Learn Chinese the Fast and Fun Way

My husband is using this book in a class he is taking at work. He is going to be traveling to China next year. The book is easy to use, written in a clear and easy to understand fashion. It is working out well for him.

This book is a good choice for learning spoken Mandarin in preparation for a trip to China. You'll learn a lot of phrases you need to know as a tourist and the book is more thorough than a simple phrasebook. You'll also learn how to put sentences together and by the end of the course you will develop a good feel for the language. Four ninety-minute tapes accompany the cassette version. Though professionally made, too much time is spent by the narrator walking you through the book. The time would have been better spent by supplementing the dialogs. The dialogs themselve are invaluable. The book uses romanized Chinese (pinyin) and therefore you will not learn how to interpret Chinese characters. Although the book comes with a nice fold-out dictionary the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary would make a wonderful accompanyment to this volume. This is about the easiest introduction to spoken Chinese that can be found.