Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition
by William McNaughton
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Book Summary Information
Author: William McNaughtonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-15
ISBN: 0804835098
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Book Reviews of Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition
Book Review: A fantastic aid
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are a BEGINNER OF CHINESE please read my entire post it may prove extremely useful to you.
Basically this book and all Chinese books must be used along with other aids in order to achieve proficiency. The book its self is excellent quality and good composition but if you truly wish to be proficient in reading and writing Chinese it will require more resources than one book.
This book is a great start and great resource to reading and writing but you will also need a good dictionary to see all the ways these characters are used together, and on top of that a grammar book and some audio guides for pronunciation and verbal skills.
Chinese words typically are two or more characters many times four and sometimes more the four character sets are like expressions usually called idioms, both the two and four character sets are extremely important to your comprehension of Chinese if you wish to be fluent.
Also you have to ask yourself if you wish to learn simplified or traditional Chinese that depends on where you will use it. Simplified it used by the mainland aka china and traditional is used by Hong Kong, Taiwan, and many Chinese communities outside of china such as United States.
You will also need to determine which spoken language to learn, if your business will be on the mainland (excluding Hong Kong) or Taipei Taiwan then you should learn to speak Mandarin but if you business will mostly be in Hong Kong or America then most of those Chinese will speak a dialect of Cantonese. Many beginners may not know the difference but Mandarin and Cantonese are less dialects and more like different languages being unintelligible.
After all this if you decide to go with simplified Chinese and Mandarin accordingly then I can recommend some books and sites that might be of great aid to you, they are as follows:
Reading and Writing Chinese: Simplified character edition (book I'm reviewing)
Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar
Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary
Chinese-English Frequency Dictionary: A Study Guide to Mandarin Chinese's 500 Most Frequently Used Words
Those books are good for a student that studies simplified characters. All four are very useful and important.
for students of traditional characters these books will be suited well enough.
Reading and Writing Chinese: A comprehensive guide to the Chinese writing system
(note that this book is really just the Traditional character version of the book I'm reviewing.)
Chinese Characters A Genealogy and Dictionary
Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar, because this book shows most of its examples and both simplified and traditional Chinese.
If you study Simplified Characters make sure your dictionary is in simplified as well, and with Traditional Characters make sure its in Traditional.
note theres more dictionaries available for Traditional than for Simplified but either way you should be able to find some good dictionaries. A matter of fact I would personally recommend having two good dictionaries for good measure.
The sites assuming they're still working:
http://www.chinese-tools.com/
http://www.zhongwen.com/
http://www.chinese-lessons.com/
chinese-lessons.com seems to be particularly good for pronunciation guide and absolute beginner.
After you have built a decent knowledge-base of Chinese characters and words then you may wish to buy some Chinese comic books to encourage your reading skills. Personally I like Japanese comics ( Manga ) so what I do is order Chinese language versions of Japanese Manga. Chinese version manga are typical written in Traditional characters, mainly from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
I also recommend watching Chinese movies if study Mandarin make sure they're in mandarin if Cantonese make sure they are in Cantonese, many movies have both options from the menu.
Do your best and don't forget to have fun
Summary of Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition
This is a revised third edition of Tuttle's Reading & Writing Chinese.
This new edition focuses on the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). All 800 characters prescribed for Level A are covered here, and the 1400+ Levels B and C characters are covered concisely.
All of the prescribed vocabulary for Levels A-C of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi is included among the example compounds. Knowledge of the 2,200+ characters and 5,253+ vocabulary items covered will equip students to take the test at either the Basic or the Elementary-Intermediate standard. Success in the top band of the Basic standard is sufficient to enter college in China.
This new edition focuses on the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). All 800 characters prescribed for Level A are covered here, and the 1400+ Levels B and C characters are covered concisely.
All of the prescribed vocabulary for Levels A-C of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi is included among the example compounds. Knowledge of the 2,200+ characters and 5,253+ vocabulary items covered will equip students to take the test at either the Basic or the Elementary-Intermediate standard. Success in the top band of the Basic standard is sufficient to enter college in China.
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