Customer Reviews

Read and Speak Chinese for Beginners

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I bought this book recently and have been studying it and listening to the cd for several days.
The cd really helps with pronunciation.
The only downside is that they don't use the accent marks in the book.

I am engaged to an Asian man and decided to learn Chinese. This book is a great way to start.

Each lesson begins with vocabulary: you hear the English equivalent first, then its Chinese counterpart while looking at the pinyin and symbol in the book. (For example: you hear "table," then "zhuo-zi" while you look at the written pin-yin and symbol.) You can cover the pinyin and try to remember/pronounce the chinese word for the English prompt.

Then, usually, a couple recorded,interactive, and simple conversations ensue which incorporate the recently learned vocabulary. And, no chapter is complete without symbol exercises (fill-in-the-blank, or describe the picture). Sometimes, there are games that you can cut out to reinforce your learning.

I've found this book & CD quite helpful and productive. For instance, last night in one of the exercises, I was using newly learned desciption words to describe an alien (ta you hen da de du-zi), and my fiance -- who was turned away from me and working on the computer -- laughed and asked "Who has a big stomach?" This reassured me that my developing skills corrolate into understandable language.

Chinese is less intimidating, and actually a bit fun, with Read & Speak. In the whole scheme of language learning, its place is to introduce foreign speakers to the basics of Chinese. Hopefully, Cheng Ma has/will create other books in this series so that I can continue with this teaching style as my language advances.

This first edition of Read and Speak Chinese uses an engaging interactive format. Pictures, "staged" settings, and the CD all encourage using the vocabulary in various contexts. But the actual execution keeps this book from being excellent. There are too many errors and omissions. First, the book should mark the tones on each word. Frequently, words and phrases are introduced on the CD which aren't explained in the book. Some of words are not accurately translated from the Chinese into English. For instance, "ting che chang" is translated as "park". Actually, it's "parking lot". On track #21 of the CD, the speaker asks the student to translate the sentence, "The magazine is behind the TV." After a pause, the speaker then gives the Chinese translation, but instead of giving the Chinese for TV, he gives the Chinese for "computer". Finally, more time should be given to the beginning student to respond to the speaker's instructions.

Mandarin is a tonal language. This book does not show any tone marks on the pinyin romanization (the english pronounciation key to Chinese characters). That's the major downside. You won't be able to tell the difference in written or spoken pinyin between several, several words.
Other than that, it's basically a fun worksheet book full of useful vocabulary in pinyin (sans tones) and with characters. You won't learn how to draw the characters (no stroke orders), but obviously "Read and Speak" does not include "write". My Mandarin teacher uses this book and tells us what tones to write in, and shows us the stroke order on a board. The CD is quite helpful too, and you can pick-up the general sound of the word from that.
My native-Chinese teacher does find errors here and there, such as apparently "mouse" is not really composed of "little" and "rat" like it tells you; that just means a small-sized or a young rat. Then again, I've never found a book that doesn't have errors... I think the key is learning with a Chinese friend at hand to make sure you're not learning wrong!

The layout of this book is well-done. There is a clear introduction to the vocabulary, clear grammar explanations and enjoyable activities and exercises to reinforce what you have learned. Had all aspects of this book been equal I would have given it four or even five stars. What lowers the rating?

1) No tone marks!- It is a book written supposedly for beginners, which would be me. There are no tone marks whatsoever in this book...at all! There are times when the speakers speak too fast or a word is not clear and tone marks would have been invaluable in knowing how to pronounce a word. In the introduction they explain that they don't want to confuse students or make it too difficult by burdening them with tone marks. They don't have to worry about mispronouncing the tones since people will understand them in context. That would be like creating a book for learning English, leaving out most of the vowels and leaving it to the person learning to figure out what the vowels are by listening to the CD. I found myself hitting the dictionary a lot and using the free online dictionary at [...] to see the tone marks and clarify the pronunciation.

2) New phrases and words used in exercises that never appear in the lessons or if they do , only at the very end. For example, in lesson one as you are practicing saying hello and your name, during a CD exercise the expression "Hen gao xing jian dao ni" appears. I had no idea what they were saying as it was never mentioned in the lesson. In the very last chapter they introduce this expression as "nice to meet you". In Chinese they use a different word for counting the number 2 (liang3) with objects as opposed to the number two used in math (èr). In an early exercise , the word liang appears as a written character in an exercise and is never introduced until the end of the book. Other words appear in exercises that are never defined anywhere, for example in the chapter covering prepositions exercises contain the word for "near" which was never given in the book even though ones such as "next to" and "in front of" were. This was a frustration I dealt with in every chapter. Each chapter had words I never learned in either the written exercises or the audio ones (sometimes both). This may not seem like such a big deal if it is only a few words in each chapter but if it causes you to miss understanding parts of exercises it can be very frustrating.

3) Some words seem to be just...wrong. As someone else mentioned they define what apparently is the word for parking lot (tíngch'ch'ng) as park. There were only a couple of others but still, this is an oversight that should have been taken care of during editing.

Had it not been for online dictionaries and the ability to ask questions online at language sites I would have become too frustrated to see this book all the way through. With my questions answered, however, I was able to enjoy the exercises the book and CD contain.
There are written questions and answers, matching exercises, word searches, interactive audio exercises with prompts etc. The exercises themselves are well-done and only marred by the fact that they keep putting in vocabulary that you have never seen in the lesson.

This is a good example of not being able to "judge a book by it's cover". This book is not worth buying.

You will never learn to speak anything understandable from this book as it does not incorporate tone, "Chinese" is a "tonal language".

This book in total, presents 12 verbs, laughable really, but does not have "take, need or want".

page 5 has the most stupid and biggest lie in all of the Chinese learning books that I have.

"Pinyin Tip:...It can be written with accents above to show the tones, but most dictionaries do not show these accents and there is no real substitute for listening to a native speaker."

I have over 30 books on learning Chinese and I have never seen a statement like this. I have 6 dictionaries and they all have accented Pinyin. In fact, "Pinyin" includes the accents. There is no such thing as "unaccented Pinyin". Hence this book is lacking one of the most critical components to learning spoken Chinese.

Another huge oversite,

"Pinyin Tip: In Chinese Pinyin, zh is pronounced in a similar manner to "dr", as in drove."

I have never seen this or heard this, I am living in China for 3 1/2 years and in practice and in all my books it is pronounced "dj", as in "judge".

Then,

"Note that vowels are pronounced separately in Chinese. So Xue-Xiao (school) should be pronounced "shoo-e shee-a-o?????".

uh, since when? In standard Mandarin "-ue" is pronounced "eww-uh"

There are two pages that cover "Chinese script". The book refers to this as the "reference section"

"This reference section gives an overview of the Chinese script and pronunciation.

There is then not one example of a stroke or stroke order example. There is not mention or example of a Kangxi Radical.

Under the Title of "Pinyin", there are 5 lines in the entire chapter, that is it!!! They give 4 examples of consonant pronunciation and get one very wrong.

Under the Chapter "Pronunciation and Tones", there is 2/3rds of a page on this. They give two Pinyin words for examples for the entire chapter. There is not one "initial" one "Final" or any rules of pronunciation.

There is one strange example of a ?word combination?.

This entire section of the book is summed up with this final sentence.

"Note that vowels are pronounced separately in Chinese. So Xue-Xiao (school) should be pronounced "shoo-e shee-a-o".

For those of you who know some Pinyin and Mandarin,, you will have a good laugh. With no rules of pronunciation given in this
book, you cannot with the wildest imagination consider this correct.

In the 91 pages of this book, there is very little content. If you take away the pretty headers adn footers, monster titles, silly pictures, and grade 6 level childish game drills. You are left with about two hours of actual learning. In total, the book introduces only 12 verbs. This is laughable.

This book is a piece of crap. Another example of a book cover designed specifically for internet marketing. The subtitle;

"The Easiest Way to Learn to Communicate Right Away!"


The flashcards that you must cut out, are the size of postage stamps. the "entertaining games" are moronic. The CD uses words not in the book and is horribly indexed.

Oddly, of my huge collection of Chinese language books, there are a disproportionate number written by Chinese authors that are garbage. My apologies to Yong Ho and his great book.

Don't buy this book, it is a waste of money.