Details

The Setting Sail with Chinese is a set of Chinese textbookscentered on vocabulary learning. The elementary level consists of two volumes,whichis suitable for teenage and adult learners both at home and abroad who havemastered about 500 core words. This set of textbooks can be used as aspecialized textbook for vocabulary courses, a self-study book for students,and teaching resources for teachers.

Thisset of textbooks takes the elementary vocabulary in the ChineseProficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education as the reference standard.By systematically sorting out the vocabulary items one by one and analyzing therelationships among related words, 1,500 words are carefully selected as themain entries. The content of the two volumes is arranged around these 1,500main words. There are a total of 30 units in the two volumes, with 50 new wordsin each unit, which are divided into two parts. Each part includes threemodules: word presentation, word explanation, and consolidation exercises. Theword explanation part contains the pinyin, part of speech, typicalcollocations, typical example sentences, and related expansions of the targetwords. For polysemous words, the core meanings are selected and presented itemby item.

1. ClearPositioning and Strong Relevance: Focusing on vocabulary learning, it carefullyselects target words, scientifically screens word meanings, and meticulouslysets up typical contexts, which helps learners deeply understand the meaningsof words and fully master their usages.

2. Scientificand Reasonable Content Arrangement: It effectively balances the relationshipbetween depth and difficulty. Based on learners’ cognitive abilities andlearning patterns, while controlling the difficulty of the meanings andcollocation examples of target words, it tries to comprehensively display thecombinational and paradigmatic relations of target words as much as possible.This enables learners to achieve in-depth learning of target words and helpsthem master basic vocabulary more quickly and solidly.

3. AppropriateExpansion to Improve Learning Efficiency through Word Relevance: During theexplanation of target words, it appropriately expands on content that has aparadigmatic relation with the target words. For example, from the word “办公室”(office), it brings out wordslike “教室”(classroom), “休息室”(restroom), and “会议室”(meetingroom). This helps learners perceive the word-formation rules of Chinese, learnto draw inferences from one instance, and obtain a magic weapon for rapidlyincreasing their vocabulary.

4. Novelin Form and Powerful in Function: On the left side of each page of the textbookis the teaching content presentation area, which shows the meanings and usagesof target words. On the right side is the blank functional area. Teachers canuse this area as a preparation zone for lesson planning and flexibly expandrelevant learning content according to students’ proficiency levels. Studentscan use this area as a note-taking zone to record the expanded content inclass, their personal learning difficulties, and so on.

Su Xiangli, Doctor of Literature, is an associateprofessor and postgraduate supervisor at Beijing Language and CultureUniversity(BLCU). Her research mainly focuses on Chinese lexicology, lexicaltypology, contrastive linguistics, and international Chinese languageeducation. Professor Su has presided over several research projects, includingthose supported by the National Social Science Fund of China, the Humanitiesand Social Sciences Project of the Ministry of Education, and key projects ofthe Center for Language Education and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education.She has also participated in more than ten research projects at various levels,such as key projects supported by the National Social Science Fund and majorprojects of research bases for humanities and social sciences under theMinistry of Education. Meanwhile, she has published more than 30 academicpapers and served as the only editor, the chief editor or the co-editor in thecompilation of multiple textbooks and dictionaries.

It is recommended to be used as a specializedvocabulary textbook independently, an auxiliary textbook for comprehensivecourses and other skill courses, or a textbook for students to study on theirown.

15 units, with each unit taking 2 to 4 class hours