Talks on Chinese Culture

by Vivian Ling

Talks on Chinese Culture (TOCC) is a post-basic Chinese language textbook intended for students who possess solid mastery of at least two years of college-level Chinese. It is designed to serve as a bridge along the path from basic command to professional level functionality.  TOCC takes the view that the student of Chinese needs to be conversant with both forms of the Chinese character: simplified and traditional/complex. Text materials are thus presented in both forms and in a manner which challenges the student to master both forms. The various topics presented in TOCC serve as vehicles for the mastery of the kind of basic vocabulary that characterizes the conversations and writings of educated Chinese speakers. TOCC is based on the widely-known "Yale" series of Chinese language texts, which even today retains an unsurpassed degree of correlation with currently used vocabulary and sentence patterns. However, students from different curricular backgrounds may also use this text with success. The goal of TOCC is to advance the student's skill levels in listening and speaking as well as reading and writing.

246 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 1997

Reviews

[Josh Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful disaster of an upper intermediate level Chinese textbook. You will learn how to write and read multiple pages of elegant prose without any discernible content. You will witness the blossoming (b)romance of John Smith and Gao Shoumin as they share their childhood stories of fleeing the Dust Bowl and the Japanese invasion of Shanghai. You will read hilariously outdated and problematic statements such as "men and women are obviously not equal" and "the most important policy of China today is to stage a counterattack and retake the mainland". Nevertheless, you will also find your Chinese level improving past the point of everyday conversation to be able to talk about social and political issues (whether you retain the everyday Chinese is another matter), so I cannot but recommend it to anyone whose academic plan requires a high level of Chinese.

[John Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a more than 60 year old textbook. Based on the title I was sort of expecting the pretty general 5000 years of culture soft power narrative that seems pretty common in Chinese textbooks. I felt this book didn't really do that, and instead really focused in on the consequential era of Chinese history from the first serious contact China had with the West to the ending of the Chinese Civil War. Some things before this era are discussed, but it really seemed to be used as launch pad into how these things affected the modern era.

Love/hate relationship with this textbook.

Loved: HUGE impact on my listening ability. Highly recommend you follow the ICLP process recommended at the start. I was admittedly a bit *lazy* with step 3 on making new sentences from the grammar patterns, but if I were to do over I probably would have probably done that. The 20 minute per lesson of audio is just awesome for catapulting your progress. Too many textbooks just give you a couple paragraphs and expect you to become comfortable with new words and grammar after seeing it once or twice; this book really feeds you plenty of input. I also learned a lot about Chinese culture from so many different angles like political structure, class structure, history, etc.

Hated: It's outdated as hell. The political viewpoints and social viewpoint of women in an early chapter are a bit icky. While it does view interracial marriage as good thing it does it from a very problematic viewpoint, strengthening the bloodline and advancing the race. You will read lines about the dust bowl and Ezra Pound that just feels so irrelevant to modern day. Some of the chapters are also REALLY boring. That chapter on the wartime economics and fiscal policy of China was dry as hell. A lot of the dialogues were also needlessly repetitive, which was fine from the standpoint of language learning, but they certainly could have been more informative in terms of content.

Overall enjoyment of content was overall mid, some chapters good, some terrible. However, the more important thing for a language textbook is did it improve your language ability, and I would have to answer that question with a strong YES.

[Estelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

受了苦行