Beginner's Chinese (Hippocrene Beginner's Series) Review

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Beginner's Chinese (Hippocrene Beginner's Series) ReviewIf you are serious about learning Chinese, this book and its sequel "Intermediate Chinese" by Yong Ho, head of the Chinese program at the United Nations, are just about ideal. They are by no means phrase books, but form a basis for a thorough but practical study of Chinese. I came to the study of Chinese some twenty years ago because my work took me to China. I have since been six times for visits of two to four weeks, but have never become really proficient. I have bought a number of texts and worked through carefully what was previously the best of them, "Practical Chinese Readers I." I therefore started Ho's second volume, but I found his explanations so wonderfully clear that I went back to read his "Beginner's Chinese".
These books are a work of art and science and are incomprably better than anything I have previously found. Ho has put his Ph.D. in linguistics to good use. He has listened to his English-speaking students and understood their problems. He has also thought about his native language and culture and come to a deep understanding of it which he is able to convey in clear concepts and good English. His exercises show how well he understands the problems of his students. There are a number of exercises which ask "What is wrong with this?" followed by Chinese sentences that make exactly the mistakes I tend to make.
Each book has ten lessons centered on very practical situations, such as getting something to eat. The new speech patterns and vocabulary of each lesson are carefully introduced, then applied applied in practical conversations that provide just the right amount of drill and repetition. They, like nearly all Chinese in the book, are given in simplified characters, pinyin (the phonetic script), and idiomatic English translation. Besides the conversations, there is expository text for practice in reading using the characters and words that have been introduced in the conversations. The "Cultural Insight" passages are original and sometimes stunningly perceptive. There are answer keys to the exercises given in both pinyin and characters.
By all means get the editions with the CD. The recordings are clear though not dramatic in the sense that they do not give the illusion that you are listening to a live conversation.
These books use simplified characters only. They do not show how to write the characters. That is not a big problem, for there are several good books that teach only that. Like all Chinese textbooks of my acquaintance, these say nothing about how to find characters in a dictionary. The best advice on that subject is to find the "Field Guide to Chinese Characters" on the Internet.Beginner's Chinese (Hippocrene Beginner's Series) OverviewThis title includes a book and 2 CDs. This Hippocrene best-seller has been redesigned and updated, making learning to speak, read, and write Mandarin Chinese easier than ever! Spoken by over 850 million people world-wide, Mandarin Chinese is the standard dialect for business and trade in China, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and the world's most widely spoken language. Mandarin is also a useful study tool for students of the Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tibetan languages, all of which have strong cultural roots in Chinese. New features in this edition include the following: ten practical lessons with dialogues, vocabulary, and exercises; new audio CDs featuring professional actors from Beijing; updated cultural and language notes; an attractive, easy-to-read presentation of the Chinese characters; additional exercises for teaching stroke order and writing skills; an index providing traditional character equivalents; and, new technology sections on how to read and write Chinese characters on a computer.

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