Product Review for Mastering Chinese: The complete course for beginners - By Catherine Hua Xiang

Mastering Chinese: The complete course for beginners (Master Languages) (Audio CDS) By Catherine Hua Xiang

Product Description

This new course teaches Mandarin Chinese to a broad range of learners in a modern, structured and engaging way. Its focus is on acquiring basic conversational skills. It also introduces the fascinating script and includes essential grammar, along with interesting cultural insights. This is the complete pack including a book and 2 CDs.

Editorial Reviews

Review
'I've been using this book for about 4 months now, and I must say it is definitely a good book to have especially for beginners like myself! I found it very easy to comprehend, with English translations available for new phrases. Mastering Chinese not only covers reading and writing exercises, but also listening and speaking in the right tones - the CD comes in particularly handy here. The book is very well-structured, covering thoroughly the vital topics such as numbers, introducing oneself, transportations, date/time etc - basically it covers everything you need to know to survive on the streets of China! Its easy-to-grasp approach to the language makes it highly attractive, while its reasonably compact size makes it fit as a travel guide. Would definitely recommend it.' - Kelly Chung, Amazon

'The book guides you throughout, with English, Pinyin and Chinese characters, and youre given tasks to work through using the CD's. It is a great learning source for complete beginners, and even for those who may have known Mandarin before, but are now pretty rusty at it. It sucessfully teaches you to learn to speak well and recognize and write the characters. I can say that using this book, I have gotten A+ in my exams so far! :D Great book! - Nustun, Amazon  .... Read more here

Customer Reviews

Mastering Chinese - a beginners review
By P A Chapman
I am a `mature' student learning Chinese at Bristol University's `Lifelong Learning' evening classes. Catherine Xiang has been my teacher for the past several years, so you may find my comments useful in deciding whether to purchase her new book, "Mastering Chinese" (published by Palgrave Macmillan). There are several self-study beginners' books, the best of the rest being Kan Qian's "Colloquial Chinese" (published 1995), which we used in my first beginners' class and where Catherine Xiang laid down a solid foundation for further study. This new book, as it says on the attractive box, is the complete course for beginners. Catherine takes care to emphasise correct pronunciation of the four tones and introduces Chinese characters right from the beginning. This thorough approach, together with the clear and well-judged phrasing of the accompanying CDs means that you, as the new student, will start reading and speaking understandable Chinese right from the start. Of course you are not expected to recognise the Chinese characters straight away so the romanised "pin yin" gives you a helping hand. The study topics include all the situations that you will encounter during a stay in China, ranging from the simple hello (ni hao) and goodbye (zai jian) to more complex issues of arranging hotel accommodation and phone calls. In addition you will also get a beginners insight to Chinese culture. And all that packaged in an attractive and well laid out book. ...Read more here