Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique resource, November 24, 1999
When I first began to learn Mandarin, Fred Fang-yu Wang's books got me going quicker than I would have ever expected. They weren't the newest materials, but they were by far the most effective.One of the last major hurdles for me was learning the Chinese cursive script. It's an essential skill, but I simply couldn't find any materials on it. I had checked with many teachers, and none could even suggest to me how to get started. So when I stumbled across Mr. Wang's book on exactly this topic, I bought it immediately. It's every bit as effective as his other works, and is material that I simply have not seen anywhere else.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Principles of cursive Chinese writing for English speakers, October 27, 1998
As far as I know, this is the only book that teaches English-speaking students to read cursive Chinese writing. I found it extremely effective when I first studied it back in 1965, and was very happy to find it still available here. (And I did buy a new copy.)Unlike calligraphy manuals, it concentrates on basic principles and shows many alternative examples. It is very well organized, and most students will also be able to use it to learn to write cursive Chinese characters. The examples are practical, rather than arty, focussing mostly on pen styles. Although it is based on the 300 characters of F. Wang's _Read Chinese_, which is no longer commonly used, these are likely to be among the first characters taught in any beginning Chinese course, and all of them are essential characters. I believe that students of Japanese will also find this text useful, since the principles are the same as those used by Japanese writers. (I know of no equivalent text for teaching cursive Japanese writing to English speakers.)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent way to begin learning cursive, May 24, 2008
This new edition is a reprint of a 1958 book originally published by Far Eastern Publications. It's organized very well, and assumes that you know only about 300 bookprint (kai shu) characters! It uses these 300 characters, starting with the most basic, moving to more complex strokes to teach you about cursive principles in writing the different components of characters. They give several variations in form for each character and also give you practice sentences to read.
The one drawback is that, being written in 1958, the characters are traditional (however 80% of the time, the cursive form derives from what we now called simplified characters). Also, ALL the chinese is handwritten, whether cursive or 'bookprint' (reminds you to be thankful for wonders of modern desktop computing and publishing!).
It even has a modest cursive stroke index so you can look up that squiggle that you have no idea how to decipher!
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