Integrated Chinese 4th Edition, Volume 1 Character Workbook (Simplified and Traditional Chinese) (English and Chinese Edition)

Finished and I now know basic mandarin

New book as promised, but was bent on the spine.

This book is very good and is a great choice for someone serious about learning Mandarin for self-instruction. If you have ever studied the Japanese language, these books are very similar to the excellent GENKI book series. The lessons revolve around a group of international students learning Mandarin.You can download the audio for the lessons for this book and I highly recommend it. For me, I can only learn the proper Chinese tones using audio. Reading the Pinyin English text has never been useful to me to learn correct pronunciations. The audio is broken up into "bite sized" audio files so it's easy to find and listen to the audio for a particular lesson.The key to Mandarin is to learn the fundamentals. After that you will be able to venture out and learn Mandarin by other methods such as watching movies, using a tutor, etc. For me, I have been studying "Listen and Repeat" Mandarin lessons for a few years. But, I realized my progress is limited because I never learned the fundamentals. That's why I purchased this book.This book uses Chinese characters from the first lesson. It's painful, but it's necessary.The bottom line is if you are looking for a solid book to learn the basics of Mandarin I think this is an excellent choice. I only gave it 4 stars because the audio doesn't perfectly match the text. They need to do a revision for the audio part.

If I counted them correctly, in this book, you learn 405 characters (including 40 basic radicals and 10 numerals).What I like about this fourth edition is that for traditional characters, it follows the traditional character set and stroke orders taught by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. No disrespect to Hong Kong but their traditional characters sometimes are different from the ones used in Taiwan and since they speak a lot more Mandarin in Taiwan than they do in Hong Kong, it just makes sense to learn Taiwan's traditional character set.I'm learning both simplified and traditional characters. There are some characters that look exactly the same between simplified vs. traditional, however, when the stroke order or the number of strokes is different between the PRC standard and the ROC standard, the workbook highlights the differences.

This is my fifth language to learn. In a short time the Chinese language (read, write and speak) is finally less of a mystery to me. This is not a self learning book so don't expect it to be. This book is required at my college for learning Chinese. If you can self teach yourself, cudos to you, however without the proper guidance this book is only going to a head butting challenge. Users of the print edition have access to audio by following the simple directions in the Preface. You will need the audio to get the tones correct. Learning other languages is having better communication skills and makes you a more valuable person.

Felt like this book was helpful in showing grammar structures and how typical sentences are put together. Felt like the book wasn't as helpful for learning vocabulary, but that's usually drill and drill anyways. Felt like the book works to be relevant to students of this generation and that it was fairly successful. All and all, I would recommend this book for someone trying to learn Chinese. Good luck!

Online reviews talk about this book coming with an audio cd. Great! I would be glad to pay this cost of the book, expecting the CD with it. But when the book came there was no CD but there are references to a website where you can get a CD for $25. That was a shock after the initial price. The lessons appear to be excellent otherwise. Just not sure it is worth the added cost on top of an already high price.

This is really the best textbook to teach yourself Mandarin for sure. A must buy for anyone serious about learning. My only complaint is they expose you to only 40 radicals before chapter 1. I recommend learning at least 100 radicals before even beginning to memorize 1 character. It will help you memorize characters tremendously.

CAME IN GREAT CONDITION WORDS ON PAGE ARE CLEAR EASY TO READ WILL POST UPDATE AFTER GETTING INTO SOME SERIOUS STUDYING TIL THEN, 再见大家

I got this product after just a few weeks and it came very quickly. Im very thankful for this purchase.

all is very good

I had to get this textbook for a class but for the high price tag you'd think it could include an answer key or that it would come in a cover that isn't going to destroy itself in my bag on the way to uni. If you're getting this for a class it works fine, otherwise it is completely unusable.

Excelentes libros para estudiar el idioma. Con muchas imágenes, y muy práctico. Vale la pena el set completo. El audio se baja directamente desde la página de la editorial, de forma gratuita.