Review: Sinolingua’s Learn Chinese Through 100 Sentence Frames (100句成汉语通)

[Wang7]

Thanks to Chinese  forums.com and Sinolingua for the generous book for review giveaway. I have received a copy of Learn Chinese Through 100 Sentence Frames and submit to you the following review.

 

Learn Chinese Through 100 Sentence Frames is a fantastic supplementary text for the beginner to intermediate level student of Mandarin. This textbook is resplendent with learning tools to improve an individual's colloquial language skills. It contains a pinyin chart, features English/pinyin/hanzi text, semantic categories for study, vocabulary lists with each new lesson, and a mp3 disc of the 100 sentence frames.

 

The textbook is divided into ten topics with ten lessons or sentence frames per topic (thereby giving you the 100 situational sentence frames referenced in the title). The topics range from the quotidian greetings and introduction situations, most useful for beginners, to the advanced interrogative and related declarative statement format for the intermediate level student. This is a 'must have' supplementary text for teachers, students, and self - study learners who are in the position to have situational conversations or colloquial exchanges in Mandarin. It is a given fact that in order to improve one's fluency an individual must speak more and acquire more vocabulary. Learning Chinese Through 100 Sentence Frames will assist students in their acquisition of fluency.

 

Although there are few instances where the Mandarin to English translation is a bit awkward sounding and confusing, e.g., frame 073 translates 解说员 as "the guider" instead of "the commentator," and when the colloquial transforms into a higher order interrogative: "董事长什么时候 任命了曹惠博士为总经理？" in frame 079. However, such occurrences are a rarity and should not detract from the excellent quality of this textbook.

 

Learning Chinese Through 100 Sentence Frames is a book I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in speaking Mandarin, regardless if the student is a casual learner or preparing to take HSK3 or 4. As I stated previously, this is an excellent supplementary text and it is worth its value as a learning tool for improving speaking skills.

[Yadang]

Excellent - thanks for the review! How's the audio? Is it naturally paced, or is it slower than normal talking speed? Are the tones normal, or exaggerated for the student?

[lechuan]

What is a sentence frame?

[gato]

It means "sentence pattern", I think.

[Wang7]

Yadang: the audio quality is superb, however I would consider its speed slightly slower than normal talking speed. Please remember, the dialogue is truncated to simple question and answer responses. Although the initial sentence frames are not very grammatically involved, the latter part of the text is incrementally more difficult, e.g.,

 

Question: "Na3xie1 shi4 Zhong1guo2 de chuan2tong3 jie2ri4?  Answer: Chun1 Jie2 shi4 Zhong1guo2 de chuna2tong3 jie2ri4.

 

The really neat thing about the text is that they grammatically deconstruct the sentence graphically! Pretty unique.

[sangajtam]

Why there is no kindle version of it?