Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #339790 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

HIGHLY recommended for beginners and current students
As a student of the Chinese language at a major American university I have reviewed several different Chinese language courses, and found none more concise, academic, or effective than Ms. Scurfield's Teach Yourself course. Contrary to that portrayed in another posted review of this book, the tapes are an excellent resource: the Mandarin spoken is very standard, the pronunciations are clear and precise, and the lessons are generally very thorough and apply directly to the lessons in the book. I began my Chinese studies with this book, and merely using the tapes from this course alone, PhD students in the Chinese department at the university said my pronunciation sounded almost like that of a native speaker. Having looked at the book they agreed that the course is easy to understand and concise, yet complete and intelligent. With some time and effort I believe one can develop a strong foundation in Mandarin Chinese through this course alone. I also highly recommended it for beginning high school and university Chinese language students as a supplementary resource.

A good beginning book
I like this textbook for the most part, although the tapes have a couple of problems for absolute beginners who have no Chinese friends they can go to for help. The 1st tape goes into detail with Chinese sounds, but there is no way of knowing which sound corresponds to which letter in pinyin. This is maddening, since you can't easily figure out how to pronoune written words. There is some tone practice, which is much clearer. The best part about the tapes is that the speakers start out slowly, and speed up to normal by the end of the 2 hours of lessons. It really helps you ease into rapid-fire (i.e., normal) Chinese. I'm a college foreign language teacher by trade, and I have to say that I like the simple, clear grammatical explanations (and believe me, I've seen some real disasters). Chinese grammar isn't too complex, but it's very different from English; this text presents grammar in a logical manner, and incorporates the grammar covered into that chapter's dialogue. The setup is well thought out, and the vocabulary is useful. Although no text can replace a live teacher, this book is a good way to start with Chinese, especially if you have no one to take lessons from.

A very good book for beginners
I liked this book very much. The basics of Chinese sentence structure and grammar are explained very clearly and in a very illustrative way. In many places the author comments and explains about the "balance" of the sentence - which is very important in speaking fluent Chinese. In fact, I owe much of my understanding and quicker learning of the language to this book. The vocabulary is very useful, although in some chapters the number of new words is a little big. The tapes are OK but nothing beats a native speaker to practice on. One major fault in my opinion is the use of simplified characters. It's true that they are the ones that are used in China today, but not in Taiwan and not in Hong Kong. It is easier to study the simplefied after having learned the tradional ones than vice versa