| New Practical Chinese Reader, Textbook Vol. 1 |  | Authors: Zhang Kai, Liu Shehui, Chen Xi, Zuo Shandan, Shi Jiawei
Creator: Liu Xun
Publisher: Beijing Language & Culture Univ Pr
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.50
You Save: $7.45 (37%)
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 68050
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 242
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 8.3 x 0.5
ISBN: 7561910401
Dewey Decimal Number: 428
EAN: 9787561910405
ASIN: 7561910401
Publication Date: June 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Brand New Book; Never Been Used! May or may not include supplements such as infotrac or other web access codes. Fast & reliable delivery. Exceptional customer service. Standard shipping is USPS Standard Mail. We ship expedited orders by UPS Ground.
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Product Description
The first volume of the long-awaited revised edition of the popular Practical Chinese Reader series are finally available! This completely new edition (it will encompass six volumes in 70 lessons when completed) takes the student from an absolute beginner to an intermediate level, approximately 3 years of higher-level classroom instruction. The text follows the story of Ding Libo (the son of Gubo and Ding Yun from the first edition) and other international students as they live in China, learning about Chinese culture and society as they learn contemporary Mandarin. Emphasizing the basic skills of reading, writing (simplified characters), speaking, and listening, with supplementary exercises, many illustrations, charts, and in a larger 8 x 11 format.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
A big improvement October 19, 2008
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.
 It never came... October 18, 2008
I ordered this book months ago and it still hasn't arrived yet. I ordered other books at the same time and they arrived in August...
Best for College Students September 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I first bought this book from a university bookstore when beginning to learn Chinese to adopt from China. The lessons are simple, clear, challenging, nicely laid out, and progress nicely. If one bothers to do all the included work with characters, one learns to read them instead of being chained to pinyin (most of my fellow adopting moms seemed in awe of me even attempting to learn the characters, but it really is my favorite part... and what is reading chinese with out reading charcters?)
What I would like to add to the reviews here (and thankyou to the reviewer who pointed out all the various materials, including teachers manuals etc needed to actually properly use all the workbook material: it is true), is that this really is focussed on University Students. I learned how to ask how many students in a faculty, say what my major is, if the teachers were chinese or foreign etc. The characters meet in dormitories and cafeterias and have discussions with professors. I daresay I would have found all this wonderfully pertinent 20 plus years ago when I was a college student.
As a mom to a toddler, whose chinese I would like to keep, and who wants basic vocab for speaking on a daily basis with other kids and parents around the home, it is frustrating and seems very disconnected to what I need to know. I am currently making my way through various children's books with a few of the other excellent books available: Oxford English Chinese dictionary: learn to look up by pinyin and character radical and stroke #, and William MCNaughton and Li Ying's "Reading & Writing Chinese" which is an index of chinese characters and stroke order. This together with having a native chinese speaker come into the home to help with real-life vocab has turned me away from continuing with these "I am an arts major" books.
Anyways, this particular series is undoubtedly excellent, but not for everyone, being so college-topic based.
One criticism of an otherwise excellent series July 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have been studying this series in class and privately for 3 + years now, and I am currently in book 4. The only wish I have is that I find the use of mainly a caligraphy-type font, while visually attractive, makes learning the characters a little harder, because many web sites, and newspapers use a different more "square", block style font. For me, it makes learning the characters harder, because one is more likely to run into the other style font on public signs ( I was in China for 20 days last summer) and in newspapers.
So, if I were to redesign the book, I would mix up the style of the fonts to help the student get used to learning the characters as they appear in a variety of fonts.
Otherwise, this is probably the best set of books for learning with a teacher or in a class. Also, the DVDs are excellent and well worth getting along with the CDs.
 A very good language book March 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have started my Chinese studies from an other language book during a language course, but after a time we have changed to New Practical Chinese Reader, which was far more better. Maybe those who have studied English as foreign language like me agree that this is a good book. Its main story is about some students studying in Beijing, and the lessons are about their life. From the very first lesson there are enjoyable conversations and useful phrases, so we can have the impression of a rapid progression which is important for guarding the motivation. The lessons have good structures and a good balance of texts and exercises, each lessons contains model phrases and explanation for the stroke order. It is easy to follow the instructions. There are not too much new words in one lesson, so one can manage to study them lesson by lesson.
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