Modern Chinese (Cassette Edition): A Basic Course: Amazon.ca: Peking University: Books

Product Description

Book Description

Superb introduction to modern Mandarin Chinese, on 3 cassettes, with manual. Full explanations, drills throughout — phonetics, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar. Box set.

Ingram

Designed for students, business executives, travelers, and those in need of a working knowledge of Mandarin Chinese, this clearly presented basic course provides a firm grounding in Chinese grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and written characters. Book and 3 cassettes.

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best product out there if you are a serious begginer, April 30 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Modern Chinese (Cassette Edition): A Basic Course (Paperback)

If you are just beginning and truly want to speak it correctly, then you have to get this book and tape series. I used this course for one week and then went to a tutor who was blown away by my pronunciation. You won't find a better product out there if you want correct pronunciation. It could use work on teaching how to write the characters, but otherwise it is great for the beginner.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best material I've found by far for English speakers like me, Jan 20 1998

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alex_colias@mentorg.com (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modern Chinese (Cassette Edition): A Basic Course (Paperback)

Being almost fluent in Spanish (self-taught), I was used to finding good material fairly easily. But with Chinese, it's another story. Why is this so much better than the other stuff out there? First, it recognizes the basic fact that speakers of non-tonal languages will have their biggest problems with the tones, in both the ears & vocal chords. All other materials I have ever seen flatly refuse to cop to this essential problem! They'll start out with the "repeat after the native speaker" routine with full phrases, but without slowly training your ears & throat, it's stupidity. This method systematically breaks it all down into logical components, then slowly builds it up. After so much frustration before, I feel so good about it all now. It made me feel like the first time I read "The Elements of Style" - clear, straightened out, refreshed. Secondly, it integrates the reading and writing of Chinese effortlessly. It's absolutely painless, and adds somethings really practical (for using dictionaries, etc.) and kind of fun. And I myself find it hard to write legibly in English, so it's got to be really simple. The only thing I've found you might want to keep in mind, is to not be put off by their technical descriptions of the basic sounds at the start. Most books cheat a little bit on this stuff (i.e. "sounds like...") and these people don't mess with that. But with the tape it's a no-brainer. And if you feel more comfortable at the start, any little booklet ought to have a more "Englishized" description of the Pinyin romanization.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Could be better, but not a bad starting point, Dec 30 2003

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Jad (TJ) Duwaik - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modern Chinese (CD edition): A Basic Course (Paperback)

I think the other reviews are accurate for the most part. For example, as one other reviewer mentions, this book uses a lot of phonetic terms like "affricative" and "labio" that really frustrated me at first. But using a dictionary, I created a little glossary of all the terms used and as I got to know the terms better, I found the descriptions more helpful than any other source for correct pronunciation. (These descriptions alone are, I think, worth the cost of the book.)

Another reviewer mentions that this book doesn't compare any of these sounds to English equivalents. I think this is done to help the student begin the process of "thinking in Chinese" which, while frustrating at first, probably pays off down the road.

I've used two other books and several Web sites to help me learn Chinese. I don't know if I'd recommend this book by itself, but together with other sources, I think it's invaluable.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars value for money
The book is a western adoption of the 1963 edition of a Basic Course of Chinese for Foreigners, English version. Read more

Published on Feb 23 2001 by a_f_schneider

3.0 out of 5 stars Good text, but a little too old
I bought this book because many reviewers here gave highest rates. But since this book was written in 1971, they use some obsolete words (for example, Chinese people don't... Read more

Published on Feb 8 2000 by K. Okada