New Practical Chinese Reader, Textbook Vol. 1

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5 Reviews

1. This book was in excellent shape. New no marks in it at all. Never Cracked open I do believe it was still in a wrapper if I’m not mistaken. Thank You.

2. As a textbook, The New Practical Chinese Reader leaves much to be desired. The format of each chapter is as follows: Dialogue, vocabulary, random non-concise grammar points, some hanzi information, and a one paragraph culture tid-bit. I feel that where the textbook is lacking is in it’s breakdown of the grammar. Dialogues are given but very little it said of actual syntactic structure as well as why and how things are said in Chinese. Occasionally, you are given an asterisk that tells you about a phrase. Also, there is very little that is ever said in regards to Chinese culture which is very important when learning a language. Culture gives back ground and answers many “whys?” to a language. I feel the textbook could have contained more information.

3. This textbook is the best book out there. However, that doesn’t say much when there are so few textbooks for chinese. In comparison to many french/spanish/italian and other romantic languages, the textbooks available for them are of better quality.

   This product is good and at the moment is still the best you can get however be warned, even with instruction which is where I use it at Northeastern University, chinese is not easy. Only buy it if you can at the minimum have a teacher, and even with a teacher, office hours or extra help is definitely recommended.

   This is the best you can get out there today but there are still way too many flaws such as it being hard to understand and the large vocabulary needed. I personally wish the speed was half as much so volume 1 should have twice as many lessons after the first few lessons about pinyin for the amount of material it covered. If the speed was the same as the first few lessons, this would have been great. However, it goes quite fast and will be daunting especially since there’s 4 volumes of this textbobok and it is hard to finish just 1.

4. This is the first in a relatively new series of Chinese textbooks produced in mainland China. It has an excellent mix of conversation, culture, reading and writing. The text emphasizes communication, starting with day to day situations.

   I have studied Chinese off and on for a few years, using many different texts, but I keep forgetting when I don’t continue studying, so I am using the book as review. I chose it on the recommendation of my teacher. This text is good for me, but it is also good for total beginners. In fact, my teacher chose it for herself because it works with students of many different levels.

   The writing aspect is particularly good, and quite different from other texts I have used. Characters are introduced right away, and the components of the characters are emphasized. It’s like teaching the ‘alphabet’ of parts that are used to construct characters, and the logic of it. One point to make is that the characters used are primarily in simplified form as used in mainland China, although the traditional forms are usually given too.

5. I first used the Practical Chinese Reader series in 1985 as a college textbook. The original books were green, fat, and printed on the cheapest of paper. Nonetheless, they were an excellent Chinese textbook series.

   The new PCR’s have kept the good points of the earlier readers and have improved upon them significantly. These improvements are the format, the quality of the dialogues, the references at the end of the book, and a first-rate 4-skills pedagogical approach. The authors of this book really do expect you to learn to speak, read, and write Chinese.

   As a home study tool for a first time learner, the books are not great because they depend on having a university level instructor or advanced high school teacher to get you through the difficult parts. One of the earlier reviewers here noted this problem as the book suddenly morphs from pinyin to kanji. The workbooks are also superfluous and not useful. The CD’s are a complete ripoff. There is a plethora of audio material available for free on the Internet.

   Home learners should check out some of the excellent videocam Chinese lessons offered on the Internet, most of which come with their own textbooks, which are cheaper than PCR.[...] Their textbook was comparable to PCR in quality.

   Bottom line: excellent textbook, shoddy ancillary materials, great for structured classroom, poor for home learning.