| 2 of 6 people found the following review
helpful:
Impractical Chinese Reader, October 4, 2004
By lesson three, you know how to say the following:
Hello, how are you?
I'm well, and you?
I'm also well.
Are you busy?
No, I'm not busy.
How are your older and younger brothers?
They are both fine.
I think the first lesson was fine, but it went downhill from there. Why
learn about older and younger brothers in the third lesson, but not about
older sisters until the 13th? (And as far as I can tell, you never learn
about younger sisters... guess sisters just aren't important.) The pinyin
system helps with pronunciation, but I would like to know how to write
"China" (Zhongguo) fairly early on in a Chinese textbook (they write it in
pinyin until around lesson 13, even though it's very simple to write in
Chinese characters, especially when we know "guo" from lesson 6.) The
organization in this textbook makes no sense. Also, as the other reviewer
mentioned, it uses traditional Chinese characters. While some places still
use traditional Chinese (Hong Kong and Taiwan, for example), most of China
uses simplified characters. So, this is only useful in a few select areas
of the world.
Oh, and I still don't know how to say "goodbye" after being in Chinese
class for five weeks and having gone through six lessons. My teacher
relies heavily on this book, and I can't even hold a conversation. The
"Practical Chinese Reader" is about as impractical as it gets. |
based on 2 reviews.