Talk Chinese Series is the first series on practical colloquial Chinese compiled and developed based on the theory of “Practical Communicative Functions”. It covers ten themes on social communication, life, travel, sports, leisure, shopping, emergency, school, office, and IT and network. By imitating real life scenes of various situations, authentic, lively and practical oral expressions are revealed to allow learners to experience the charm of the Chinese language through lively, interesting and humorous situational conversations, and learn the most commonly used colloquial words, phrases, slang, customary usages, everyday expressions and sentences. In another word, this is a very useful and practical encyclopedia on speaking Chinese. As long as one masters the contents of this series, one can respond fluently with the knowledge and oral expressions learned in whatever situations.
The characteristic of this series lies in its authentic, practical language expression, stresses on colloquialism, liveliness, and modernization of language. It selects high frequency words and the most vivid and authentic oral expressions used in daily life, work and study. One of my American friends who can speak perfect Chinese said to me after reading this series, “Very good. I think some expressions in the books are really typical, which I can’t learn from other places.” This shows that this series has made a breakthrough in Chinese learning materials, and achieved our original intention—that is to introduce the most typical, practical colloquial expressions to our friends who love Chinese, and allow them to use these expressions as soon as they learn them.
Besides, we’ve also included a “related expressions” by listing more expressions and words related to the themes in order to make it convenient for learners to expand their language competency and enlarge their vocabularies.
In addition, to better help learners to know Chinese and the Chinese culture, we’ve set up a column of “Language and Cultural Tips” with the intention to introduce some common usage and grammatical knowledge, common mistakes and point out words and expressions that are easily confused, as well as tips on cultural background of the language. Our goal is not only to help learners learn Chinese expressions, but also get to know the cultural connotations and language knowledge.
We know that learning and practicing is linked together. One can’t reach the goal of learning without practicing, so at the back of each unit we’ve put together some exercises, emphasizing on listening and speaking to assist learners in mastering what they have learned through practice.
