mini-review

The Integrated Chinese textbook series is very colourful. The first ten pages of the first book put some emphasis on understanding and practicing pronunciation. Then, you dive into the lives of five friends living in America and their everyday experiences speaking Chinese.

Each chapter contains two dialogues between the friends and focuses on a specific topic, such as family, hobbies, or school life. The authors have ensured that vocabulary words reflect modern student life, with lots of content relevant to modern-day communication, such as text messaging and communicating on websites. There are language notes that annotate the dialogues, and grammar points are highlighted and numbered to help you identify them once you reach the grammar section of the chapter.

There are also sections for interactive language practice that will train your oral communication skills and additional vocabulary sections for keen learners. The textbook identifies lower frequency words so you can concentrate on more practical Chinese, and after every five lessons, you will review the functional expressions that Chinese speakers often use.

If you want a textbook to guide your studies, Integrated Chinese is well-organized for beginners. However, it is quite expensive compared to another popular textbook, the New Practical Chinese Reader.

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Through the six volumes of this series, the authors reinforce language structure and function, integrating lessons with dialogues and cultural information. Students will follow the lives of nine main characters, initially learning basic sentence patterns through reading their dialogues, and then advancing to more complex material.

The New Practical Chinese Reader does not have as flashy of a textbook design as the Integrated Chinese textbook series. However, it is significantly cheaper and has several other advantages — including having been published by the Beijing Language and Culture University Press. Unlike in the Integrated Chinese textbook series, the focus on character writing extends beyond what is contained in the dialogues. Before attacking more complex characters, you will learn the fundamental rules of Chinese characters and break down character components. There is also a 34-page introduction to pronunciation with drills to reinforce your understanding throughout the early chapters. For the beginner levels, you will notice tone marks indicated above each character so you can get accustomed to proper tone use.

Overall, the New Practical Chinese Reader has a stronger focus on writing and pronunciation than Integrated Chinese, but the grammar explanations may not be as strong. Luckily, Chinese Grammar Wiki can be used to supplement your understanding if you do end up using this textbook.

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Taiwanese language schools have been using the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese series for decades. You may find that the earlier versions use some slightly out-of-date vocabulary words, as they were originally written in the time of CD-ROMs and VCRs. However, the series recently underwent a makeover that seems to have brought the content up to speed with modern technology.

Unlike many textbooks that contain short dialogues that students can use to practice speaking, some of the dialogues in this series extend up to five pages long. However, the idioms, phrases, and content of these dialogues are true to Taiwanese culture and everyday conversation. Listening or reading the text feels more like entering a movie scene than it does reading a university textbook.

Each chapter has an extensive vocabulary section that focuses on new words and words with similar characters. There are additional exercises in the grammar section, speaking activities, comics, and material straight from newspaper articles or magazines. You will also find a section that compiles the grammar and vocabulary words from the chapter into a short essay written both by hand and on the computer.

Overall, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese is a practical resource for anyone learning traditional Chinese characters.

If you purchase these textbooks in Taiwan, they are only about $35 USD. Online, however, the prices vary. Make sure you differentiate between purchasing the full textbook or the accompanying workbook!

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Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar divides into two parts; Part A focuses on the major features of Mandarin grammar and is intended to be a reference guide for forms or structures. Part B shows you how to use the language — sections are organized by the function of the grammar point, such as “expressing additional information” or “expressing speaker attitudes and perspectives.” These two parts cross-reference each other, giving you a broader perspective of the different sentence patterns. Each grammar point is accompanied by both simplified and traditional characters, plus examples that can be applied to modern communication.

The first few sections elaborate on basic concepts, such as pronunciation, two-syllable words, common suffixes, and word-specific tone changes. They briefly explore the Chinese writing system and then dive into structural topics like phrase order and modal verbs. Later sections in Part B become a fun reference for the question “what do I want to express now?” With the accompanying workbook (purchased separately), you can expand your range of self-expression one section at a time.

You may want to get the hard-copy version, as some reviewers have complained that it has not yet been formatted for e-book form. If you’re not ready to invest in a textbook, you can check out Chinese Grammar Wiki for a free guide to Chinese grammar.

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With Hanzi Grids you can create your own Chinese character worksheets to download as PDFs, print, and practice writing. Gone are the days of buying Chinese character books that dedicate the same amount of space to practicing ”了“ as “健康”!

The customization features on this site allow you to change the background guides, headers, row spacing, character size, column spacing, and grid colours. Although the free version is usable on its own, for a one-time fee of about $7 USD, you can also access multiple fonts and automatically convert between simplified and traditional characters.

As long as you have access to a printer, Hanzi Grids is an excellent resource to improve your character writing skills.

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