Colloquial Chinese: The Complete Course for Beginners

It would be hard to imagine a beginning textbook which could set a novice learner of Mandarin more at ease. From the sections on pronunciation that start out this book, on to the carefully crafted dialogues and well-explained grammar, a student will never feel overwhelmed by the aspects of Chinese that are unfamiliar to a non-native speaker (nearly all of them, in other words). Unlike many other books in the Routledge Colloquial series, almost nothing is used in the lessons that is not clearly elucidated right then and there- Even in early lessons, where the occasional resultative compound ('kanshangqu', which idiomatically means 'it seems') there are no lurking surprises or unsolved mysteries left to plague the student in future lessons. Vocabulary is very useful and everyday, basic principles of writing Chinese characters are demonstrated very clearly (although handwritten examples would have been nice as well as printed forms) and best of all, there is a Book 2 to go on to- and by the time a student finishes this first volume, they should be able to go on to it with a great deal of confidence and anticipation.

I must admit the book's awesome. I had a couple of tomes before, but none of them was clearly so good. Definitely, it's really good to own the mp3 files. Therefore, I recommend you to buy one no matter what. The book focus especially on grammar and global understanding of mandarin. As long as you looking for a book where written characters are learnt, do not buy that. Moreover, you likely should have one even if you want just study written characters. So, that's all i wanted to share. Have you a good time associated with studying chinese. BYE

I got the audio cassette version just before cds became ubiquitous in my country and also because the cd versions were not available at the time and given my vast experience with tons of tapes over the years, I knew it was only a matter of time before the oxide layer would fall off and the sound quality would slowly but slowly degrade. I hence got a techie friend to immediately burn the tapes onto cds for me; he managed to squeeze everything onto 2 discs. Why this long intro? I just wanted to explain why this product got 4 instead of 5 stars from me and I'd recommend getting the cd version immediately unless you absolutely have to listen to cassettes. The sound quality of cassettes is limited and you'll have to put up with the irritating hissing sounds that we in this modern day and age have become totally unaccustomed to. That aside, this is a very good resource for beginners who cannot afford the time and expense of personal tutoring or attending formal classes; this is by no means a substitute for these but may well be the next best thing. The book is very comprehensive and explains what's probably the hardest part to grasp of the language which is mastering the 4 basic tones. Once you can get these down pat and the relatively simple grammar rules, the rest is all about adding to your vocabulary. Of course if you want to go further than this spoken, beginners' course, you'll need to look for more advanced courses that teach the other headache of writing and reading the characters! As they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and so this is a worthy first step indeed. Just try and get the cd version instead of this cassette version.

The grammar is clear and enough for beginners like me. The sentences are simple enough. I like the quizz/question parts, they made your brain work.1-I wish they had both simplified and traditional characters like Tung's books, but I know that's impossible. 2-the CD sound was hissing and not digital-like.3- It seems that the chinese speakers in the CD had been away from the mainland many many years so their accent were not quite beijing's.

I'm a complete beginner in chinese. This book with its accompanying Audio-CD's give's the beginner a good base in chinese llanguage. As soon as someone finishes this book, he will be able to understand basic written and spoken chinese and move conveniently around china as a tourist or even bussiness traveler (the book's text are based on business traveling). It is good for those who wish to have a basic knowledge of the language. Then they can move on a more academic book.