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Kuo, Startup Business Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Opensecret Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4690 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 1 of 1 28 February 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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I've been slogging away trying to learn Chinese (pǔtōnghuà) on and off for several
years, and have posted elsewhere about other Chinese materials that I like, but I recently acquired Jane Kuo's Startup Business Chinese, and I think it's excellent for expanding vocabulary and reading skill. The book has excellent grammar notes (exploring such mysteries as placement of the "then" -- jiu -- in "if...then" phrases, which in Chinese don't always follow the logic English speakers would expect). The book also has very good notes on culture. Not surprisingly, the book puts some emphasis on on business vocabulary (terms like general manager, marketing department, products, etc.), but a lot of the dialogues (such as discussing where to go out this evening, or talking with the cab driver about which ring road to take) are broader in scope. Each chapter begins with a dialogue in Chinese -- characters at the top of the page, pinyin below, with a pinyin-English glossary close at hand. Then the author goes into exploration of many of the vocabulary/usage issues in the dialogue. It's a little similar to the Assimil model, except that the usage notes come after the dialogue, instead of being integrated as notes attached to it. Compared to my Assimil Chinese book (Le Chinois sans Peine), Kuo's book is much more current. For some reason, the book doesn't show on Amazon, though two other books in the series (a Workbook, and a second intermediate volume) do. The only place I could find it was from the publisher, Cheng & Tsui in Boston, and the bad news was that the price with shipping came to $84. That almost kept me from buying the book, but I'm glad I did. (The price does include a disk with a substantial amount of oral content.) Edited by Opensecret on 29 February 2012 at 6:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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