Of the following books , which ones might you be interested in?

[kelvinzhao]

Hi everybody,

the company Im working for is planning to publish several books for Chinese learnning, so I put the ideas here for voting , could you pls vote for which one you'd be interested in ? thanks everyone.

the vote options is the rough name of the books, here is the descriptions.

Mandarin lifesaver in 12 hours – the most essential phrases in a simple easy to access format, which can be grasped in 12 hours on the plane- just enough to ease your first step into China

Living in Beijing – consisting of beautiful China-unique photos, practical useful Chinese phrases and dialogues, and interesting cultural tips to know China more

Wordbook with Post-stickers – a Chinese wordbook which contains the most useful and practical vocabulary going with small size post-stickers

Extreme Chinese – very popular and colloquial phrases in authentic everyday Chinese

Chin-ease – a fun self-study guide to pinyin and Chinese characters with pinyin exercises and introduction to history and connotations of Chinese characters

Chinese Idioms – a guide to 200 Chinese 4-character idioms as a window into Chinese history and culture, containing the situational usage of the idioms

Mini-book Series – a book series which applies an easy way to learn different types of Chinese common phrases, basic grammar, essential vocabulary and idioms separately in 7 pocket-sized books

Chinese Learning DIY – a crash way of learning to speak and read Chinese language by using very basic Chinese sentence patterns with a systematical pinyin guide and a comprehensive Chinese essential vocabulary to be used in the sentence patterns

Crash Oral Chinese – consisting of native Chinese pronunciation guide, and providing different types exercises on pronunciation and tones to imitate and practice with correct and native Chinese audio-aid

Essential Chinese Grammar Guide – a practical, detailed, accurate and simple Chinese grammar book, comprehensive and easy to catch up with

since the max count of the options is 10, there is another idea here :

Sandwich Chinese – a fun and natural way of learning Chinese gradually by substituting components in English sentences (in form of stories, conversations or cartoons) into Chinese step by step

Gourmet China – a talking Chinese food menu with an introduction to Chinese cuisine and phrases used in the restaurant

[kelvinzhao]

could you guys post the reasons here ? thanks everybody.

and anybody is interested in kind of phrase book ? such as for business, travel and so on? maybe like series of lonely plant? I think lonely plant is great series books, but I am not Chinese learner, I don't know if you think it's good enough.

[ipsi()]

I note that most of these books cater exclusively to beginners. The market is already flooded with those. Have you not considered producing books targeted to intermediate / advanced learners?

[kelvinzhao]

true, most of these books are target to Chinese Learning beginners, because actually, I don't know every clearly how to define "intermediate" and "advanced", for different propose of different learners, maybe they mean different. but it does be my task in the future.

so in your opinion, what the intermediated or advanced learner need in deed ?

[atitarev]

Kelvinzhao, why are you asking? Do you have intermediate books?

I'll give you some of my ideas about intermediate books:

1. Reader books with short stories, fairy-tales or a novels with 3 or 4 of the following:

1) Chinese character text - simplified or traditional or both

2) Pinyin phonetic guide made as ruby (on top of the characters) or on a separate page.

3) English translation

4) Vocabulary list, grammar points and expressions.

5) Perhaps audio?

2. Lyrics books with popular Chinese songs with romanisation and perhaps translations and explanations.

3. Textbooks teaching characters thoroughly beyond the 1st 1,000 characters - usually textbooks slack off after the most common characters.

4. Learner's comprehensive (at least 3,000 - 4,000 characters) dictionaries with stroke orders and pinyinised examples. Usually, examples don't provide phonetic guides. There are excellent paper dictionaries for Japanese. For Chinese they are yet to be written, IMHO.

5. Just bilingual books (see 1.) would be highly popular, in my opinion - comics, novels, short stories, whatever.

6. Chinese expressions are good, why only 200, why not make a larger and a more serious list?

7. I'd like to read newspapers, magazine in Chinese, would be good to have a textbook teaching to read Chinese newspapers - with lots of articles, vocabulary lists and translations.

[kelvinzhao]

good points, atitarev, thanks.

I'd appreciate for your opinion, Im just wondering how do you make sure they are an intermediated learner need, where can I find any standard or rule to confirm that, such as "intermediated" learner should have ability to read a Chinese novel , or he should familiar know about 2000 Chinese characters, whatever.

I looked around this forum, all kinds of information rushed to me, I'd a little flood in it.:wink:

[gougou]

Im just wondering how do you make sure they are an intermediated learner need

Ideally, you'd make a series of books, one picking up there where the other left off. I studied with two books written for Germans, where this picking up worked magnificently. Unfortunately, there was only two books to the series, so once I was through, I had to find something new. The problem with the books I used afterwards was that they would explain a lot of vocabulary I already knew, but leave out other words I didn't know yet. Same for grammar.

[atitarev]

Kelvinzhao, Gougou explained "how". Another thing, if we talk about intermediates (whatever definition), it means, at least able to pronounce some Chinese sounds, familiar with any basic grammar, no need to explain what Chinese characters are, etc.

The definition of an intermediate is really broad but if you target any student from 500 to 3000, you can't go wrong. Actually, I'd say textbooks or detailed character dictionaries teaching the first 1,000 - 1,500 are too numerous.

Then if you start a bilingual novel with a phonetic guide and a thorough vocab explanation, even a beginner should be able to cope (with a bit more work). It's one of the methods to learn a language - through reading. You'll find this concept if you search for "Breaking into Japanese literature", "Read Real Japanese" or "Hiragana Times", "Bilingual manga". So, you can borrow it from Japanese, they have already worked out how to teach their language efficiently.

I know complaining doesn't help to create those missing things but publishers of Chinese books should ask themselves - what is it that helps foreigners to learn and enjoy Chinese?

Chinese kids are less spoiled with phonetic guides when they learn to read compared to Japanese. In Japan, the market is flooded with books supplied with "Furigana" - phonetic hiragana letters written next to "kanji" （漢字）. Even books for adolescents have them. It makes so much difference to a learner! Ideally, it should also have a translation and vocab list.

[ipsi()]

I'd be interested in most of the book ideas suggested by atitarev, and they all definitely need vocab and grammer explanations (preferably distinct from the main text, so that if you're just reading to improve your reading speed, you won't get distracted by them).

If you're publishing a book on Chinese Idioms and Expressions, what I would like to see is an etymology of each of the phrases.

In terms of what intermediate actaully means, it's a pretty big area. I'd actually define the ability to read a Chinese Novel as moving more into the advanced area. It does depend on the type of novel though At a minimum, an intermediate learner will understand the basics of pronounciation, the basics of word ordering (e.g. time words at the start of the sentance), and will be comfortable learning characters. One could also assume that they can understand basic characters (i.e. 你，我，他，她，要，看 etc). Probably the easiest way to do this would be to grab a number of introductory textbooks (e.g. NPCR 1, Chinese in a Flash Vol 1, and others that I don't know) and see which characters commonly crop up between them. Take this as a basic grounding for characters intermediate learners should know (or could easily learn by looking in a dictionary).

Another thing I would be interested in would be recordings of some form. Perhaps Audio Books, with the audio on CD (I'm not purchasing tapes, no way) and a transcript of the audio, explaining each piece of vocab and the grammer used. You could leave out the basic characters.