Reading Into a New China: Integrated Skills for Advanced Chinese, Volume 2

by Duanduan Li

Get to the heart of contemporary China with Reading into a New China, Volume 2! This is the third incarnation of the third-year reader formerly known as A New Text for a Modern China, complete with enhanced language learning tools and coverage of the exciting changes taking place in twenty-first-century China. It is ideally suited for students who want to understand China s rapidly changing contemporary culture while perfecting their Chinese language skills. Three features together make the book more unique than many advanced texts on the word frequency rankings for the HSK, vocabulary building skills and reading skills. This edition includes engaging new lessons on important contemporary issues such as the Internet, the environment, and divorce in China. Each lesson includes more usage and grammar examples, explained in clear English. Built-in exercises focus on strategies for effective reading; a new Vocabulary Building Skills exercise also helps students acquire vocabulary more efficiently. The book encourages students to comprehend written texts as organized, coherent works. Reading into a New China is the perfect tool for building reading comprehension and stylistic skills along with broad and deep cultural knowledge. Purchase of the book includes access to online mp3 downloads that supplement the text with audio.

374 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Viktor Nilsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good:
+Real texts, interesting subjects, and somewhat modified to appropriate level.
+Lots of exercises.
+Clear explanations, many examples.
Bad:
-In short: Not very pedagogical (i.e. tedious to work through, acquired knowledge doesn't stick). In detail:
-Vocabulary is only provided for the first text of each chapter. Since each chapter has about 5 texts, that only covered about 1/3 of the new words I had to learn (had to look up the other ones). It also only includes HSK words and thus often doesn't include the hardest ones.
-The examples and exercises are in a language just as hard as the main text.
-No answers for the exercises.
-To many new concepts studied at once.
-Much of the explanations and exercises seem irrelevant.

If you like the Chinese way of studying, e.g. using language books published in China, then this book should be among the better ones. I don't, so compared with other European/American language books, this book didn't impress me.

[Robert Yengo · Rating 5 out of 5]

plenty of exercises to help improve reading and writing skills. glad it came with audio.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mark of a good language textbook: diversity, range and quantity - exercises.