All Things Considered: Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese.

by Chih-p'ing Chou (Editor), Yan Xia (Editor)

This modern Chinese language textbook bridges the gap between intermediate and advanced Chinese. It is ideal for students who have completed intermediate courses but need more language practice to prepare them for the complexity of advanced Chinese.
The text is divided into two parts. The first section consists of twelve dialogues; the second is a selection of recent newspaper articles about contemporary Chinese society. A novel feature of All Things Considered is that several topics appear in both dialogue and essay forms. This repetition is designed to improve students' retention of grammar and vocabulary as well as to highlight differences between spoken and written Chinese.
All of the articles and dialogues center on everyday issues in contemporary China. Several of the topics featured are controversial in the hope that they will spark students' interest and promote participation in class discussions.

Genres: Textbooks, China

536 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Things Considered is a great Modern Mandarin Chinese textbook to help one make the leap from intermediate to advanced Chinese. I used it for that purpose and it helped me place into an advanced level of Chinese after less than a year since starting beginners' Chinese. The news articles in the back are very interesting for getting a sense of the identity crises felt in 1990s "post-socialist" China, but they are quite outdated for anyone trying to read Chinese news in 2015. This book is particularly good for those trying to boost their reading skills, maybe not so much for those trying to work on conversation fluency.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would've given it four stars because I fell like the articles get a little repetitive. That being said, I assume that reading a real newspaper would be worse, so I gave it five.

I think this is the perfect book for people who have a Chinese level equivalent to student learning 3rd year Chinese language in a US university. But a warning: if your teacher is from Mainland China, she might be offended or on edge to teach this material. Not that it is offensive at all--the articles are mostly from the Communist Party's newspaper--it's just a cultural thing.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Done with this fir now at Chapter 19 (we did not hit each chapter) as my class is over. Princeton does a great job. These books are well put together and offer the most useful vocab and grammar. Highly recommend!