Chinese for Today: Book One - Student Book

By Zhengcheng Huang

Chinese For Today - Textbook 1' contains 35 lessons in Mandarin preceded by a concise introduction to the speech sounds and tones of modern Chinese. Each of the texts of these lessons consist of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9620742907
• ISBN13: 9789620742903
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Long River Press
• Length: 447 Pages
• Weight: 1.96 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good Intro to Chinese - very good CDs

I admit that I have studied Chinese previously and so am not a complete beginner. I found the text and accompanying CDs to be one of the better text/CD sets available to Chinese learners (of course the competition isn't very strong). Contrary to what two other reviewers mentioned I think the MAJORITY of the language is very basic and geared to the beginner. The book covers basic situations - Chapt 1 - Welcome, Chapt 2 - Introductions, Chapt 3 - Looking for Someone, Chapt 4 - Where are you going, Chapt 8 - What's the date, etc. That said, there is the occasional more advanced word like "acrobatics" etc. that you will probably never use. There are fairly good grammer explanations for each chapter. The CDs are of high sound quality. The speakers use "standard" or "Beijing" pronunciation. The speakers also speak at a natural pace (i.e. beginners will find it to be a bit fast). The book only uses simplified characters (i.e. those that are used in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong or Taiwan. I wish they had included both like many books do. I bought this set in Hong Kong where it seemed to be one of the most popular texts.