Speak Mandarin, Workbook

This is the book I used when I first learned Chinese. It is a rather boring book to look at, but it is so straightforward that, with tapes or a native speaker to help you, you can make real progress rather quickly. The Yale romanization poses no problem as it is close enough to pinyin to make later adjustments quite easy. In my mind it's the best there is - and I've tried them all just about.

This book was the primary text to my course in college. Within weeks, students developed small, but functional speaking vocabularies. Though the Yale system of romanization is used for this book, its phonetic system properly trains the vocals for Beijing Mandarin. It is personally felt that after first learning Yale romanization, conversion to Pinyin and Wade-Jiles is a simple adjustment which creates a more universal Mandarin Chinese Student.

This is a good grammar text book for spoken Mandarin Chinese. It gives lots of examples, drills and grammar explanations in its twenty lessons. It uses an outmoded phonetic spelling system developed during WWII by Yale University which is similar to the the widespread Pin Yin phonetic spelling. This Yale romanization is actually designed for the English tongue, so it seems more natural to pronounce than Pin Yin, but since not many places teach it, it's of limited use.