Zhang Pengpeng's books

[OneEye]

Does anyone here have any experience using Zhang Pengpeng's series "New Approaches to Learning Chinese," particularly the second two books (The Most Common Chinese Radicals and Rapid Literacy in Chinese)?

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Common-Chinese-Radicals/dp/7800525767/ref=sr_1_2/102-5536575-9871361?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176012028&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Literacy-Chinese-Zhang-Pengpeng/dp/780052695X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5536575-9871361?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176012028&sr=8-1

What are your thoughts on the books, and how useful are they for increasing character knowledge quickly?

Is it necessary (or maybe I should say, beneficial) to memorize all the radicals in the Radicals book before moving on to Rapid Literacy? Or would it be ok to start the Rapid Literacy book once I have a sufficient grounding in spoken Mandarin (Zhang recommends learning to read after you can speak some)? Any other advice you can give for these books? Thanks in advance.

[onebir]

I've seen those books; if i remember rightly his methodology is:

learn pinyin

learn to speak

learn to read and write

I didn't look at the stuff for learning to speak, but the 2 books you mention are fairly well designed. (Although the explanations of some of the radicals &/characters in the radicals book are totally pointless.)

But unless A) you're confident with basic conversations AND B) you want to learn to write [with a pen ;-) ], I think the material in these books is too dense. Not enough audio material in each (very short) chapter, too many new characters, and almost no recycling of characters or grammar points (you're supposed to go off and write them down the characters 100 times or something, & the grammar points you should have an instinctive grasp of by this stage if you're following the methodology.)

Other 'reader' type material might be better if you're don't fulfill conditions (ie A & B).

On the other hand, you can get the books & tapes at chinese prices from lovemandarin.com, so you'd only be risking about $15.... & you can publicly berate elina on this forum if they don't arrive!

[josephine]

onebir is spot-on.

I have Rapid Literacy and found it very useful, but I am an 'advanced beginner' (Chinese background, fluent speaker, illiterate) and, after 6 years of Latin/Greek, a total grammar geek. I worked through the whole thing in about 3 months, but it really is only good for reading, unless you are self-motivated enough to copy out each character dozens of times. And for the love of kittens, ignore the 'grammar' sections. Most of the sentences are good, and memorable. A few are hilariously half-arsed. However I think it could be very good as a supplement to a more rounded book, because it gives you words in context, which helps distinguish those pesky homonyms.

Had a flick through the Radicals book, and really wouldn't bother with that; I found

this much better.

[OneEye]

I have both of the books I mentioned already (found them cheap at a used bookshop), and I think I may use them as intended (ie, wait until I have the speaking background). Most of the stuff I'm currently using (China Panorama, FSI and CPod) are geared for speaking only anyway, so I can start the reading later. Thanks for the help.