Best book for learning Chinese by yourself?

[Chinadoog]

You don't need to start learning Chinese with a textbook. After doing Pimsleur and fifty Chinesepod lessons or so, you should already know most of the vocabulary and grammar that comes in a beginner's textbook. You will also have a lot of practice speaking and listening which is the most important thing (assuming that you actually speak when you're doing Pimsleur and Chinesepod).

I have the Schaum's grammar book which is pretty good. I also have a book called ''A guide to the proper usage of spoken chinese (simplified edition)'' by Tian Shou-He. It's a nice book but probably better to use once you're at the intermediate level.

[putonghua73]

As others have said, you cannot rely on a textbook (or series) alone. A textbook series is good for structured learning, and for a general coverage of all skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing - but requires supplementary material i.e. grammar reference book(s), additional reading material, podcasts, radio, TV, language partners, etc.

Read reviews of textbooks on Amazon, then pop into a decent bookstore and preview a few textbooks e.g. BOYA, Integrated Chinese, NPCR, etc, and decide which textbook is suitable for you as a way for structured learning.

A textbook provides a solid foundation for language acquisition and consolidation, but is not the be all and end all. I too, have suffered from frustrations caused by my own expectation levels when using a textbook as the backbone for language acquisition. Temper your expectations, expect to use a whole range of supplementary material, and most of all, find ways to make your learning enjoyable i.e. if you're becoming bored with slugging through your textbook, focus on supplementary material to consolidate and expand your existing knowledge, such as reading a Grader Reader [汉语风］, watch a Chinese soap-opera, something different if you need a break from the monotony.

The difficulty for the self-learner - I was one after I finished Elementary level at SOAS a few yeas ago - is cost of all this material (no short-cuts, unfortunately, but Ebay and second-hand book stores are your friends), focus and motivation.

Cheers!

[Gcremillard]

For learning and remembering both forms of the Chinese characters (simplified and traditional), I would suggest the Chinese Blockbuster Series, a new, comprehensive and fun method to help anyone read simplified and traditional Chinese characters and pronounce them in Mandarin. The series goes beyond the ‘top few Chinese characters you need to know to get by,’ as people too often realize that they don’t get anywhere with such a limited number of characters. The Chinese Blockbuster Series is comprehensive and covers what is necessary to reach reading fluency in modern Chinese. It teaches:

 

• How to recall the building blocks that compose both forms of a Chinese character (simplified and traditional)
• How to remember the various definitions of a character
• How to memorize the various pronunciations of a character in Mandarin
• Additional facts concerning the character, such as its frequency of use, its etymology, or its ancient meanings and shapes

 

You can visit the website and download the first 130 pages of Chinese Blockbuster 1 for free, if you wish to have a better understanding of the method.