Teach Yourself Chinese Complete Course [Paperback]

Elizabeth Scurfield (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0844238546 | ISBN-13: 978-0844238548 | Publication Date: January 11, 1999 | Edition: 1

Here is a complete course in the Chinese language, with graded units of dialogues, culture notes, grammar, and exercises that make it easy to study and then practice what's been learned. Audiocassettes feature dialogue recorded by native speakers.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Elizabeth Scurfield

is a member of the Chinese Department at the University of Westminster, London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (January 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0844238546
• ISBN-13: 978-0844238548
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU WANT TO LEARN CHINESE!!!!!, March 9, 2004

By 

J. Qazi (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teach Yourself Chinese Complete Course (Paperback)

I've read some other complains about how this book "is too tough for beginners," but to me it's totally the wrong attitude to take when learning a language.. i've learned three other languages now, and it's not that i'm good at languages-- i've just found better ways of learning.

For one, you have to get make sure to get ridiculous amounts of exposure to whatever language you are trying to learn. To me, if someone complains that there's too much to learn, well, that's what they signed on for: if you want to learn a whole new language, you should be prepared to be immersed in it beyond belief, and trust that your mind will do what it takes to make sense of your environment. Beginners especially need to kick themselves in the pants, otherwise you are wasting your time. This book does cram a lot of the information into the later chapters (the beginning chapters are basic, actually). When you think about it, it means that you are getting your money's worth.

If a chapter is too much, take a couple more days on it. But the alternative is buying another, easier book that, in the end, cheats you out of your money, because you pay the same / higher price, thinking that "it's more your level" when in fact they just give you <u>less info per page</u>. The trick is allowing yourself access to a lot of information, so that you can attack it at your own pace.

I enrolled at a the "Learn Chinese" course at Zhejiang Da Xue, China's third largest university, but found that the money I had paid (a full semester's worth) would go to waste; the end of the course text book was still just focused on how to say "I will eat food". I expected that after six months at this program, I'd be able to say something a little more complex than that. But it was such a baby course that focused so much on characters, that progression into the meat of the language became a real issue.

This book is for those people who want to speak chinese. Now, I looked all over the place IN CHINA, and I bought many many books. All were either too character focused (thus containing too few pages on how to speak chinese), or "Intensive Speaking" books that were really thin (I suspect because those books were designed for short-stay visitors to China), which frustratingly enough, stopped only a little farther at "I will eat food tomorrow".

This book was a godsend. I had it shipped from the US to China, cause it seemed like exactly what I needed: a book that teaches spoken chinese, finally. I was so impressed with it, I vowed to write Ms. Scurfield a rave review, but I was too busy speaking chinese I never got around to it until now.

Now characters are important, but to me its a more leveraged use of time to focus on speaking while in China, because one can always learn characters with flash cards. It's a completely different game to learn the spoken language, than it is to memorize characters, but all of the other books I encountered often confused the two.

Using her book, I learned Chinese in a little more than TWO MONTHS. Granted, I studied it like 4-5 hours a day for those two months, and I practiced it by talking to a lot of random strangers, but still, that is MUCH more than I can say about the usefulness of those other books.

Ms. Scurfield's book is INCREDIBLY WELL THOUGHT-OUT and ORGANIZED. This book glows with a commitment to teaching the reader chinese, it's in the way it's written and presents its information.

I was living in a dorm building with many other english speakers who were trying to learn chinese, and they too had many books, but I was really the envy of all with my simple pinyin, simplified but effective book, that my friends from England and New Zealand were always asking to look at.

And the price is ridiculously cheap, considering you get all that REAL instruction, and TWO TAPES, which are a must have, because they give you practice hearing how each word should sound, which is so essential to spoken Mandarin.

Of course, the work is on you to speak, and study, but with other books even if you are diligent, they will limit you with their all too academic orientation on characters.

Elizabeth Scurfield rocks, and she should be recieving much more acclaim then she does.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for a complete beginner., November 18, 2002

By 

J. Cabanski "lynnredbug" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teach Yourself Chinese Complete Course (Paperback)

I had this book before I started taking college Chinese and it was too big a bite to chew. Ten credit hours and two trips to China later it excellently serves as a supplementary classroom material. This book is well organized. Chapter one starts out with standard, Hello, How are you? My name is so and so. I come from so and so. Then it progresses to telling more about yourself and your family, ordering food (very important when you travel to China.), making hotel reservation, ... etc. This book is the best overall. That means, there are better books on Chiness reading out there if you are concentrated solely on reading. (Try John DeFrancis's Beginning Chinese Reader) If you want an absolute beginner then try Berlitz's.

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars you can do better, April 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Teach Yourself Chinese Complete Course (Paperback)

When I started purchasing these resources I was an absolute begginner of Chinese. I got on to Amazon.com and ordered practically every well rated resource. This particular one has some good information in it, but for a beginner it goes way too fast. I found the tapes to be useless. FOr the absolute beginner very intent upon learning chinese I would recommed "a modern course in Chinese" THe tapes that come with it are invaluable. But if you just want a good book, then get Beginner's chinese, by Yong Ho. THough as an extra resource it does have allot of good information.