Maybe intermediate-Biginner Chinese?, February 21, 2006
　

The title of this book is a little bit misleading because it is not really an intermediate level book, and for that reason, I am a bit crestfallen, although it looks interesting.

Each chapter consists of the following:
1- dialogues
2- reading in Chinese, usually 5 to 15 sentences.
3- vocabulary list
4- linguistic explanation of focused materials
5- exercises

Nices: It has many more pictures than many other language textbooks would (even though they should), and I think this is very nice; it makes the learning more vivid. Linguistic explanations look very explicit. Some of the supplementary activities look interesting, too. The price is quite reasonable for a textbook with an audio CD. Please note: there is only 1 CD, and not 2. There are reading passages about Chinese culture in Chinese, which I found very useful because when one learns a foreign language, s/he must also learn the culture in which the target language is used (learning a language is not just a task of translating something from one language to another).

Not Nices: It looks like every Chinese character in the book has pinyin on it, and this, for some reasons, annoys me a little bit because it make this textbook full of words. If this book is for intermediate learners of Chinese, we probably do not need pinyin for every word such as "wo (I, me)" "ni (you)" shenme (what)" ... Audio recordings are too slow, too; I edited them using a software programme on my computer, and I played them x2 faster than the original, but they were still slow enough for me to repeat after them without looking at the scripts (perform shadowing). Also this textbook is DEFINITELY NOT for intermediate learners. It would be more acurate to entitle this book "Biginner's Chinese Level 2" or something. If you have mastered the basic grammar rules of Chinese, you will be able to enjoy this book; probably suitable for 2nd semester of Chinese for college students. This book would be for intermediate-beginners.

(For intermediate learners of Chinese, I would probably recommend "Yuandi" published by Department of Chinese, The University of Tokyo. ISBN: 4130821075 without CDs, and ISBN: 4130821156 with 2 CDs. You can get that from Amazon in Japan, not Amazon river, but the bookstore Amazon. Japanese Amazon has a website in English as well, and there isn't much written in Japanese in this textbook; pretty much everything is written in Chinese, but lots of fun readings, enjoyable, juicy!)

But anyways, thank you very much for reading my review until the end.

Another winning text by Yong Ho, June 5, 2005
　

Please see my review of "Beginner's Chinese with 2 Audio CDs".

"Intermediate Chinese" is even better than "Beginner's Chinese" because the font for the characters is large enough to be easily read. All of the good things said about the first book apply also to this one.