"Tiananmen Zai Nar?"
The number of textbooks available for learning Chinese is increasing rapidly. Unfortunately, the number of good textbooks for
learning Chinese is increasing much more slowly. I'll recommend a few here. The situation is much improved compared with just
a few years ago, and you are now
no longer forced to use textbooks with chapter titles like 'Registering for the Conference and then going to Tiananmen
Square with Teacher Wang Before Meeting Anna the Foreign Student who is on her way to Return a Book to the Library and then
Happily Discussing Tomorrows Trip to the Commune to meet the Happy Workers.' I'm only half joking. Buy any
foreigner-learns-chinese
book published more than a few years ago, and tell me what you see before you drift off to sleep dreaming of happy workers.
A note on this section - there are links here to Amazon.co.uk and .com, from where you can buy some of these books. Hit UK or US according to where you are. I hope to add more Amazon sites later. Links marked with an ! mean that although you can buy this book from Amazon, it's actually cheaper in China - you may wish to wait. Not all books are available at both UK and US sites.
teach yourself chinese
This would have to be my recommendation. The topics are useful, but not so likely to get your face slapped as '200 Situational Dialogues'
and it uses a very good 'literal translation' method to let you see the nuts and bolts of the grammar. It covers characters, but
they are optional - you can use the pinyin throughout if you prefer. Grammar is introduced clearly and logically, and if you
complete the book then you will have a very solid base for further study. (UK)
There's also a Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese , which is a little more limited, but easier. (UK) (US)
200 situational dialogues
This is one of the better entry-level books I've seen. It sits half-way between a phrasebook and a textbook. Some grammar and vocabulary is introduced, but the main focus is on things you might actually use one day - unit titles include 'Buying Condoms', 'Finding out if a girl is married' and 'Asking the Hotel Attendant if your Girlfriend Can Stay in Your Room' along with the more usual 'Shopping' and 'Buying Tickets'. I'm not joking, and yes, I think it might have been written by a man. Recommended for those who aren't confident about learning languages, or are here long enough for a phrasebook to be inadequate, but not long enough to actually learn a huge amount of Chinese. (UK!)
the little red dictionary
This is a great dictionary. It's the only one I know which uses pinyin throughout, its easily portable, and I've used mine
so much that all the writing has rubbed off the outside. Essential for everyone except those who don't want to learn any Chinese,
or already knows it all. The Chinese edition has a plain red cover with some words in gilt on the outside. Can't tell you
what the words are though, as they've rubbed out. Anyone who's unconvinced should take a look at the reviews of the
international edition (the same, but with the cover shown above) at Amazon.
(UK!)
(US!)
Practical Chinese Readers
This, along with it's companion volume 'Elementary Chinese Reader', are the principal culprits of the crimes listed in
the first paragraph. If you
want to learn how to praise the progress of the People's Republic and have happy conversations with bus conductors on your way
to visit Tiananmen Square, this is the one for you. If, on the other hand, you find it not so necessary to praise the People's
Republic and that your chest is generally too crushed by the crowds on the bus to converse with the conductor, move on. The
design of the book - text followed by vocab and grammar followed by exercises - is years our of date. The only reason for using
this is if your university still uses it (incredibly, some still do, both in and out of China).
(UK!)
only in china
The following books are not available outside China. I've taken (blurry, small) photos so you can see what they look like, and hopefully this will make them easier to spot in bookshops. You should be able to find them in the two bookshops on Wangfujing in Beijing, and hopefully in the bookshop of any university that has a decent sized population of foreign students.All of these books are relatively specialized. If you are looking for an all-round general textbook, I still recommend Teach Yourself Chinese above.
If anyone knows where these books can be purchased outside of China, please let me know
listening books
This is a series of books running from elementary to advanced. The listening pieces are well-chosen, there's a range of
interesting, realistic and often amusing dialogues using idioms and phrases you really will hear. Situations include story telling, overhearing conversations,
radio reports, etc. The books are all in characters (apart from new vocab, where pinyin and translation is given) so you need a certain reading ability to tackle the exercises.
I've used all of these books up to the end of intermediate level, and cannot recommend them highly enough. The pieces are
interesting enough to keep you motivated and the vocab you learn can go straight into conversational use. If I had to
make a negative comment it would be that the quality of the recordings isn't as clear as you might hope for, but this is
a problem with all cassettes in China.
reading book
Core Chinese Reading isn't a companion book to the above listening texts, but it should be. Again, the texts are varied and
interesting, ranging from the stories behind classical idioms to jokes, from discussions of ethics and morality to the effect of socialization
on gender roles. The questions set for each text are excellent, and you often find that the questions point to a difficult
part of the text which on second reading you realise you didn't actually understand correctly first time round. There are
also end of unit summaries and regular revision units. Again, highly recommended. Unfortunately, there only seems to be this
one intermediate book, and I haven't seen either elementary or advanced versions.
HSK listening book
Not so much a textbook as a collection of useful phrases and idioms often found in the HSK listening exam, this isn't suitable for use on its own. However, the
phrases chosen are extremely useful and the kind of thing you hear in conversation everyday. Take a few from this book each day
and you'll soon be peppering your speech with the 'nar de hua?'s and 'tai bu xiang hua le!'s that will convince people you
can actually speak Chinese when in reality you've just learnt a few clever phrases. The book
only uses English for translating the phrases. The usage examples, which are very good, are only
in characters and pinyin. There's also a companion volume which is
equally worth purchasing, in a nice shade of blue.
character learning books
There are lots of books that will claim to teach you Chinese characters, and I'm only going to recommend one of them. Entitled
the 'Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters' the book does actually go some way to living up to its title. Most of the
textbooks I have seen give you a text and then ask you to learn characters from the text. While this is all very well, it ignores
the patterns of structure and compostion in Chinese characters. This book doesn't give you any texts, but instead asks you
to learn characters according to similarity - for example, all characters with the water radical, or all characters composed of
two other characters side by side. This means you are learning characters in sets and groups rather than individually.
A very good book indeed, and I credit it with teaching me to read Chinese. Or at least, with teaching me to learn that Chinese
which I can read.