Integrated Chinese, Level 2: 中文聽說讀寫

by Daozhong Yao (Editor)

Integrated Chinese Level 2 is intermediate-level textbook for students who have completed one year of study at the high school or college level, or for anyone seeking to communicate effectively in Chinese wherever it is spoken. This acclaimed, best-selling series is successful because it "integrates" all four language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Integrated Chinese helps you understand how the Chinese language works grammatically, and how to use Chinese in real life—how to understand it on the street, speak it on the telephone, read it in the newspaper, or write it in a report. The materials within Integrated Chinese's set of textbooks, workbooks, character workbooks, and audio CDs are divided into sections of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Two types of exercises are used: traditional exercises (fill-in-the-blank, sentence completion, translation) to help learners build a solid grammatical foundation, and communication-oriented exercises (speaking drills, discussion topics, etc.) to prepare them to function in a Chinese language environment. Frequently, authentic materials written for native Chinese speakers and realia (newspaper clippings, signs, tickets, etc.) are used. Notes on language use and Chinese culture are found throughout the textbooks. In Level 2, simplified and traditional characters are combined in one book.

Genres: Textbooks

371 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This textbook is just average. The dialogues don’t seem as natural as they could be. They also focus on life in America rather than life in either China or Taiwan. In the last three units, constitutional rights (gun rights, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc,), animal rights, and environmental protection start getting discussed. There’s nothing wrong with learning about these things, it’s just that some of the vocabulary choices were completely wrong. I’ve asked native speakers about some of the words and the odd usages and was told to either ignore them or change them to the more suitable words which they provide for me. But sometimes, they didn’t understand what was trying to be convey (as rare as it was, it was annoyingly suspicious. It made me feel as though the author had issues that he didn’t fine tune before publishing. Always crosscheck with a native speaker, preferably one from Taiwan. Seeing that this book is 20 years old, don’t think anyone will come across it by chance in a bookstore. It’s been updated and revised 2-3 times since was first published. I have it because I bought it a very long time ago in hopes of using it. One thing led to another, and thus I never got around to finishing it until recently.