Chinese Primer: Lessons / Notes and Exercises / Character Workbook

by Ta-tuan Ch'en, Perry Link, Yih-jian Tai

Four experienced teachers of beginning Chinese have developed this introductory textbook. A pilot edition has been tested widely in classrooms and refined over a period of years. Among its salient features are lessons that are lively, amusing, and relevant to everyday life: concentrated training of ear and tongue in the sound system of Chinese; extensive grammar notes, clearly presented, with attention to mistakes English-speakers are likely to make; a carefully sequenced character workbook embodying a new and effective approach to the learning of Chinese characters; and audiovisual reinforcement via a complete set of audiotapes and two videotapes, one of which offers entertaining dramatizations of the lesson dialogues."The Chinese Primer" is available in two versions, one using the GR system of romanization, which employs different spellings instead of diacritical marks for different tones, the other using Pinyin romanization. The contents of the four volumes are as follows: (1) Blue Book "Lessons"]: Introduction; foundation work on pronunciation; lesson dialogues in romanized Chinese and English; appendices; glossary-index. (2) Red Book "Notes and Exercises"]: Vocabularies; grammar notes and culture notes keyed to the lessons; exercises. (3) Yellow Book "Character Workbook"]: workbook. (4) Green Book "Pinyin Character Text"]: Texts of the lessons in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and a Chinese introduction for teachers.

The first three volumes: Blue Book, Red Book, and Yellow Book are sold as a set (GR Set or Pinyin Set). In addition, the GR Blue Book "Lessons"], GR Red Book "Notes and Exercises"], and GR Yellow Book "Character Workbook"] are soldseparately. The Green Book "Character Text"], along with the Pinyin Green Book "Pinyin Character Text"] are sold separately. The GR Audio and video materials are available from the Chinese Linguistics Project at Princeton University for use with this text. These supplementary materials are not published by Princeton University Press. For further information and prices, contact the Chinese Linguistics Project, 231 Palmer Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. 08544. (609-258-4269).

156 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 1994

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This three volume set was used in my introductory Chinese (Mandarin) class in college, along with the accompanying Chinese Character Text. It utilizes Pinyin romanization, in which diacritical marks are used to indicate the four tones, as opposed to the GR system (also available from PUP). The three volumes are as follows:

Chinese Primer: Lessons, (Blue Book), which contains thirty-seven lessons, divided into thematic sections, from the introductory "Foundation Work," which includes five lessons on such topics as tones, initials & finals, and pinyin romanization; and eight Units, devoted to subjects ranging from "Students" to "Dogged Localizers and Directional Complements."

Chinese Primer: Notes and Exercises, (Red Book), which contains vocabulary, grammatical and cultural notes, and exercises corresponding to each lesson in the Blue Book, starting with Unit 1, Lesson 1.

Chinese Primer: Character Workbook, (Yellow Book), which introduces the student to the characters themselves. Each page contains five characters, along with their Pinyin romanization, English meaning, the radical of the character, and the number of strokes used in the character (in addition to the radical). This last is important, as the Chinese writing system is not an alphabet, and dictionaries are organized by stroke number.


It has been some time since I took this class, but I recall finding this system a comprehensible and organized method of learning a complex language that is quite dissimilar to English. If the student follows the recommendation of learning five characters a day, studies regularly, and pairs this set with a good recording, I think they have an excellent chance of succeeding in their first year of Chinese study.

I should note that the characters used are traditional, as opposed to the simplified characters currently in use in the People's Republic. I've always found it somewhat ironic that almost all Chinese-language publications in the United States are printed using the traditional characters, whereas almost all collegiate instruction, geared toward study abroad and interaction with Beijing, utilizes the simplified characters after the first year.