Chinese (Mandarin) textbooks for beginners

On 2002-03-28 02:55, AbacusTrans wrote:

Ni hao



(I hope I got that right )



I am looking for high-standard, professional textbooks on Chinese for beginners (or Mandarin, I should say).



I am not interested in those phrase books that one sees in bookstores, but in reliable textbooks (preferably with audio tapes or CDs for the proper pronunciation and pitch). In addition, they should use the proper characters from the start (rather than presenting the lessons in phonetic transcription).



I have a fairly solid background in Japanese, so getting up to speed on these characters won\'t be too difficult anymore.



So, if you know of any good books, please post them here (with the ISBN number, if possible). I am sure that this would also be of interest to many others.

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-03-28 02:57 ]





Here is a link to China Books and Periodicals, Inc. They have many Chinese text books for beginners and intermediate learners of Chinese.



http://www.chinabooks.com/ ▲ Collapse

On 2002-04-10 20:26, Daina wrote:

Hi Werner,



I took a beginning Chinese (Mandarin) class, last fall and we used \"Integrated Chinese: Level 1 Part 1, Simplified Character Edition,\" ISBN 0-88727-263-0, by Yao and Liu, published by Cheng & Tsui.

It has dialogues written out both phonetically and in characters. I liked it pretty well as language textbooks go, at least better than the one I bought on my own where the tape ended up having even the explanations in Chinese (I am a total beginner). This one goes through the typical topics such as family, greetings, transportation, appointments, etc. The book also comes with a character workbook, which I did not use, and you can get tapes.



You might also want to check out the following URL (which has the audio files for the dialogues from this book, incidentally):

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm



Let me know if you find anything else useful. I would like to take up Chinese again this spring...when I get that big project off my desk...



Cheers,

Daina





I\'ll look into that. I have also been thinking about the distance-learning courses offered by the Univ. of Toronto: http://learn.utoronto.ca.



You can take courses (fully distance-learning-based), leading up to a certificate in international languages and/or professional translation. ▲ Collapse