-Review- A series of books that might be of interest...

[magores]

The other day I was at my local Xinhua Bookstore in Beijing.

I was looking specifically for Chinese grammar books designed for the natives.

I saw a series of books that looked interesting. I bought a couple of the books, and they were, in fact, interesting (to me). So... here's the details.

-Published by Nanjing University Press.

-It's a series of 6 books. (Or more?)

-The books are graded by level, 1st year, 2nd year, etc (aka Grade 1, Grade 2...)

-The books are sort of similar to the many HSK sample test books. As in... Read a passage, and answer questions.

-As far as I know, there is no audio available. (This is for natives, after all.)

I bought the grade 1 and grade 2 books.

-Grade 1 book, section 1, begins with a passage regarding an alarm clock. Pinyin and Hanzi are given. Questions include things like: Is 喉咙 pronounced as "hóu long" or "hóu lóng"

-Other sections include 再 vs 在, and similar

Grade 2 book is similar, but with longer passages, expanded vocabulary, punctuation questions, etc.

I looked at the later books. Obviously, no pinyin in the later books, and the material gets more difficult.

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I showed the 1st grade book to my co-worker (a fellow teacher), and she said the material would be difficult even for a native Chinese child of 7 years old.

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I like these books for a few reasons.

Primarily, it's because it's the material that the Chinese use/read/study. It's real Chinese. The phrasing is what Chinese kids are expected to know. It's not paraphrased to accommodate foreigners like me. I'm tired of the PCR and similar books. I want the real stuff.

My boss took a look at the books, she said if I followed these books, step by step, by the end of the last one, I would know 99% of everything I would need to know.

Of course, what I need to know, and what I want to know, are different, but I'll tackle the "want" later.

Hope this helps someone.

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ISBN, book 1 : 7-305-05009-1, 8RMB

ISBN, book 2 : 7-305-04655-8, 6RMB

Direct contact: sales@press.nju.edu.cn

[gato]

I think you are referring to this series of books here, designed to teach writing to Chinese elementary school students. They look pretty good.

http://search.dangdang.com/search.aspx?key=%D0%A1%D1%A7%C9%FA%D7%F7%CE%C4%B8%DF%CA%D6&selbook=0&selmusic=0&selmovie=0&key1=&key2=&key3=&key4=&key5=&catalog=01

小学生作文高手:优秀习作亮点解读

[magores]

Yep. Thats them.