Integrated Chinese, Level 1, Part 2: Textbook, Simplified Characters

by Tao-Chung Yao, Yuehua Liu, Liangyan Ge

Cheng & Tsui Company is pleased to announce the completion of the second editions of its award-winning Integrated Chinese series. This acclaimed, best-selling series is successful because it integrates all four language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Integrated Chinese helps you understand how the Chinese language works grammatically, and how to use Chinese in real life.

Materials within Integrated Chinese are divided into sections of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Two types of exercises are used: there are traditional exercises (fill-in-the-blank, sentence completion, translation) to help learners build a solid grammatical foundation; and there are communication exercises (listening quizzes, speaking drills, discussion topics, etc.) to prepare them to function in a Chinese language environment. Authentic materials written for native Chinese speakers, such as newspaper clippings, signs, and tickets, are used frequently. Topics relate to students' immediate environment (family, friends, school, and work) and focus on practical competencies such as seeing the doctor, making an appointment, shopping, etc. Notes on grammar, language use and Chinese culture are found throughout the textbooks. Character workbooks teach students to write characters in their correct stroke order. The Level 2 Character Workbook also features example sentences in traditional characters showing word usage in context, and four useful appendices: Proper nouns and measure words, an English-Chinese glossary of all vocabulary in Levels 1 and 2, a Chinese character index of all characters in Levels 1 and 2, and the example sentences in simplified form. Teacher's Manuals contain workbook answer keys, transcripts of listening exercises and grammar notes in Chinese.

The Character Workbook is designed to help the student learn Chinese characters in their correct stroke order. Character workbook features:

In the Level 1 workbooks, stroke order for each new character is displayed, along with its pinyin pronunciation and English translation. Character boxes allow students to practice writing the characters. The Level 2 Character workbook, in addition to stroke order, presents example sentences to illustrate word usage in context. The Level 2 Character workbook includes both simplified and traditional character forms. Four useful appendices are included in the Level 2 Character workbook: A list of proper nouns and measure words; an English-Chinese glossary that includes all vocabulary in Levels 1 and 2; a Chinese character index that lists all characters appearing in Levels 1 and 2; and the simplified-form example sentences that appear in traditional characters throughout the text.

Genres: China, Language, Reference, Linguistics

424 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not complaining about inanity of dialogues in itself- it is an introductory language course, after all- but I resent the expectation that I should be able to remember which character is Gao Wenzhong and which is Wang Peng. The writers (justly) focus on hitting the appropriate vocab and grammar, neglecting the finer points of storytelling, so why can't we do the same?

[Tabitha Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am currently a 2nd year in Chinese and have purchased the book because I find it very useful and good.

[Merrari · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text should just automatically come with a supporting audio disc. With any language, especially a tone-based one, it's just useless not to.