories are varied and interesting as they introduce Chinese history and culture.

The layout of the textbook is text, vocab, grammar then exercises for each chapter, of which there are fifteen. At the end of every five chapters there is a set of more difficult exercises which review the last five chapters. The exercises are set at a good level to test what has been done and consolidate well. The criticism I would have here is the instructions for the exercises being in Chinese (and very brief) sometimes sends me looking for a Chinese friend to explain to me exactly what is wanted, perhaps if the explanations were a little more substantial it might make life easier.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grammatical explanations are EXCELLENT, October 14, 2004

By 

reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Chinese Reader, IV (Paperback)

Although this book is well into its 17th birthday (the first printing was in 1987), and some of the content are out of date and no longer represent modern China, I have to give this book the credit it deserves for the excellent grammatical explanations it contains. For example, on page 207, the differences in usage between xin4ren4 and xiang1xin4 are explained. If you look up the two words in a Chinese-English dictionary, the definition of the two words are more or less the same, meaning "to trust, to believe, to have faith in, to have confidence in," but does this mean that the two words are completely interchangeable? The answer is no, and on page 207, the 3 differences between the two words are thoroughly explained with sample sentences to further illustrate the explanation. And that is really the strong point of this book, for on the previous page (206), the usage of the word suo3 is also thoroughly explained and illustrated with sample sentences, and the explanations in this book are far more superior to anything contained in the popular textbook Taiwan Today (0887273424); in fact, Taiwan Today's explanation of suo3 is completely useless and not helpful at all in helping the student understand this important structure. Because of this, I would definitively recommend this book for those in the 5-6 semester of college-level Chinese. Students in 4 semester should try volumn 3 (7100000904).

Note: the grammatical explanations are written completely in Chinese, but the book does give the English equivalent to the linguistic jargon (noun, verb, resultative complement, etc.) in the back of the book, so the student should be able to understand the text. Most of the book is in Chinese, so the reader should be sure that s/he has a good grasp of foundational Chinese before venturing into this book.