Decent for very beginners, July 5, 2005
　

I liked this book because it was inexpensive and had provided flashcards at the back of the book. It helps with building comfortableness with hanzi, and can be used to build very basic levels of pronunciation.

The book, however, uses a unique romanization system (it's definitely not the Hanyu pinyin the PRC uses), and does not indicate what tone the words should be pronounced with. Its justification is that "Chinese will understand by context," but without teaching any grammar, I don't see how context can be established.

I'd say it's worth the $9, but you might also want to get a dictionary so you can learn the tones that go with it.

My seven year old son and I began learning Chinese together only three weeks ago, and we started with this book. It was a great help in that regard, and we got help with the pronunciation from on-line resources. The flash cards and the test at the end assisted both of us in trying to remember the Chinese words. I would definitely recommend this book to those who are beginning to learn Chinese but have chosen to teach themselves.

A little funky romanization., April 17, 2002
　

Sadly, I cannot give this book a nice review.

Jane Wightwick et al produce some excellent Arabic instruction books, but this simple chinese vocab book seems to have fallen through the cracks.

It does little to provide more than rote memerization of the characters, but really falls short on the romanization. Not only is pining not used or mentioned, the entire notion of Chinese being a tonal language isn't even mentioned! So you get words like "ya-ds" or "ger-bou" and thats all you get. Which is useless without tonal information.

It may be worth the low price to use the flash cards alone, but that's about all.