New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook and Audio CD Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4

Product: New Practical Chinese Reader (Whole Set)
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1, and 4 Audio CDs
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 2, and 4 Audio CDs
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 3, and 4 Audio CDs
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 4, and 5 Audio CDs
By Zhang Kai (Author), Liu Shehui (Author), Chen Xi (Author), Zuo Shandan (Author), Shi Jiawei (Author), Liu Xun (Compiler)
Publisher: Beijing Language & Culture University Press (June 2004)
Language: Chinese (contemporary simplified characters, pinyin phonetic symbol, Mandarin; from textbook 2 all texts in traditional complex characters are also provided), and English translation
Textbook in a larger 8 x 11 format

The long-awaited revised edition of the popular Practical Chinese Reader series are finally available both in Textbook and Audio CDs! New Practical Chinese Reader is a series of Chinese textbooks compiled at the beginning of the new millennium for the purpose of teaching Chinese to native English speakers or those who use English as their principal second language. It aims to develop the learner's communicative ability in Chinese by learning language structures, functions and related cultural knowledge as well as by training their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The first four volumes, consisting of fifty lessons, are for beginners and pre-intermediate level learners. This set of textbooks is designed for overseas students who either take Chinese as an elective or major in the language for a period of three years, studying about one lesson a week, or one volume a semester. It can also be used by autonomous learners.

Practical Chinese Reader has been published in numerous editions since 1981 and has been adopted as a textbook by Chinese language educators and learners worldwide during the last two decades. The characters appearing in the lesson of Practical Chinese Reader (Palanca, Ding Yun and Gubo, among others), have accompanied two generations of students of different nationalities during their study of beginning Chinese. The teaching of Chinese as a second language has changed greatly during the last twenty years as a result of the experience accumulated by the many teachers of the language, both inside and outside China. We hope that this new teaching material will be able to make original contributions to the teaching of Chinese language in a number of areas.

New Teaching Material, New concepts

More and more Chinese language teachers advocate the idea that the fundamental goal of language teaching is to cultivate the learner's communicative ability in the target language. What is taught must be determined by students' needs and must enable them to learn creatively, gradually strengthening their motivation and sense of achievement. We must create a synthesis of all pedagogical schools, ranging from the grammar-translation method to the communicative approach. We should both emphasize the communicative function and also obtain a firm grasp of language structure. We should allow students to gain grounding in the four basic skills by means of a large number of drills and exercises while also mastering the necessary grammatical knowledge and rules for word and sentence formation. The study of pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, and speech are the foundation of linguistic communication. The only way that we can make the learning process easier and smoother is by emphasizing the principle of moving from the simple to the complex and from the easy to the difficult, progressing gradually as we constantly review what has come before. Finally, language teaching materials must help students understand the culture and society of the target language so that they can use the target language more effectively. The above are basic concepts that guided us while writing New Practical Chinese Reader.

The layout of volumes one to four of New Practical Chinese Reader

Text This section supplies the topics and scenes of each lesson. For the most part, volumes one and two use dialogue form, facilitating audio lingual practice and providing an overall grounding in the reading and writing of elementary Chinese. The pronunciation section in lessons one to six emphasizes the PINYIN test, while lessons seven to fourteen focus on Chinese characters, which, however, have Pinyin written beneath them. In the second volume, Pinyin disappears, and there are only tone marks. From the third volume onward, tone marks are no longer used. In this way, learners gradually free themselves from Pinyin.

New Words: This part of each lesson analyzes the morphemes that form new words with the aim of improving learners' comprehension and memory. At the same time, students can master the use of new words by practicing them in phrases. Supplementary words can be learned according to the learners' individual abilities.

Notes: For the most part, notes contain explanations of new words, develop grammatical points taught previously, or introduce necessary cultural background. English translations are provided to help students comprehend sentences containing grammar that will be dealt with in later lessons.

Conversation Practice, Drills and Practice: By practicing phrases, doing pattern drills, and taking part in dialogues and communicative exercises, students can move successfully from mechanical exercises to proficient interaction.

Reading Comprehension and Paraphrasing: Exercises of this kind ensure the review of some of the sentence patterns and lexical items already taught, thereby developing the students' discourse abilities in both oral and written forms. From the second volume on, the contents of reading texts are expanded so as to strengthen the students' reading comprehension.

Phonetics and Pronunciation Drills: In view of the peculiarities of Chinese pronunciation and the special difficulties it presents to foreign learners with English as their mother tongue, the text focuses on the principle features of the Chinese pronunciation system, phonetics and spelling rules. Students can gradually achieve a good foundation in pronunciation by doing the exercises for spelling, the four tones, sound discriminations, tone discriminations, tone sandhi, tone combinations, practice on disyllabic and polysyllabic words, and reading classroom expressions.

Grammar: The grammar explanations take into account the special features of the Chinese language and the difficulties encountered by native speakers of English in learning them. They do not attempt to treat Chinese grammar comprehensively but articulate the most important grammatical structures and rules for sentence formation. Each volume has two review lessons that help learners review the grammatical points taught earlier.

Characters: The text first introduces character components, later combining them to form characters. Rules for constructing and writing characters are also given to facilitate the learning of Chinese writing.

Culture Note: At first, culture notes in the English language are provided so that students can gain insight into culture information related to their language studies. As learners' Chinese proficiency improves, culture notes are incorporated more and more into the Chinese text.

Tags: spoken Chinese, Chinese conversation, Mandarin, Putonghua