ABSTRACT
Colloquial Chinese: The Complete Course for Beginners has been carefully developed by an experienced teacher to provide a step-by-step course to Chinese as it is written and spoken today.
Combining a clear, practical and accessible style with a methodical and thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Chinese in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
Colloquial Chinese is exceptional; each unit presents a wealth of grammatical points that are reinforced with a wide range of exercises for regular practice. A full answer key, a grammar summary, bilingual glossaries and English translations of dialogues can be found at the back as well as useful vocabulary lists throughout.
Key features include:
- A clear, user-friendly format designed to help learners progressively build up their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills
- Jargon-free, succinct and clearly structured explanations of grammar
- An extensive range of focused and dynamic supportive exercises
- Realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of narrative situations
- Helpful cultural points explaining the customs and features of life in China
- An overview of the sounds of Chinese
Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Chinese is an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Chinese.
Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.
Introduction. 1. Meeting someone for the first time 2. Name, nationality and race 3. At a company party 4. Asking the time 5. Family and friends 6. The date and the weather 7. Asking for directions 8. Shopping (I) 9. Shopping (II) 10. At the restaurant 11. Taking the taxi and buying train tickets 12. At the hotel 13. Making telephone calls 14. Socializing 15. Writing a letter to a Chinese friend Grammar summary Key to the exercises and reading/listening comprehension questions. Chinese–English glossary. Appendix A: useful signs. Appendix B: table of the combinations of the initials and finals in Putonghua. Appendix C: Dialogues in characters for Units 1 to 3. Appendix D: English translation of dialogues from Units 6 to 15. Index of grammatical terms and cultural notes.
