Teach Yourself Chinese with CD (Audio) (Teach Yourself (McGraw-Hill))

I bought this book about fourteen months ago when I had no knowledge of Chinese at all, and I just finished it. It is the only Chinese course I have studied, so I don't have much basis for comparison, but I would give the book five stars for achieving its expressed goal of "all-round confidence". I went on holiday to China a couple of months ago and I could manage some simple conversations. When I was listening in on native speakers I could not understand most of what they said, but often I could pick out some of the basic sentence structures they were using. I think this is a fair amount of progress to make with a language as radically different from English as Chinese is.

The course follows the progress of a young English couple in Beijing. She is studying Chinese, he is teaching English. We come across a range of situations such as them being invited to eat with a native family, buying tickets, changing money etc. This format allows for the introduction of a lot of useful day-to-day vocabulary. The dialogues are scripted and recorded in a studio. I would see this as bad in a Spanish or German course, but for me as a complete beginner in Chinese it was nice to be spoon fed with model pronunciation and measured delivery, the speed of which increases gradually as the course progresses. The young couple we are following also speak very fluent Chinese, which gives the dialogues a somewhat surreal flavour considering she at least is supposed to be newly arrived, but it is obviously more important for us as students to hear the language spoken correctly. Actually both the girl (I assumed her part was played by the author but I can't remember if that is stated anywhere) and her boyfriend, who is played by another native English speaker, to my ear have very pleasant accents when speaking Chinese, which is encouraging and helps the student realise that this is an attainable goal. The rest of the actors are Chinese.

Some of the previous reviews have pointed out that the course introduces lots of new vocabulary as it moves forward, which is true. As the blurb on the back of the book says, it "moves at an energetic pace". But this is Chinese, not French. Every word is new and you are going to have to become a bit of a mentalist in order to get anywhere, so I think the pace is realistic. Anyway, the big advantage of studying at home is that you can take as much time over each lesson as you want.

I think the only drawback with this course is the one that is inherent in the book/audio medium, which is that it is basically passive. Having completed the course I feel my language production skills in Chinese are weak compared to my comprehension, so I am going to start lessons with a private tutor. That said, I am completely comfortable with this idea, which I would have found daunting a year ago, and I have a great desire to carry on studying. To sum up, I think this is a great foundation course.

Far too advanced (0/0 people found this helpful)

I imagine the people who made the Teach Yourself range have set criteria for the level of difficulty of these books but out of 6 Teach Yourself language books I've looked at, only 4 have the right level of "good for beginners who don't need everything spelt out for them" (For this, buy the Beginners' version). This one goes way over the head of beginners. As a professional linguist, I can happily learn and absorb the grammar from all the complicated conversations here but, regardless of whether you like a challenge, it's not going to be much use knowing how to ask the age of your friend's children, or about your friend's wife's cooking skills (the first two dialogues of the book) if you still cannot even tell people your name, age, where you're from, and all other basics that give you confidence when you start learning a language and allow you to get by. Bizarrely, the conversations come back to about the right level more than half way through the book with the introduction of the Chinese characters. A lot of Chinese grammar concepts are also explained in short paragraphs without offering many examples so that the reader can get a feel for the new structure or word. I would say this book offers good content for intermediate learners. These Teach Yourself books need to take the lead from the Turkish, Japanese, French, and Spanish versions, which are comprehensive and gradually build up difficulty from complete beginner to basic intermediate by the end of the book. To highlight the inconsistency, the Greek version goes to the opposite extreme and is way too easy and does not cover enough.

excellent!! (4/4 people found this helpful)

This book is the best book that i have found for serious Mandarin Chinese students. But you must be serious about your study because it is not easy and requires alot of practice!

I'm 16 and towards the end of my Chinese GCSE and going onto do AS. At times the book goes over GCSE level which is great if you really want to get to grips of harder structures etc..

The book goes into great explainations all the time and the diologues are clear and understandable. Tones are also explained very well which is very useful! The is also chapters on the chinese writing system which is a must!

The only possible flaw that i have found is that as you go through the book the lists of new vocabulary get quite large! some are over a page of new words! But balance your time and you will not find it a problem.

My chinese teacher said she thought it was abit difficult for a beginner, however if you like a challenge and has the ability to apply your dedication then go for this book! Its the best book out of the 'teach yourself' series!

I'm not sure about previous comments (7/7 people found this helpful)

I feel I need to clear something up: the dialogues ARE recited fully on the CD! And when refering to tones it clearly shows in the book the order in which it is being voiced on the tape, i.e. tone 1 ,tone2 etc.
I believe the CD recording is actually quite good, the only problem being that Chinese is very difficult (although NOT impossible) to pronounce just from listening carefully, with no native instruction.
I gave the book 4 stars because I'm not sure I liked the style of the book- it's different from other TY language books in its presentation. However chinese is a very different language, and certain things are handled particularly well (grammar points and chinese idiom).
I looked at TY Beginners (mandarin) Chinese at a bookshop, and that seemed more my style (in the style of "beginners japanese"), however it lacked a bit in depth.
IT IS ESSENTIAL that you buy the CD with this Book! The words are not pronounced anything like they look.

A very good book for beginners (29/31 people found this helpful)

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

Teach Yourself Chinese with CD (Audio) (Teach Yourself (McGraw-Hill))

Liz Scurfield, Song Lianyi

Reader Reviews:

Great Foundation Course (0/0 people found this helpful)

Far too advanced (0/0 people found this helpful)

excellent!! (4/4 people found this helpful)

I'm not sure about previous comments (7/7 people found this helpful)

A very good book for beginners (29/31 people found this helpful)

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