Customer Reviews

Practical Chinese Reader, Book 1: (Traditional Character) Textbook (C & T Asian Language Series)

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

 

 

Pluses: uses traditional characters; lists both pinyin (romanization) and hanzi (chinese characters) for some words. Minuses: teaches you an outdated style of speech; does not include hanzi for a lot of words; linguistic explanations have plenty of errors and are not very revealing; plenty of typos; very poorly printed -- did they use an old Xerox machine or something?; lots of propaganda.

This book is wonderful because it is EXACTLY what I was looking for: a Mandarin Chinese textbook that uses TRADITIONAL characters. It is important to learn the traditional characters because the traditional characters are used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and in older Chinese books published on the mainland.

I find the readings interesting and the grammatical explanations clear and concise. I like the way the readings at the beginning of each chapter include the pinyin transcription underneath the characters for most of the book (at the beginning the pinyin is above the characters).

My only complaint is that there is no vocabulary at the back of the book. However, the vocabulary is included in the separate volume Practical Chinese Reader I: Patterns and Exercises, which I've ordered.

All in all, this is a great course.