Newspaper Readings: The U.S.A. in the People's Daily

My only complaint about this book is a slight lack in consistency. Newspaper selections and selection glossaries are each presented in both simplified and traditional characters. However, the examples given to illustrate usage of new grammar points are only given in traditional characters. Aside from this small snag, it's a great buy.

This textbook is a collection of newspaper article from the People's Daily concerning news relating to the United States. From these articles, one sees how the U.S. is viewed in the eyes of the official newspaper of China, and one could analyze it however one wish. Besides the political nature of the textbook, the book is excellent in its design. Traditional and simplified characters are provided for the article and the vocabulary, but only traditional characters are used in the grammatical example sentences and the glossary index. What is also neat about the book is that one can choose to skip around and read any chapter because the vocabulary in each chapter is tailored to that particular chapter; thus, one does not have to read chapter 1 before chapter 2. The grammar explanations are good, and the example sentences have their English translations. However, this is not a textbook for the beginner or low intermediate students. I would say it is a good textbook for those in their 5th semester of college level Chinese or higher since the vocabulary list is CRAZY. Some chapters contain over 100 words, most of which are academic words (so if you are looking for a book that will help you improve your conversational fluency, this is not it, but if you are already conversationally fluent and want to work on academic fluency, this is an excellent book). Overall, an excellent textbook.

This book introduces students to actual current newspaper articles written in China, and so exposes students to the official Chinese newspaper's view of America in addition to expanding students' knowledge of Chinese written formal vocabulary and grammar. It also prints out what the actual newspaper article looked like to give students an idea of how much vocabulary and grammar is necessary to even read Chinese newspapers without much trouble. The provided exercises are more thought-provoking questions than grammar/vocabulary building exercises, so supplemental exercises may be necesary.