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Title: Integrated Chinese, Level 1, Part 2: Character Workbook (Traditional Character Edition) by Tao-Chung Yao, Yuehua Liu, Nyang-Ping Bi, Yea-Fen Chen, Liangyan Ge, Yaohua Shi, Xiaojun Wang, Jeffrey J. Hayden ISBN: 0-88727-272-X Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Pub. Date: June, 1999 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Cannot stress it enough
Comment: I am currently studying in China right now, and this book as well as the second-year version formed the foundation of my Chinese. I have been studying Chinese for a little more than two years (almost all of which were in the U.S.) and I am now taking university courses at Tsinghua University. I cannot say enough good things about these books especially compared to other books like the Practical Chinese Reader. The only possible shortcoming (and that is if it is one) is that the grammar and phonetic explanations are sometimes unclear if you do not know the terms (although English is our mother tongue, so . . .), but very clear if you are familiar with English grammar. However, these words are very important if you ever study Chinese in China or use things like the Beijing University Press books which only use the Chinese words for these terms to explain grammar. I noticed that one person criticized the lack of English->Chinese glossary, but the implications and connations of words in Chinese are such that you require a Chinese dictionary to really understand them. My teacher constantly warned us about using an English-Chinese dictionary to find the words we were looking for. The first-year level of integrated Chinese gives you enough words and grammatical structures to survive and thrive in China upon first arrival, as well as flexible and reusable words to enable you to handle many situations.
Rating: 5
Summary: Integrated Chinese is fantastic
Comment: I've been studying Chinese for three semesters using the Integrated Chinese series (Level 1, Part 1; Level 1, Part 2; and Level 2), and I'm a BIG fan of these books. I went to Taiwan after learning only 18 chapters' worth of material, and found that the book had -- miraculously -- taught me most of the practical vocabulary I needed to survive. The grammar explanations following each chapter are clear and thorough, and the workbook is an excellent means of reinforcement.
Rating: 4
Summary: A good choice
Comment: This book is quite good. I've studied Japanese for a long time and have gone to great lengths to find a good book for learning it, and it took me about 15 books. I thought that would be the case with Chinese as well, so you can imagine my surprise when the first book I tried actually turned out to be good. This was actually the textbook we used for my class, and although I haven't used many other Chinese textbooks, I would highly recommend this one. There are a number of good points about this book, and a few bad ones:
Pros
1) The vocabulary presented is fairly useful, and the early chapters really do start you off with useful vocabulary. Not like some books where you learn how to say "rainy season" in chapter 1.
2) The accompanying workbook is excellent. The only studying you need to do is the workbook exercises. With languages usually I have to study alot, and do many of the exercises twice, but with this book, I simply do the workbook exercises once and I really feel like I know the material.
3) Although this book romanizes all dialogs, the later books do not. This is a _good_ thing. Believe me, after learning 2,000 Japanese words from a book that puts the phoenetic transcriptions everywhere, you'll be glad to put in the extra effort to simply learn how to read and write the characters early on. I can't stress this enough. Although it may seem hard at first to memorize and learn how to write 30 or 40 characters for each chapter, you will definitely be glad you did. Imagine getting to the point where you know 1,500 words and then deciding hey, I sure wish I knew how to read and write.
Cons
1) The grammar explanations aren't terribly descriptive. It turns out that for much of the grammar they are teaching there's many variants of the same pattern, which they don't teach. So you're stuck if somebody switches around the word order on you. Furthermore, they teach by pattern rather than by grammar. It's great to know "this is the pattern to use when you want to say this", but it's also nice to know that the function of a certain word is to turn an adjective into an adverb, which you won't get from this book.
2) Sometimes the vocabulary can be presented in a weird order. For example, they will teach you the word fast in one chapter, and slow in another chapter. Eat in one chapter, drink in another chapter. Similar words should be grouped. This is of course, what they try to do but it could be done a little better.
3) The glossary in the back is very annoying. There is simply no English->Chinese glossary. Good luck figuring out how to say a certain word in Chinese, because you'll have to scan through _every_ single word in the Chinese->English portion of the glossary until you find it, and you'll probably accidentally skip over it anyway.
Overall though this is a solid book, and I would recommend it. Note that _the_ best book on Chinese is Beginner's Chinese, by Yong Ho. It is simply the best. Buy it. It's insanely cheap, and unbelievably well written.
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Title: Integrated Chinese, Level 1, Part 1: Textbook (Simplified Character Edition) by Daozhong Yao, Ted Yao ISBN: 0887272630 Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Integrated Chinese, Level 1, Part 1: Character Workbook (Simplified Character Edition) by Daozhong Yao, Ted Yao ISBN: 0887272673 Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Integrated Chinese, Level 1, Part 1: Workbook (Simplified Character Edition) by Daozhong Yao, Ted Yao ISBN: 0887272657 Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Integrated Chinese, Level 2: Textbook by Daozhong Yao, Ted Yao ISBN: 0887272754 Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Beginner's Chinese by Yong Ho ISBN: 078180566X Publisher: Hippocrene Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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