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Practical Audio-Visual Chinese 1 -
Practical Audio-Visual Chinese book 1 2nd Edition (Book+MP3). The series of five levels is designed for adult non-native learner. The first volume has 12 lessons of pronunciation and simple everyday dialogues using basic vocabularies. Vocabularies are in traditional Chinese and annotated with pinyin, zhuyin (BoPoMoFo) and Tongyong pinyin. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.
332 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 31, 2015
我唸過最難的書 :)
Great study tool. This is the official textbook of the NTNU (a university in Taipei, Taiwan with a very respected Chinese as second language program). It is a good book if you are looking to learn to write chinese, not just speak it. It's not exactly easy, it took me a good while to go through all of it (many youtube videos are more fun for casually picking up a few phrases), but if you want a bit of structure it is worthwhile.
Great study tool. This is the official textbook of the NTNU (a university in Taipei, Taiwan with a very respected Chinese as second language program). It is a good book if you are looking to learn to write chinese, not just speak it. It's not exactly easy, it took me a good while to go through all of it (many youtube videos are more fun for casually picking up a few phrases), but if you want a bit of structure it is worthwhile.
March 11, 2026
The Practical Audio Visual Chinese series may at this point be out of date, but it's still a useful primer for those learning Chinese. It was the hallmark Chinese textbook for those learning English in Taiwan for decades.
Book 1 starts off assuming no prior knowledge of Chinese and gives you a lesson in pinyin before starting off with Chapter 1. However, the book wastes time and paper providing full-length transcriptions for every single chapter in English, two types of Pinyin (Han and Tongyang), and Bopomofo. The amount of hand-holding in the book is excessive, and the amount of text is enough to overwhelm anyone starting the language who may think they need to learn all of these phonetic systems.
A common trend throughout the series is that each chapter will dump a ton of new vocabulary words that don't appear again elsewhere in the book. While this is less common in book 1 simply because at this point you don't know many words, it will become a problem later on. The book also has very longwinded explanations for grammatical words like 的 or 在. To be fair, this book appears to be meant for in-class use, so I am hoping a teacher would smooth out the creases in this book.
The major strength of the book at least is that it lives up the name "Practical." The first 12 lessons get straight into the key, emergency Chinese phrases involving asking directions, how much does something cost, and names of basic objects.
If you are brand-new to Chinese, I would recommend another textbook series that is newer. That said, if you like a bit of silliness with your lessons, and being part of a larger PAVC community (it has a bit of a cult following) then this series will be the right fit for you.
Book 1 starts off assuming no prior knowledge of Chinese and gives you a lesson in pinyin before starting off with Chapter 1. However, the book wastes time and paper providing full-length transcriptions for every single chapter in English, two types of Pinyin (Han and Tongyang), and Bopomofo. The amount of hand-holding in the book is excessive, and the amount of text is enough to overwhelm anyone starting the language who may think they need to learn all of these phonetic systems.
A common trend throughout the series is that each chapter will dump a ton of new vocabulary words that don't appear again elsewhere in the book. While this is less common in book 1 simply because at this point you don't know many words, it will become a problem later on. The book also has very longwinded explanations for grammatical words like 的 or 在. To be fair, this book appears to be meant for in-class use, so I am hoping a teacher would smooth out the creases in this book.
The major strength of the book at least is that it lives up the name "Practical." The first 12 lessons get straight into the key, emergency Chinese phrases involving asking directions, how much does something cost, and names of basic objects.
If you are brand-new to Chinese, I would recommend another textbook series that is newer. That said, if you like a bit of silliness with your lessons, and being part of a larger PAVC community (it has a bit of a cult following) then this series will be the right fit for you.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews