Concise and practical, February 18, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
What really captivated me about this book is the simple explanations of some of the nuances of the Chinese language such as yao...le or kuai...le (about to...). Very important too are the examples on the various uses of 'le'. This is by no means exhaustive, but done in a non-complicated manner and besides, any help on the usage of 'le' is helpful as this is quite a hard concept to master in Chinese.

Each chapter starts off with some dialog (Chinese characters, pinyin, no English translations) and then a reading passage. Afterwards, new words and concepts are explained, where the finer points of the language are explained. Although there are no English translations alongside the initial text in the dialogs, I think this format is ok for an intermediate text as it gives the reader an opportunity to do some self evaluation. The translations are at the end of each chapter.

Here's another example of clarifying grammatical concepts. When I previously leared "ni putonghua shuo de hen hao (your Chinese is very good)" I never understood the grammatical construct of it. The author explains that it is a shortened form of "ni shuo putonghua shuode hen hao," explains the construct and explains why and how it is shortened. He cleared up in 5 minutes what I was confused about for months.

Alas, I have only read Chapter 1 and am now reading Chapter 2. I think I will enjoy this text and will also buy his "Beginner's Chinese" which is the prequel to this book.

One step closer to being liuli (fluent).