Reddit reviews New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook 1

I actually enrolled in local university course. I'm old enough to know that unless I have external pressure and schedule I tend to wander off, break the schedule, postpone things and generally grow more lax about things. To avoid that I decided to make it official so that I'd feel some sort of obligation to keep going. I can effectively teach myself things that take few weeks or monhts to master, but this project is much more serious so I need someone else to push me along too.

We're using New Practical Chinese Reader which is not exactly a fast paced textbook, but it seems to be a standard. There's a series of them, all with workbooks and audio.

Come join us over at /r/ChineseLanguage for starters! Look into chinese pod for listening, anki deck for learning vocab. And then try a book like New Practical Chinese Reader as a textbook. But to be honest, without some tutoring, or preferably time in China, it will be a massive uphill struggle at the best of times.

yes I know that Japan borrowed Chinese characters for their writing system but that doesn't make the languages related. just like koreans used the chinese writing system to express their language, and the vietnamese also. however, neither of those languages are related to chinese except that there is a great deal of vocabulary that is borrowed.

that would be like saying that because my friend borrowed my clothes to wear, he is my brother, which isn't true either.

chinese and japanese are from different language families and have evolved independently of each other.

I honestly don't know why you made this thread because you seem to think you know more than you really do. I have been taking chinese for almost two years and am in china RIGHT NOW studying chinese.

it is my opinion that if you actually want to learn chinese and not flex your intellectual penis on reddit you should do it from the standpoint that you don't have any experience with chinese, because in reality you don't.

edit:

also, just so I can feel like I'm being more helpful rather than feel like I'm berating you here is the book I used in "chinese 101"

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Chinese-Reader-Textbook-Vol/dp/7561910401/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262081421&sr=8-2

it has dialogues in chinese characters subtitled with the pinyin. and the vocab lists are the same way. and until you get to an intermediate chinese course all beginning level chinese text books will have pinyin. it is necessary to learning the language.

http://www.chinabooks.com.au/ChinaBooks/search.cfm?UR=14071&search_stage=details&records_to_display=5

THIS is the book they use for entry level courses here at BLCU for people learning Chinese. it is in much the same format as the other book (dialogues in chinese characters subtitled with pinyin).

I think you will find this to be the most common format and also the most logically designed for learning chinese.

no, its xin shiyong hanyu keben， 新实用汉语课本

https://www.amazon.de/Practical-Chinese-Reader-shiyong-hanyu/dp/7561910401

its a good textbooks series for learning, the first volume still has pinyin under the characters and the second one still has tone markers over them , easing you into reading over time.

i recommend getting each together with its workbook, since you get a lot of practice examples in the workbook. I`m currently in book 5 out of 6 but im looking at switching since ive heard that for advanced level theres better textbooks available, im just used to the format by now :)

I bought some great material the other day on Amazon.

[This is the book](
http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chinese-Reader-Textbook/dp/7561910401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334379917&sr=8-1)

And here are the CDs

You'll see that both things are available used for very reasonable prices. It's the best language learning self-teaching system I've seen out there in a long time. It seems to be thorough, and the student is expected to learn and use that knowledge in the exercises - just like a student would with a real elementary school lesson book.

It's a refreshing departure from most language learning materials I've found out there in bookstores and on the net, which are woefully inadequate.

Recommended Textbooks
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Integrated Chinese - This is used in many university classes in the US. The companion CD is definitely recommended. The workbook wont be much use if you don't have someone to check your answers, as the company is pretty strict about not letting out the answer keys.

New Practical Chinese Reader - This is a great alternative to Integrated Chinese. There are also PDFs and mp3s of all materials floating around on the internet if you look.

Character Practice
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Skritter - Seriously awesome. It does have a monthly subscription though.

Oral Practice
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Pimsleur, Assimil, or the FSI course (free). I've only used Pimselur, but I've heard good things about the others. These are good for practicing your tones.

Online Resources
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Chinese-forums

nciku - A Chinese - English dictionary. You can draw out unknown characters, which can be much easier than going by radical like in other dictionaries.

You should also set up Windows (or whatever OS you use) to be able to type in Chinese (usually through pinyin).

Once you're good enough, you can find easy books called "Graded Chinese Readers" that often have a companion CD to help with pronunciation. They're pretty cheap as well if you import them from China.

Good luck, Mandarin is a difficult language, but it's also really fun. It might take a long time to see progress (I still can't read newspapers), but as long as you keep at it you'll probably be happy with your results.

Why do you need this for college? I'm not trying to be mean but most colleges don't care if you know a language unless you're fluent. And I'm not sure how much you mean by "a bit".

The textbooks my Mandarin class in college is using are the New Practical Chinese Reader Series They're pretty cheap as far as textbooks go and you can watch video clips of their conversations on youtube.

Here is a website that has a lot of links for how to learn Chinese. I know not all of the links work, but a couple of them looked pretty good.