Question about the DeFrancis readers?

[ChristopherB]

Do you need to also buy the romanized textbooks, such as "Beginning Chinese", "Intermediate Chinese" and so on in order to be able to make use of the actual readers, like "Beginning Chinese Reader" and so on? In other words, are they linked together as a set which require each other?

I know this series is very well known, so if anyone has any experience with using them, I would really appreciate some clarification. I'm already using some other textbooks to learn Chinese, so I'd be using the Readers mainly for characters and vocabulary. Can they be used on their own?

[chalimac]

Yes, they can be used on their own and they are extremely good. No need for the grammar books (you can get a grammar such as Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar in case you get stuck in some structure)

Bear in mind that the bulk of the text is in traditional characters with some appendixes in simplified. If you want to learn both, then this books is perfect.

I recommend you get the audio from

http://www.shu.edu/academics/artsci/language-resource-center/chinese-audio-materials.cfm

I am at the advanced reader and now I regret not having used the audio.

[ChristopherB]

I'm currently using the audio in conjunction with the Beginning Reader, and I notice there are some discrepancies between the audio and text. I'm using the second edition. Does anyone who has used the set know why this is?