A Key to Chinese Speech and Writing, Vol. I (English and Chinese Edition)

I've searched for a Mandarin language textbook for years and this one chosen by my teacher is excellent. It provides both Pinyin and Simplified characters, which other books don't provide, as well as a CD, important for me as I am a visual learner, while learning the Chinese language requires the oral/aural. (I also have a childhood foundation in "forced fed" Cantonese, so the main issue for me is Mandarin pronunciation and reading Pinyin.) The lessons are paced well and I especially like the lay out of new words, the characters and demonstration of how to write the characters, although the arrows on the diagrams could be a bit clearer. The book is on heavy paper and solidly constructed. The CD is good, downloaded into my computer. I do wish it could be played in my car so that I could listen while driving. Also, instead of just reading the dialogues and vocabulary (at a moderate pace), I wish they had left time for the student to repeat each phrase/word. This book is being used with an excellent teacher who is mainly following another book called Integrated Chinese, a series that has a textbook, workbook, CDs and other learning aides, all available separately and much more expensive. The exercises in that book are being used by the teacher in class and the overall effect is that I'm inspired and am learning a lot.

Amazing!

I purchased this to study Chinese Speech, but this is not a beginners book. There are two books before this one. However this was my mistake but it turns out that a friend of mine borrowed it and she LOVED it. It was a great way for her to refresh her memory of Writing and speaking Chinese, so it was not all to bad!The shipping was on time and the book was undamaged just as the description was posted! Thank you!It is very repetitive and can get annoying after a while so I play instrumental music in the background (low volume) and it is a lot better and easier to handle. I do like it and

I bought this book in Beijing along with the 2 cassettes. The fact that it is available on Amazon attests to its universal appeal. I played the cassettes so much, they both broke. This is an excellent resource for anyone learning Mandarin. The lessons are clear, concise and practical. This book and cassettes are a stellar addition for a self-learner's library or anyone in a first year course. I am trying to hunt down the cassettes and even without them the book is so well put together that I find it invaluable.

I lived in China for about 2 years and it was often difficult to find books that taught the Chinese Language for a Western Mindset. A friend found these books break down the language into segments where you learn the most common characters and then how the characters you learn form new words. In the last few years there might be better books that have come out that teach language learning for Mandarin but when I left in 2002, there was nothing I found that took this approach. There are companion Cassettes but I am unaware if they are available here.

Works well in a classroom sitation where you have a native speaker teaching/leading the class. The book was originally written in French, then translated to the English.

useful

The textbook is the product of a collaboration between a European linguist, who is an expert in Mandarin, and a Chinese linguist. I have not come across a more effective book for teaching sinograms and speaking. The book explains the origin of each character (so that they make more sense and are easier to remember) and builds your oral vocabulary by the presentation of conversations and dictations. There are CDs to accompany the book. The book is relatively old (1997). But a cracking textbook is still a cracking textbook whenever it was printed. (And I just so wish that Amazon would pay its taxes).

together with an app on the mobile it works fine

The only thing to criticise- with a broad smile- is that in this book English and german people meet in China and then have their conversations in Chinese (*wink) Obviously, I needed to learn how to say, hi I am from Germany... so its just a joke. This book is made suer easy and perfect for beginners. After I worked myself through it- I actually was able to do and also write small talks.