Re: "Kanji in Context" - Chinese equivalent?

Dylan Sung wrote:

"Mike Wright" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:12l10ft8qte6ta3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dylan Sung wrote:

"abd08" <dejaonly@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1162837254.508310.81970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi All,

Does anyone know of a book similar to Kanji in Context but for

There are a number of books called "Kanji in Context", and a fair few people here who've never heard of it. Would you like to say what in "K.in.C." such a great book?

And how far along are you with the spoken language?

Mandarin? If the book also has the non-simplified versions for
reference, that would be a bonus.

There are a number of Chinese (Mandarin) readers by John Defrancis which are in my opinion quite good for learning hanzi by exposure. Between 10 - 16 hanzi (depending on which volumes you get) are introduced, with their pronunciation in pinyin, and meanings in English, then there may be character compounds created from these characters and characters which have previously been introduced. They then are used in many, and I stress many, small text passages for the student see how they are used. In the red coloured books that I have, the Beginning Chinese Reader I&II, Intermediate Chinese Reader I&II, and Advanced Chinese reader, each level introduces around 400 characters, and the repetoire of 1200 character and many many thousands of compounds derived from them gives the reader a fairly good foundation for reading basic Chinese. Explanation of grammar occur when and where needs, but I feel for someone who doens't already speak a Chinese dialect, tuition and guidance from a teacher would be preferable. If you are new to Chinese, then you may need other texts for padding out the grammar.

I agree about the DeFrancis readers. They're all in traditional characters, though, as far as I know. (I think that any serious student

The main texts are in traditional characters, however, at the end of each level (Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced) there is a section for you to learn a number of simplified character equivalents to some of the characters introduced in each lesson. This is probably the bonus the OP wanted.
There is a two book set by the late Helen T. Lin which gives both traditional and simplified versions of a text and it's pinyin equivalent too. I've given them to my sister, so I can't recall much from them.

is better off learning the traditional forms first. It's pretty easy to go to the simplified forms from there, but perhaps not so easy to go in the other direction.)

And, of course, there are the DeFrancis Mandarin texts, Beginning Chinese, Intermediate Chinese, and Advanced Chinese. There are student versions, with grammar explanations in English and teacher versions, all in characters. The vocab may be a bit out of date, but the grammar exercises are great.

Yes, there are several sets, the red ones I mentioned above, then there is a green set, and a blue set. I can't remember offhand, but one set is purely in pinyin.

I should have mentioned that the student text is all Pinyin. Those are the green ones. The "Character Text for..." ones are blue.

When I was teaching from them, my student had one set, and he used the blue ones in class. I had to use the green ones, because my tones weren't as good as his, and I didn't want to confuse him. We went through all 8 volumes over about a two-year period. He had been through part of "Beginning Chinese" with a native Mandarin speaker several years before, and he could read Japanese pretty well.

My tones got a lot better, too.

The organization of the whole package is excellent. Things aren't just thrown together as seems to be the case with some other texts that I've looked at.

Yes, some work clearly went into them. It helped me learn to read Chinese without a doubt.

What better testimony could anyone want?

--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
.

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