Recommended Books for Spoken Chinese
Basic Spoken Chinese, Vol. 1 (Basic Chinese)
by Cornelius C. Kubler (Paperback, 384 pages) from £24.50
You don’t need characters to speak Chinese! In fact, for English speakers, learning the characters is an inefficient process and slows down your progress in learning to speak and listen to Chinese. The dual track for spoken and written language gives you a chance to develop oral proficiency without being slowed down by the character writing. The book distinguishes itself with its carefully graduated presentation of material in easily digestible sub-units, comprehensive and clearly written grammatical and cultural notes, and 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. It is an ideal textbook for any program that seeks to advance rapidly in spoken Chinese. Included Audio disc provides native-speaker audio, including all of the book’s conversations, build ups, new words, supplementary vocabulary, dialogues, and other key items. Basic Spoken Chinese, Vol. 1 helps you to acquire basic fluency in spoken Mandarin through a proven, practical approach.
Basic Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials, Vol. 1 (Basic Chinese)
by Cornelius C. Kubler and Yang Wang (Paperback, 256 pages) from £20.40
Study spoken Chinese requires a lot of practice. You don’t need characters to speak Chinese! Respected Chinese language expert Dr. Cornelius Kubler who has taught diplomats, business people and students, presents a system to power and polish your spoken Chinese. This book corresponds to Basic Spoken Chinese, Volume 1 and allows you to move from complete beginner level to basic proficiency. Practice Essentials includes carefully designed activities to help solidify every aspect of your spoken Chinese skills: Pronunciation exercises, Vocabulary and Grammar summaries, Substitution drills, Transformation and Response drills, Role Play & Listening Comprehension exercises, Dictation exercises, Translation exercises, and an included disc contains over 16 hours of audio material, as well as (printable) PDF files of hundreds of additional practice pages and exercises.
Mastering Chinese: The complete course for beginners
(Master Languages) (Book and Audio CDs, 384 pages) by Catherine Hua Xiang from £19.01
This is an excellent book for beginners and pre-intermediate learners of Chinese. The book focuses on developing learners communicative language skills and offering learners choices in terms of learning characters or pinyin only. This is particularly encouraging for adult learners, as it is common for some learners to declare that they are only interested in oral communication and have no interests in Chinese characters. The author recognises the true needs of these real learners, and help them to achieve their targets in a way that authentic vocabulary and structures can be learned by different types of learners. The book consists of 12 thematic units in daily life with cultural information section highlighted in each unit to improve student’s cross-cultural understanding.