I truly enjoyed being guided through this book in my beginning Chinese class. It is very well-organized inasmuch as the conversations develop, chapter by chapter, as a real conversation might evolve between native speakers during a few encounters with each other. There are a few minor errors in the pinyin representations in the vocabulary sections. Also, the chart for "day-before-yesterday," "yesterday," "today," "tomorrow," "day after tomorrow," etc. and the same for years occur later and seem less clear in the 3rd edition. A few vocabulary items have been changed. Second edition chi-fan becomes chi-cai in the third edition, though not in all contexts. The audio format, unfortunately is inferior to the previous edition. The 2nd edition's CD repeated each conversation three times - very slowly, moderately paced, and natural speed. The 3rd edition's CD contains only one run through of the conversations, and that is at a relatively fast speed. All in all, this is a great book, when combined with the character book and CDs, for learning Mandarin.