Customer Reviews

Read Chinese, Book One: A Beginning Text in the Chinese Character, Expanded Edition (Far Eastern Publications Series) (Bk. 1)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the first book in Wang's series of readers. It teaches 300 frequently used characters in various combinations and reinforces them through repetition. By the end of this book, you will actually remember all the characters (unlike the Practical Chinese Reader series) and you will be able to continue to the more advanced books in the series. There is also a supplementary reader published by Yale titled "The Lady in the Painting" (ISBN: 0887100430). This is a full 90-page story which uses the 300 characters from this book. The other two books in this series also have corresponding readers. If you start here, you will have an excellent foundation in written Chinese with the option of progressing to higher levels of proficiency.

Note: This book uses traditional characters and Yale romanization. Yale romanization is very easy to read if you can already read Pinyin.

Read Chinese Book One is a great place to begin to learn Chinese characters. You must have a basic understanding of the Yale style of romanization and pronounciation of Chinese prior to beginning, but you can learn the grammar and the sentence structure from the introduction. I enjoyed using Read Chinese Book One the first time I read it over fifteen years ago, and I still use it as a refresher course when I want to brush up on my ability to read the Chinese Language.

I just received the book, but in a glance I could know it is written by a master! It really has a phantastic method for the beginners: step by step it mixes " english-helping-words" (pyin yin) with the chinese characters! And slowly, as the new lessons come, it uses less and less pyin yin help. It works
wonderfuly! I am not so "beginner", for I could read the Lady in the Painting, but wanted to reinforce my chinese and pretend to buy the 2nd an 3rd books.Great!

I agree with the previous opinions, this is a good and useful book, easy to follow the texts and it is a very well-built book with the mixed use of Chinese characters and pinyin. Even though it uses the traditional characters, it also shows the simplified ones when they are different, and at the end of the lessons there are some sentences with simplified characters also. For me it was a bit confusing that the author uses Yale romanization because I have studied international Pinyin, but after the first shock I could read the Yale romanization easily. Maybe it is easier for native-English speakers.

I bought this book (and books II and III) in college and have since begun studying anew. The book presents 15 characters a chapter then actually puts them into sentences which are fleshed out with pin yin words for characters yet to be introduced. The structure is great. I supplement book I with the Tuttle vol 1 flashcards and pull out the flashcards which correspond with each Read Chinese chapter. So far they match 99% of the time. I tried to replace this book (it's pretty old) with something newer which only uses simplified characters but was unable to find another beginning character book which is as easy to use and effective. I HIGHLY recommend it.

I concur with the other reviewers. I tried other methods, with little success, before stumbling upon this three volume series from Yale. There is so much varied repetition of characters that it is hard not to learn quickly, and completion of the third volume has taken me to the 1000-character level. Repetition is the key to remembering - it's not much good learning a character only to come across it weeks or months later; with Read Chinese, the same character keeps cropping up on a daily basis, reinforcing retention. I have only two reservations:

i) Although simplified characters are taught, the bulk of passages for reading are in traditional characters. I have limited time, and aim to learn simplified characters only, so to get the most from this series I had to convert many passages from traditional to simplified.

ii) There are no further volumes, and I haven't yet found any comparable resources with engaging repetition for the next 1000 characters.

As the earlier reviewer said: START HERE !

I think it is time to compliment the creators of this wonderful teaching method. I began to study Japanese but was consiistently blocked by the Kanji elements. I purchased untold numbers of books and flash cards without any significant improvement. Then, I discovered these three volumes for the Chinese Kanji and their accessory reading texts and was truly amazed! By the second lesson, I noticed (to my own wonderment) that I was able to read an entire sentence at a glance. I cannot explain how this happens but, assuming you give the exercises the time they require, it simply works. Time but not all that much effort (or even memorizing) is involved and it is rather fun, like working out puzzles. The lessons begin with the limited use of the characters, mostly using the Pinyin (or equivalent ... both are given). As you progress, you see an increase in the use of the Kanji and decreased use of the Pinyin so that you soon discover that you can not only recognize the characters but also are able to pronounce the Chinese (maybe not so well yet) without having actually committed these to memory by rote. Stories are already presented by the end of the second lesson. The dictionary in the back of the first text is excellent (Pinyin to Chinese to English). Basically, you translate sentence after sentence after sentence, giving numerous variations of the same vocabulary repeatedly per lesson so that you cannot help but absorb the concepts. Don't get too involved with exacting translation. Loose or casual translation works better. Each volume is different in its content and vocabulary. Some words of advice: you should invest in the Speak Chinese either before or simultaneously with the first volume as it will aid in the usage of the many particles, etc. that make Chinese a special language unto itself. Otherwise, it makes the going a bit tougher than it has to be. Also invest in the readers as they are indispensable for the practice. These are really great books, tried and true. I highly recommend them ... and THEN you can go on to Japanese!

This reader was not what I thought. Not all the reader is written with characters. The sentences and reader combines romanization and characters as well. I would prefer that the new vocubulary, that it is supossed that you do not know, would be first presented in both, romanization and character, and use only the character in the reader.
Another thing that I do not like is the Yale romanization used in the book. I think pinyin romanization would be much better.

None of the Readings are Translated!

When you read the forward, you find out that the book was created for a quite specific need. It seems that during the War (yes, the War that happened more than sixty years ago) a lot of military people and spies were taught Chinese on the rush -- to save time, they were not taught even the simplist characters. So this book is for students who are totally proficient in Mandarin, fluent speakers that is, all except they don't have any idea what any of the wiggly lines mean.

Well, who besides Spies and Military Liasons from sixty years ago need such a book? Besides if one is already perfectly fluent in SPEAKING Mandarin, then wouldn't reading be simply a matter of substitution -- learn the character, then read the character. Why would they even need a 'reader'. Besides, a book is a 'Reader' only if some translation or explanation is offered, and with this book, that is not the case.

It seems that all the books from Yale University Press are simularly dated and vague in their intent and purpose, begging the question of why anybody would ever want such books... even 60 years ago. One supposes that such books started as coherent visions but were just allowed to fall into the laziest modes of lackluster execution. Yale had something of a monopoly, and so they could dump almost any garbage on the market. But why is it still being sold? Nobody but Yale still uses their stupid ancient phonetic script. Why don't they break down and use Pinyan like everybody else?

The book does have a little grammar section written in English, but when one gets into the actual book, one is provided with drawing of not very many characters with bare bone definitions, and then there comes the Chinese Readings. No Translations! No explanations. It is just ALL chinese. Even if one were to stuggle through it, flipping pages back and forth to attempt a translation, you would never know whether you got it right or not. If it all looked stupid, well, so? Maybe the Chinese was all stupid. Who is to say if the book won't say?

In the back, the appendixes would be good, if they too were not so dated and ugly. Apparently they scratched the characters out on a form using a ball point pen and then sent it to the printer like that. Page after page of pen scratches on cheap paper -- copies of old mineographed forms. This is the Final Copy! What did the draft look like?

If you want a beautiful book for Chinese Characters, then use the William McNaughton and Li Ying "Reading and Writing Chinese". It gives the Traditional Characters but shows the Simplified also. And it is done in the highest standards of modern printing. It doesn't go so far as providing readings, but if it did, they would have had enough sense to include a Translation!

Without a translation they might as well just send you an old newspaper in Chinese and a paperback chinese dictionary, and a note wishing you the best of luck in your 'reading'.

I'll keep "Read Chinese" by Fang-yu Wang as a curio -- the stupidest, ugliest, most useless, and the laziest book I own, and probably one of the finest books published by Yale University Press... which is fair warning regarding all of their other books.