Intermediate Spoken Chinese: A Practical Approach to Fluency in Spoken Mandarin

by Cornelius C. Kubler

Welcome to the world's most effective method of learning Mandarin!

This widely-acclaimed series continues to impress and inspire learners whether they're studying Chinese on their own, or in a classroom setting.Intermediate Spoken Chinese and the corresponding Practice Essentials allow you to experience real-life situations in different Mandarin-speaking locales. Each of the common situations explored here—from shopping at a market to playing unexpected phone tag—is one you're most likely to encounter as you interact with Chinese speakers.

The breakthrough foundation of these books is that you don't need to know the characters in order to speak Chinese. This series provides separate "tracks" to help you master the skills of speaking and writing Chinese at your own pace. Some learners place greater emphasis on reading and writing, while others focus on developing a knowledge of spoken Chinese first, and then learn the characters. Both approaches are perfectly valid, and the one you adopt will depend on your personal goals and the amount of time you have for weekly study. This series allows you total flexibility in this regard.

An accompanying software program contains 56 videos shot on location. The software allows students to interact with the videos in various ways: to select/replay specific passages; to view the dialogues in Hanyu Pinyin, Simplified or Traditional characters as each line is spoken; and to mute a particular speaker's audio.

Additional key features of Intermediate Spoken Chinese:

-Clear and detailed explanations of natural, colloquial Chinese pronunciation, grammar and usage
-Recommended strategies to help you learn to speak Chinese more efficiently
-Videos teach you real-life Chinese, the actual speaking styles of -Chinese people in various parts of mainland China as well as Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia
-Notes on Chinese culture and society allow you to understand situational etiquette
-Discussions of challenges faced by English speakers who are learning Chinese and how to overcome them
-Audio recordings by native speakers of all the vocabulary, dialogues, and other key items
-A separate Teacher's Guide and a full character transcript (both Simplified and Traditional) are both available electronically

Available separately, Intermediate Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials is the companion workbook for Intermediate Spoken Chinese. This practical guide includes a broad range of drills and exercises designed to dramatically enhance your proficiency in speaking and comprehending. While designed for use with the companion textbook, it can be used together with any Chinese textbook or teaching program to hone your Chinese language skills.

384 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2013

About the author

CORNELIUS C. KUBLER, Stanfield Professor of Asian Studies at Williams College, received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from Cornell University. He earned a second M.A. in Chinese literature from National Taiwan University. From 1980-1991 he was employed at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, where he served as Language Training Supervisor in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Mongolian; as Principal of the advanced Chinese field school in Taiwan; and as Chair of the Department of Asian and African Languages. Since coming to Williams in 1991, he has chaired the former Department of Chinese and Asian Studies Program as well as the Department of Asian Studies, which he was instrumental in founding. He has also taught at Eisenhower College, Portland State University, Middlebury College, National Taiwan Normal University, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Kubler, who is author or coauthor of 15 books and over 50 articles on Chinese language pedagogy and linguistics, frequently serves as reviewer or consultant for Chinese and Asian Studies programs in the U.S. and overseas. He has served as Chair of the Test Development Committee for the SAT Subject Test™ in Chinese and as member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages of the Modern Language Association. Below are some questions received from users of Dr. Kubler's new BASIC CHINESE series along with his answers to them:

READER QUESTION:
What are the 3 tips you'd give to someone who wants to learn Chinese on their own? I know your books are being used at a lot of top universities, but I'm not sure if I could use them to learn Chinese on my own, at home?

DR. KUBLER ANSWERS:
The Basic Chinese series was designed with the needs of independent learners like yourself in mind. The grammatical and cultural notes in each lesson of the textbook explain in detail everything you need to know, and the copious exercises in the workbook and on the DVD and CDs offer many hours of useful practice. As for my 3 tips, they would be: (1) Start with listening and speaking (at the beginning, Chinese characters tend to slow you down, you can take them up later); (2) Be sure you have not only the textbook (Basic Spoken Chinese), but also the workbook (Basic Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials), since it contains most of the exercises, which are especially important for independent learners; (3) When using the DVD, after you have mastered a Basic Conversation, click "Chinese speaker only" and YOU play the role of the American speaker, and then you can click "American speaker only" and play the role of the Chinese person. In addition, try to meet with a teacher or native-speaking friend for an hour each week for communicative practice using the new material in the lesson. There are many more suggestions for independent learners in the Basic Chinese textbook, workbook, and Instructor's Guide.

READER QUESTION:
I have a background in Romance languages; on the graduate level I studied theoretical linguistics. About a year ago, I began to study Chinese, having never before pursued an Asian language. I made progress, but was disillusioned by the slow pace at which I was learning. Then, several weeks ago, I ran across your Basic Written Chinese and purchased it. Within short order, my acquisition rate accelerated. I'm now awaiting the arrival of the Basic Spoken Chinese book; will I make faster progress using the combination of the two books, Written and Spoken?

DR. KUBLER ANSWERS:
Thank you for your kind words about Basic Written Chinese. Like yourself, I also am a linguist (I started out in German, then studied Latin and several Romance languages, and ended up specializing in East Asian languages). The Basic Chinese books, as you know, take the approach of separating the learning of SPOKEN Chinese from the learning of WRITTEN Chinese, since that helps English speakers learn Chinese more efficiently. That said, I'm gl