Short Term Spoken Chinese: Pre Intermediate

by Ma Jianfei, 李小荣

Short-term Spoken Chinese is the set of textbook for short-term intensive training programs for foreigners. It includes 5 levels of study. The Pre-Intermediate volume is for students who have mastered simple sentence patterns and 800 or so Chinese words.

185 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

Reviews

[Viktor Nilsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good conversations, using (and teaching) the everyday slang that people actually use when they talk (which it seems most Chinese people will not teach you, don't ask me why!). Each chapter is made up of 4 conversations, then explanation, and lastly exercises (all of them purely in Chinese). The conversations are excellent, but the rest has a lot of things missing. The vocabulary list at the beginning of the chapter only cover the words that occur in the conversations, which is weird, because the explanations usually contain even harder language (and are a vital part in making you understand the conversations). Also the exercises use some expressions which for most readers would be way above their vocabulary level. Even for the conversations, the word list at the beginning of the chapter will not quite do, since the authors seem to conveniently have left out the hardest words.

I wonder whom this book is targeting? The explanations and exercises are really hard to follow unless you have a native speaker by your side to help you. On the other hand, if I was just judging the conversations, this book would get 5 stars. Highly recommended for anyone who is already pretty good at formal Mandarin (spoken or written) but would like to get more proficient in conversations. And by the way, choose a book at least one level bellow your current skill level, because all the books in the "Short Term ... Chinese" grossly underestimates the vocabulary level required.

[Elwathiga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gooood book

[André · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, not bad. The texts are a bit boring, but the vocabulary can be quite useful.