Colloquial Chinese Series

[etribe]

Hi guys, i'm interested to know your thoughts on the 'Colloquial Chinese' series from Routledge....i'm thinking of buying both books and wondered what you thought about the vocab and topics covered. also, what level of proficiency does it teach you up to? (i know you can never really determine this but would you say an Intermediate or Advanced level?)

[Scoobyqueen]

I have got both of them. I really like that series both from a topics points of view and the explanation of the grammar points. The vocabulary is good too. You need to buy the CDs also. I think they are intended for first/second year Chinese students.

They are written by Ms. Kan Qian who has extensive experience teaching Chinese and who is currently at Cambridge University. I have met her on several occasions and she has the advantage of being based in the UK (ie outside China) and the topics chosen therefore reflect more of a Western perspective.

[James Johnston]

There are two versions of Colloquial Chinese. The original and the newer version. The original is a university textbook that was for many, many years the basis of the first year of the Chinese degree course at SOAS and has accompanying books in simple and complex Chinese characters. It's dated and would be a struggle to teach yourself from, but it will take you much further than most single volume language study books including learning to read and write characters if you can bear with it. There is a reason they are still publishing it.

I think the newer version by Kan Qian is more limited in ambition, but will probably give you a much more comfortable introduction to Chinese and can be used more easily for self-study, which is the reason it replaced the original version. It's geared to practical situations you are more likely to encounter, but by the time you finish it you will not be able to have conversations outside of a very narrow range, however to some extent that will be the case whatever book you use. Amazon now has a Colloquial Chinese 2 which could be helpful if you want to carry on beyond a basic level, but I've not seen the contents myself.