Basic Mandarin Chinese - Reading & Writing Practice Book - by Cornelius C Kubler & Jerling Guo Kubler (Paperback)

About the Book

"A workbook for beginning learners of written Chinese."--Cover.

Book Synopsis

This comprehensive Chinese character workbook can be used with any textbook or on its own to enhance your Mandarin reading and writing skills dramatically!

No matter what textbook you're using to learn Chinese, it requires a lot of practice. Here is a wealth of effective activities and drills--plus an hour of native speaker audio recordings--to help you learn the 288 basic Chinese characters quickly and effectively.

This book follows the Basic Mandarin Chinese--Reading & Writing textbook but works equally well with other coursebooks or on its own. The free companion media includes native-speaker audio recordings as well as printable PDF files providing hundreds of pages of extra exercises, activities and a set of 288 printable flash cards to help you learn the basic characters.

Basic Mandarin Chinese--Reading and Writing Practice Book includes a wealth of carefully-designed activities designed to improve every aspect of your reading and writing skills, including:

• Character writing practice sheets
• Dictation, fill-in-the-blank, and dialog completion exercises
• Answering questions, reading maps, converting written style to spoken style
• Identifying radicals and phonetics, punctuating sentences
• Writing tasks based on real-life schedules, photographs and name cards
• Translation exercises

The helpful companion media includes:

• Audio recordings by native Mandarin speakers
• Hundreds of printable practice pages
• A printable set of 288 Chinese flashcards

About the Basic Mandarin Chinese series:
Respected Chinese language educator Dr. Cornelius Kubler has taught Mandarin Chinese to diplomats, business people and students for several decades--using an effective learning system with two separate but integrated "tracks" to help you learn the spoken and written forms of the language more efficiently and more successfully. The materials in this series have been acclaimed as a breakthrough in Mandarin Chinese language learning. This book is a new edition of Basic Written Chinese: Practice Essentials.

All media content is accessible on the Tuttle Publishing website.

Review Quotes

"A breath of fresh air ... Its dual track for spoken and written language finally gives American students a chance to develop oral proficiency without being slowed down by the character writing ... An ideal textbook for any program that seeks to advance rapidly in spoken Chinese and to fully prepare the students for their encounter with China." --Dr. Jingqi Fu, Associate Professor of Chinese, St. Mary's College of Maryland

"An ingenious introduction -- Basic Spoken Chinese is the finest textbook for learning Modern Standard Mandarin that I have ever encountered." --Dr. Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania

"Contextualized so learners know not only what to say, but why, when, and with whom it is appropriate to use such language -- thorough and clear -- refreshing." --Dr. Matthew Christensen, Associate Professor of Chinese, Brigham Young University

"Kubler's books distinguish themselves with natural, culturally-rooted dialogues, detailed notes (for both written and spoken language), generous practice activities and an amazing care for organization. These books will be valuable tools for both students and their teachers." --Prof. Eric Pelzl, Wisconsin Lutheran College

"Outstanding for its carefully graduated presentation of material ... and perhaps most important of all, its separation of the task of learning to speak the language from the very different processes of learning to read and write Chinese characters ... The most exciting Chinese language textbook I have seen in many years." --Dr. James E. Dew, retired associate professor of Chinese, Univ. of Michigan; former Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei

"Revolutionary in its approach ... The dream of having engaged and fully-prepared students in every class is an easily reachable reality for any program that adopts this series." --Professor Cecilia Chang, Chair, Department of Asian Studies, Williams College

"The ideal material for any committed learner embarking on the journey of learning the Chinese language." --Dr. Jun Yang, Senior Lecturer in Chinese, University of Chicago

"This is one of the best elementary Chinese textbooks, I believe, ever produced in the history of teaching Chinese as a second language ... A great and unique work which will benefit students and teachers for many years to come." --Dr. Shengli Feng, Professor of Chinese Linguistics, Chinese University of Hong Kong

About the Author

Cornelius C. Kubler received his Ph.D. in linguistics from Cornell and is currently the Stanfield Professor of Asian Studies at Williams College. Since joining Williams, he has chaired the Department of Chinese and held visiting professor posts at Middlebury, National Taiwan Normal University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and other universities. He has authored many books and articles on Chinese pedagogy and linguistics, and served as a consultant for many Chinese language programs in the U.S. and abroad including orientation programs for Chinese language teachers arriving in the U.S. He has chaired the SAT Chinese exam Test Development Committee and recently completed a two-year stint as Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Nanjing University Center for Chinese & American Studies in Nanjing, China.

Jerling Guo Kubler is a graduate of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of Soochow University in Taipei. Her experience in language education spans several decades, and she has taught Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language at all levels from pre-kindergarten to university level at institutions in the U.S. and Taiwan including Williams College, Eisenhower College and the Taipei Language Institute.