This book is part of the series of Chinese for English-Speakers, which include three textbooks (Primary, Intermediate, Advanced), companioned by three workbooks (Primary, Intermediate, Advanced) and a primary character book.
Primary Textbook consists of two parts: Phonetics and texts. In Phonetics, we will first learn the general table of the phonetics, the rule of Pinyin and then practice Pinyin. In the book, Exercises 1 to 5 are designed to practice vowels, consonants and accents; Exercises 6 to 8 are for useful words, expressions and simple sentences to make the learner get familiar to the basic knowledge of Chinese phonetics. In the textbook there are 22 lessons, each has two theme-related short passages available for classroom teaching. The grammar of this level is mainly about four kinds of predicate sentences and five interrogative sentences. We will discuss the main sentence structure as the attribute, adverbial (modifier) and complement, etc., and the combined or complicated sentences, e.g., the comparative sentences and the sentences with "把" or "被". On vocabulary, we will begin with the number, pronoun, interrogative, location words, and then the common verb, adjective, adverb and proposition. Since the classifier (or measure word) is always regarded as one of the most difficult problems in Chinese language teaching and learning for an English speaker, we have changed the usual detached teaching method of classifier-learning and, instead, focused on teaching the classifier (or measure word) in a condensed way, e.g., the lesson We're Singing the Song of Classifiers together with Please Tell Me the Classifiers in this textbook may impress you somehow as funny and functional as well. Totally in Primary Textbook, 90% of the words are A-level words. And in order to make students learn or remember words easily, we combine the similar words in a group (e.g., 上午、下午、晚上;哥哥、姐姐、弟弟、妹妹、母亲、父亲) or show the synonyms and antonyms in the same text (e.g., 多少、大小、远近、新旧、上下、左右、买卖、存取) , etc.
As for Primary Workbook, we focus on the practice of grammar and sentences. There are lots of exercises on "Substitution", "Make a sentence by using the following words in a right order", and "Reading the following sentences" to make students get familiar with the words or expressions and sentences in the text. And there are also some dialogues designed for students' imitation. Nevertheless, the beginners shall enhance their character-writing practice. Hence the Character-Writing Workbook is designed for the beginners to practice writing about 5 to 7 Chinese characters everyday, i.e., 25 to 35 characters per week (from Monday to Friday). Generally speaking, the Beginner's Textbook is designed for about 4 to 6 hours' study per week for about one year's teaching.
Generally speaking, the Beginner's Textbook is designed for about 4 to 6 hours' study per week for about one year's teaching.
-- The Author
