school books

[fij]

Dear All,

I would like to buy books used by kids in China (in schools) for learning to read and write. Regular school books, 1st grade, 2nd, etc.

谢谢

[Chinadoog]

Sometimes using the same books that Chinese kids use isn't the best for foreigners learning Chinese. Chinese kids already have huge vocabularies by the time they're 5-6 years old, and in simple childrens books there are a lot of words that you might not know. I tried looking at these kinds of kids books (the story books with pinyin above the characters) and found them quite difficult with my limited vocabulary of about 3,000 words.

I suggest finding some beginners books that are specifically for foreigners learning Chinese. A few popular ones are the 'Chinese Breeze' series, the 'Read it Now' series, as well as various textbooks like the New Practical Chinese Reader, Chinese Made Easier, etc.

This website is really good too http://collections.uiowa.edu/chinese/topic_advanced.html

Something that might be useful for you are those tracing books that Chinese kids use for writing practice where you trace over the characters. They're really easy to find in China, but I'm not sure where you can get them outside of China. The way I learned how to write was by using www.nciku.com and just writing the new characters that I was learning on paper. A lot of people like 'skritter' and writing on their cellphones, but writing on paper is the best method imo.

[feihong]

@fij

I've tried this approach, and I do not recommend it. First, because Chinese schoolbooks are often rather boring. Second, because they assume you have the vocabulary of an average six-year-old Chinese child. Meaning they assume you know more than 10,000 words (this is a conservative estimate).

[Meng Lelan]

If you are in mainland China, go to the major bookstores and ask for 语文 - they may ask you what grade level you are looking for. Actually they issue those books in the schools to the students instead of sell them to the students in the bookstores. People's Education Press is also supposed to maintain copies of each grade level textbook online but their website is somewhat slow and unreliable. However those are online editions, not hard copy textbooks. Also their website is in Chinese so I don't know if that's a problem to you.

If you have friends in mainland China, sometimes they are willing to let you have their children's old copies of 语文 but be aware that there may or may not be notes written into them. This is what I ended up doing when I was trying to acquire a set of high school level 语文 and it so happens that nearly all my friends in China are teachers.

If you are outside mainland China, a very good source is your local Chinese heritage school in your community. They usually use textbooks modeled somewhat closely after those in the mainland and the series is called 中文 published by Jinan Press, but those books are purchased through the Chinese heritage schools, not through the market or the internet. Understand that this series is intended for Chinese heritage schools, not in the schools in China.

As a note of interest, Chinese heritage schools actually used the very same textbooks as primary school children in the mainland until about ten years ago when 中文 began to be published in response to teachers and parents concerns that the textbooks in China were not appropriate for children living outside of China.

[Jane_PA]

Yes, go to 新华 (xin1 hua2)bookstore or any big bookstore in Beijing, you may find a shelf for Chinese textbook for primary schooling.

It is true it may not be a good idea for a non-native speaker to take those books as a guide. I thought you wanted to teach your children who grew up in the U.S. could not write or read Chinese but can speak.

Also, I found just this summer that it is interesting that my niece's Chinese textbook(she is first grade) contains more Chinese words than that when I went to primary shcool. For the first year, she was required to know how to read and write more than 200 Chinese characters plus Pin Yin. I don't think when I went to primary school, the first year requires so much.

[tboasis7]

I just went to the Beijing Normal University Press Bookstore and there is a good selection of books for foreigners learning Chinese, i got one for 6 USD and its pretty good, there are also some other series that are aimed a slightly younger crowd. But if you are in Beijing its worth a shot to go in there.

[fij]

Thanks for your replies. 我是匈牙利人 and I'm a beginner with Chinese. Do you happen to know if these books can be looked up online and bought in the US? I'd be very interested in their method(s). Again, thanks.

[马盖云]

fij，there is a guy with a blog (in china) who is publishing images of the pages of his child's school textbook as they are learning it. He is annotating the exercises, and showing how the vocabulary - while simple for a child - is not tremendously obvious to an adult learner. I had a bookmark to the blog, which I cant seem to locate. Perhaps someone else knows what I am talking about? I will look again. Also, I bought some schoolchild age books in Guangzhou on my last visit, thinking the same thing as you. I have not gotten into trying to read them yet, though.

Not a bad idea, by any means, but what will be more useful to you.. the "travel" vocab used in most adult learning material, or knowing the names of all the fuzzy animal friends? :rolleyes:

Edit... found it! See:

http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen/?page_id=197

This is the explanation of the website. Looks like he is not still updating it, but click on any topic to see typical pages from childrens books for the various grades.

[rezaf]

Second, because they assume you have the vocabulary of an average six-year-old Chinese child. Meaning they assume you know more than 10,000 words

Come on it can't be that high. It's between 3000 to 5000.

[feihong]

Come on it can't be that high. It's between 3000 to 5000.

Actually, 10,000 is a low estimate:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ednWUqVRFpgC&lpg=PA142&ots=8uXBHquITN&dq=Anna%20Maria%20Di%20Sciullo%20listeme&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=Anna%20Maria%20Di%20Sciullo%20listeme&f=false

"Using similar techniques, we can assume that an average six-year-old commands about 13,000 words... A bit of arithmetic shows that preliterate children, who are limited to ambient speech, must be lexical vacuum cleaners, inhaling a word every two waking hours, day in, day out."

[rezaf]

I searched it on the internet and I couldn't find any specific studies for Chinese children but there were a few websites that said 3000 to 5000. I'd be happy to see if a study has been done on Chinese children but according to my estimations an educated Chinese harldy knows more than 22000 words so 13000 for a 6 year old is surprising to me.

[gato]

fij,

You can find a set of grade school textbooks from the People's Education Press here:

http://www.pep.com.cn/xiaoyu/jiaoshi/tbjxzy/kbjiaocai/tb1s/

语文　一年级上册

[rezaf]

After reading some parts of these yuwen books I think they are very appropriate for foreigners like us.