Basic Spoken/Written Chinese by Tuttle

[Homogenik]

Has anyone used this method before and want to comment on it? I just bought it after looking for something that felt as complete as possible and I decided to get this one which I literally stumbled upon by accident. I haven't gotten far yet but I feel very confident in the author's ability and in the books' strategy, so to speak. Hopefully, I will be successful.

[animal world]

I have only seen the Tuttle books to learn characters and how to write them, such as The First One Hundred Characters, etc. They always struck me as expensive scratch paper in the sense that at the top of the page Tuttle shows one character and its stroke order and then most of the page is blank where the user of the book can practice writing that specific character. I have always used the back of grocery receipts, old note pads and, you name it , any old piece of paper to practice writing characters on. I have never seen any audio formats by Tuttle but suspect that there may be better values in other publications available. I'm sure in this forum many resources are listed.

[Homogenik]

Thanks for your response. I did hesitate between the Tuttle books and the New Chinese Reader which does seem rather nice and much better than the original Chinese Reader (and all the chinese books made from the same boring model), but I opted for Tuttle mostly because it seemed to include a thorough approach for me (although I'm not a specialist so I can hardly tell for sure). I like how honest the author is (he writes for instance that chinese is a difficult language that takes a long time to master, let alone feel capable in, which is undoubtedly true and a cliché but many methods try to take the learner through the easy route, but there is none really) and how flexible the books are. It also features a CD with audio and videos of people acting out the dialogues on location (China), so that's kind of interesting as a bonus feature. It's true that the exercise book for writing characters is not as complex, but how complex can it be : there's no trick to learning to write characters, you just have to write them! I also use any paper I can write on to practice them. Anyway, I've just gotten through the initial (and long) pronunciation exercises in two or three days (I'm finishing Pimsleur One so I think I don't have to spend that much time on such exercises), but I'll come back to them later, especially for the tongue twisters they've included which are terribly difficult and poems, etc. I'll say more as I go along.

Some tongue twisters :

妈妈骑马,马慢,妈妈骂马

māma qí mǎ, mǎ màn, māma mà mǎ

四 是 四 ， 十 是 十 ， 十 四 是 十 四 ， 四 十 是 四 十 ， 四 十 四 只 石 狮 子 是 死 的 。

Si4 shi4 si4, shi2 shi4 shi2, shi2si4 shi4 shi2si4, si4shi2 shi4 si4shi2, si4shi2si4 zhi1 shi2 shi1zi shi4 si3 de

[Homogenik]

I thought I would update this little post.

I have continued to use the Basic Spoken (and Written) Chinese books but not as much as I wanted to at first, as I've decided to take up a chinese class at the university, and I have another book to use. But since it's an elementary class and is actually quite easy for me (because I've already been studying by myself for some time), I've also been using the Tuttle books at the same time, although not as quickly as I normally would in other circumstances.

I can comment on the fact that I still believe it to be an efficient, interesting, well constructed course with a good balance of both listening, speaking, writing, reading and grammatical information. The recordings are clear, simple and numerous. The videos included as a bonus aren't very well done though (they seem amateurish and have been overdubbed, making them not very useful in my opinion).

There are many exercises and ways of learning included. I also enjoy the historical, cultural and even geographical perspective included. I was surprised to learn the name of so many Chinese cities and provinces (台北，台湾，四川，南京, ⋯⋯), Chinese names and popular surnames (李，林，河..) very early on. That may put some people off, but for me it makes it more interesting as I feel more involved in the learning process.

[Meng Lelan]

That has got to be the one written by Kubler. My class reviewed this set when I was at Middlebury and it was very highly rated because it's based on current research of teaching Chinese as a second language. You learned to write the names of those Chinese cities and surnames early on because they contain radicals and strokes that are going to build a foundation for reading and writing when you start characters that go along with chapter 1 of the spoken Chinese books. Also they help orient you to people and places right from day one, when you need that the most. I wish I had this series when I started out decades ago but ended up muddling through the language for years.

For your information Kubler is editing the second year level of this series right now.

The Tuttle practice books, I have those also, I use with students who need some review now and then. When they learn more and more characters sometimes they have to pause and review the basic characters. Yes, they're pretty much scratch paper but I just xerox when I see need for remedial practice.

[OneEye]

learn the name of so many Chinese cities and provinces (台北，台湾...

Ouch. And Kubler used to live in Taiwan, he should know better.

[Homogenik]

Oops, I'm sorry, it's my fault, my english got twisted. I meant that we learn many Chinese names of cities and provinces. If I had added 东京 and　京都　to the list it would have been more obvious that I made a mistake. I wouldn't want people to think of the author something that isn't true to reality.