Colloquial Mandarin Chinese: The Complete Course for Beginners

by Qian Kan

Colloquial Chinese is easy to use and completely up to date!

Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Chinese. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

What makes Colloquial Chinese your best choice in personal language learning?

- Interactive: lots of exercises for regular practice
- Clear: concise grammar notes
- Practical: useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
- Complete: including answer key and reference section

Whether you're a business traveller, or about to take up a daring challenge in adventure tourism, you may be studying to teach or even looking forward to a holiday - if you'd like to get up and running with Chinese this rewarding course will take you from complete beginner to confidently putting your language skills to use in a wide range of everyday situations

Course components:

The complete course comprises the book and audio materials. These are available to purchase separately in paperback, ebook, CD and MP3 format. The paperback and CDs can also be purchased together in the great-value Colloquials pack.

Paperback: 978-0-415-43415-7 (please note this does not include the audio)

CDs: 978-0-415-43416-4

EBook: 978-0-203-88362-4 (please note this does not include the audio)

MP3s: 978-0-415-55159-5 (available from http: //www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/html/)

Pack: 978-0-415-43417-1 (paperback and CDs)

Another FREE 60 minutes of audio can be listened to online at http: //www.routledge.com/books/Colloquial-Ch..."

Genres: Language, China, Nonfiction, Reference, Travel

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 1995

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Due to learning Mandarin Chinese I was required to buy this book in order to keep up with my studies. I would recommend it to anyone thinking about learning a language, not just Mandarin as there are other languages available by the same author and in the same format.
It is easy to follow and builds up your vocabulary and introduces you to 'characters' slowly.

[Keith Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book. I bought this years ago and took my Mandarin studies further to HSK 5 now. I just picked this up again to have a look and in retrospect its a really well written, thoughtful text with lots of really good information and vocabulary. I was only think whether it was actually set a bit to high for an absolute beginner. Thoroughly recommend

[Dima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written, scrupulous but I'd wish for more frequent-use vocabulary to be introduced and more topics. After studying the book I reached about 600 words level but I would say only about 350-400 words would be useful in real life

[Linus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best beginners course for Mandarin Chinese I have come across!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very concise and effective introductory textbook. Explanations of grammar were to the point and easy to understand, clearing up some questions I still held after doing Pimsleur language tapes. The dialogues as well were a good balance between speed/challenge and understandability.

However, the kindle edition in particular has numerous typographical errors, some are missing letters, some are words turned into gibberish. Also, the audio for the dialogues had, on multiple occasions, diverged from the script in the book (usually only a couple words here and there). But for the student who is watching with the utmost intensity on these dialogues and vocabulary lists, these types of errors are nigh unforgivable. They incite doubt in the student and cause problems with the progres of learning. So because of these issues, I will give this edition three stars instead of 4.

[Mina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, succinct information. One teacher uses it, one does not. Oof...

[George Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is a really good book, with lots of examples. I am going through it a second time more slowly...