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itiswhatitis
Joined: 08 Aug 2011
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 Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 10:20 am Post subject: Books/resources for learning Mandarin Chinese.... |
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I am currently teaching in Korea but I plan to make the move to northern China (to teach and learn Mandarin) next year.
I am looking for some good textbooks/learning resources for Mandarin chinese language.
Please provide some suggestions. As an aside, I currently know ZERO mandarin and I am a complete beginner.
Thanks in advance. |
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aq8knyus
Joined: 28 Jul 2010
Location: London
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:01 pm Post subject: Re: Books/resources for learning Mandarin Chinese.... |
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| itiswhatitis wrote: |
I am currently teaching in Korea but I plan to make the move to northern China (to teach and learn Mandarin) next year.
I am looking for some good textbooks/learning resources for Mandarin chinese language.
Please provide some suggestions. As an aside, I currently know ZERO mandarin and I am a complete beginner.
Thanks in advance. |
If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of Korean then the Mandarin resources for Koreans are numerous and very cheap.
The 다락원 중국어 마스터 series is very good especially if you have a Chinese tutor which are not that expensive in Korea.
If you do not speak Korean then it is a little more expensive, but you can buy the Oh, China! elementary reader at Kyobo. There is a whole series of them and whilst they do not include a CD and are focused at heritage learners, they are great for upping your reading fluency and learning a ton of useful new words.
You can also get the New Practical Chinese Reader in Korea, but you might have to order. In fact the videos for book 1 are all on Youtube and you can find the pdf for the textbook online for free as well. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:34 pm Post subject: Re: Books/resources for learning Mandarin Chinese.... |
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| aq8knyus wrote: |
You can also get the New Practical Chinese Reader in Korea, but you might have to order. In fact the videos for book 1 are all on Youtube and you can find the pdf for the textbook online for free as well. |
This is the book I've been using (I'm about halfway through volume 5 now). It's quite easy to order from Beijing University Press. The DVD videos for books one through four are actually all available on Youtube for free, but the audio is faster and more natural than the audio in the lesson CDs, so it may be harder to understand. Volumes 1 through 4 come in either simplified or traditional characters, but 5 and 6 are only available in simplified (with traditional versions of each lesson's main text in the back, but not the listening comprehension, dialogue, and so forth). The original poster would presumably want simplified, so that's no problem for him.
If you have a smart phone, I would also highly recommend downloading Pleco. It's the best Chinese dictionary application I've ever seen (and in fact, probably outright the best dictionary application at all). When you download it you get a few decent dictionaries for free. You can purchase additional dictionaries and additional functionality as well (like using your camera to look up words, a very decent flashcard program, or a reader which lets you look up words in texts by directly clicking on them).
I'll also recommend www.lingq.com for reading and listening practice. They sell memberships for people who want to use their build in vocabulary memorization system, but there's really no reason to do that. You can just make an account and directly access all their reading and listening resources directly without screwing around with clicking on words and telling the system how well you remember them. Most of the Chinese I've seen on the site is in simplified characters, so again that should favor the original poster (and evidently everyone except me, since no one else seems to have any interest in learning traditional characters!). Normally I would also recommend Anki, but in the case of Chinese, Pleco's flashcard system is nearly as good, but far, far more convenient (because you can add flashcards to your deck with a single touch), so there's really no need to bother making a personal Anki deck. If you later want to switch to Anki, Pleco's flaschards are also exportable in a fashion which Anki can recognize and translate directly into its own flashcards, but I don't think there's much reason to switch over.
Finally, I'll push www.lang-8.com. This is a website where you practice writing in your target language and receive corrections from native speakers. The understanding is that you will in turn provide corrections for people learning English, but here's the thing: even if you never provide a single correction for anyone, the Chinese people on the site will still flood you with corrections. There's a point system which makes you more likely to receive corrections based upon how many corrections you give other people by pushing you up higher on the list, but there simply aren't that many people actively learning Chinese, while there are a lot of people actively learning English. Accordingly, even if you never bother to get any points, you'll still easily get corrections, while Chinese people learning English need points to even stand a chance of getting corrections, so they'll rush to correct for you. I'm not necessarily saying you should cynically take advantage of the system that way, but it's possible if you don't want to invest much time in the site. As a Chinese learner, it will be very easy for you start writing from day one; the characters might be hard for you to remember, but using a pinyin input system means that won't be a problem so long as you watch carefully for homonyms and choose the right one.
| aq8knyus wrote: |
| especially if you have a Chinese tutor which are not that expensive in Korea. |
And possibly even free. If the original poster works for EPIK, he should ask his co-teacher to see if there are any CPIK teachers living in the area. I got in touch with one some time back and she was willing to regularly meet up and help me with my Chinese. She refused to take money, and in fact insisted on paying for our coffee sometimes. Unfortunately, she only stayed in the country for a single year (and according to her, every CPIK teacher she knew was desperate to escape Korea after their year was up). |
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le-paul
Joined: 07 Apr 2009
Location: dans la chambre
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| Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 2:08 am Post subject: |
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There are some free apps from apple that can be downloaded, i started with them.
There are also a lot of youtube videos (if you can weed out the crap) which can be downloaded onto phones/computer etc.
Good luck - the writing almost put me off learning languages for life  |
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aq8knyus
Joined: 28 Jul 2010
Location: London
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| Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 2:12 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Fox!
That lang-8 resource looks great.
Also, if I may ask, do you have a private tutor in Korea or do you use language exchanges? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:09 am Post subject: |
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| aq8knyus wrote: |
Also, if I may ask, do you have a private tutor in Korea or do you use language exchanges? |
For Chinese? Other than that CPIK girl I met with for a few months, I've engaged in some limited exchanges over the Internet (exchange being a loose word for it: Chinese people seem to be pretty happy to just have a conversation in Chinese, instead of insisting on some English time). No actual paid instruction, and I don't intend on getting any. The application I used for the exchange was "HelloTalk Language Exchange." I've deleted it for the time being because I started to feel uncomfortable chatting with Chinese college girls (who make up a strong majority of the people who will actually sit and practice with you), and felt like my time would be better served on vocabulary acquisition through reading practice for now.
Last edited by Fox on Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:11 am Post subject: |
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| le-paul wrote: |
Good luck - the writing almost put me off learning languages for life |
The writing system is the best part. It's beautiful, and once you grasp the radicals, it's not that hard to remember new characters. Sure sometimes you'll forget how to spell words (like the famous example of Beijing University students forgetting how to write "sneeze"), but in the age of electronic dictionaries and pinyin input, that's relatively trivial. And once you get the characters down, you can explore some great poetry and historic texts. |
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spaceman82
Joined: 01 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| For the characters: "Remembering the Hanzi" by James Heisig (https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013/11/RH-S1-sample.pdf) |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| For less than half the price (including shipping) of one volume of Remember the Hanzi (and there are two), you could purchase a one month subscription to Skritter. During that one month, you can load as many items as you want into your study list. On the site, all the Hanzi from Heisig's books are already formulated into premade lists, including their mnemonics. Load all the Hanzi on those lists into your study list before your month's subscription expires, and henceforth you can practice those Hanzi, even after your subscription ends, either on a computer or on your smart phone, without paying anything extra. In fact, there's no reason to stop with the Hanzi in Heisig's book; you could easily go ahead and dump the top few thousand most used Hanzi into your study list while you're at it. It's a fine resource so long as you have a finite goal you want to reach (meaning you can dump a set number of words or characters onto your study list and then cancel your subscription). It would be great for just learning characters. It's also fun to use. |
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spaceman82
Joined: 01 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Skritter is a good option. I'd still check out the beginning chapters of the Heisig book (the first 67 pages of the book are available for free at the site I linked to) to learn how to use his method, however. For me, the book's characters and mnemonics themselves are less important than the method given, which you can later use to memorize any character you come across. I was able to learn about 1,300 Japanese characters in a few months using the Kanji version. |
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