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Good textbook for Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6826 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes  Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 1 of 12 19 September 2011 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everybody!
Recently I have decided to learn Mandarin. I have been looking at a few materials,and would need some advice. For learning Hanzi I am going to use Remembering the Hanzi. I want to supplement that with with a dictionary, but I think I should stick to one method and one book while getting a basis for the Hanzi, as more would just confuse me. Now I am looking for a good textbook that will give me a good grounding in Chinese grammar and allow me to explore the language by myself, in an immersion environment. It should include Pinyin, traditional and simplified Hanzi. I am also looking for a good, thorough grammar book to complement my textbook. Now I have been looking at some books and I am really confused. People swear by the Integrated Chinese series, but there are too many books and they are too expensive for my taste. I have also looked at Beginner's Chinese by Yong Ho, some people swear by it, others hate it. I have also read that Teach Yourself Chinese is a very good book, but I made the experience that Teach Yourself books are rather mediocre and simple, and so I am confused. What do you think? What can you recommend me? Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 12 19 September 2011 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't like the Teach Yourself Chinese. There is a lot of English in the recordings plus not all the dialogs are recorded. It also has the usual TY shortcomings.
I think the Assimil course is good overall and I'm glad I did it, but I now find the voices of the actors and the editing of the dialogs irritating. The organization and the dialogs are at the usual Assimil standards, though, so I still think it's a useful course. I'm using the old Colloquial Chinese course by Pollard and T'ung. I really love this book. The dialogs are really well put together and actually much funnier than Assimil. There are more explicit grammar notes and there are a lot of practice sentences based on the grammar notes that are really useful. To top it all off, there are 5 hours of freely available audio for the book here, all in Chinese. The voices are really nice to listen to also and the acting is super. So overall this is the book I would recommend for beginners. It's all in pinyin, which is a plus of you are learning characters separately. There are character versions available, too, in simplified and traditional. Edited by newyorkeric on 19 September 2011 at 4:53pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vykis92 Groupie LithuaniaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5320 days ago 68 posts - 71 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 12 19 September 2011 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have Hippocrenes Beginner's Chinese and I think it's awesome, it doesn't move to fast and gives solid grounding.
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| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7126 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 4 of 12 20 September 2011 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Hippocrene is Yong Ho's Chinese course.
Tuttle has a new series of books out or in preparation by a Cornelius C. Kubler that are getting good Amazon reviews. Here is a link to one of them: http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Spoken-Chinese-Introduction-List ening/dp/0804840156/ref=sr_1_78?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=13164809 79&sr=1-78 Personally, I like the Living Language Ultimate courses, but the Chinese one is very thin on the ground in the Hanzi department. OP, if money is an issue, have you looked at the FSI offerings? They are free - no strings attached. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6826 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 5 of 12 20 September 2011 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot for the answers!
Money is not that much an issue, but I need one or at most two textbooks. The reason for this is, I know myself, if I get too many textbooks I will get confused to wich method to use, and it will slow my process dowon. I think I will get the Old Colloquial Chinese and Yong Hos book. What I am wondering is: I want to both read and write simplified and traditional Hanzi, but if which edition should I get if I have to chose between simplified and traditional? I am more a Mainland China guy, so the answer would be simplified, but I am scared that I will have a very hard time with traditional! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6826 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 6 of 12 20 September 2011 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry for the double post. I was wondering, how good is Assimil Chinese? Are Volumes 1 and 2 enough to make one a textbook independent learner?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6444 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 12 20 September 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an ambiguous question - do you mean prepare one to independently learn using textbooks, or to learn independent of the use of textbooks (that is, without them)? For Chinese, I'd say you'd need more material than Assimil 1 and 2, whether or not it's textbooks, before you're comfortable with using unmodified native material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6826 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 8 of 12 20 September 2011 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe my question needs a little clarification. I was wondering, if I could keep studying according to the AJATT Method, with native material but heavy SRSing and looking up sentences and words, after Assimil 1 & 2
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