Business Chinese Textbooks / BLCUP vs. PKUP

[ZhangKaiRong]

Does anyone have any experience with BLCU Press or Peking University Press business Chinese textbooks? I'm currently studying Chinese language in China, I have extracurricular Business Mandarin class, but... how to say, I'm not too satisfied with our lessons. We use BLCUP's 经贸汉语 - Chinese for Economics and Trade 1, but I think this book is just terrible, it's like an intermediate 阅读 book with some business and economics content, but I found the 生词 are often too off-topic and unrelevant. Conversational skills are also not covered in the book. So I am a little disappointed...

After getting back to my home country, I immediately start working at one of the big international auditing companies. My work is related to China, so I want to improve my business Chinese skills - I feel the classes are useless, so I want to learn on my own. Can someone recommend me some good learning materials? My Chinese is somewhere around HSK5, but of course, I know a lot of words and characters outside of the HSK word list. From the BLCUP and PKUP webpage, I found these books:

- Erya Chinese (Advanced Reading/Conversation)

- Intermediate Business Chinese Conversation (2008 revised edition) (there is vol1,vol2)

- Intermediate Business Chinese with 1 CD

- 公司汉语

- New Silk Road Intermediate II.

Integrated approaches are more welcomed, but if there are some individual speaking/reading/listening learning materials, they're also OK. About the topics, I prefer finance/accounting/management vocab if it's possible, because my major covers these fields.

Any recommendations are welcomed

[icebear]

Why don't you start reading magazines like 财经 and 财新? I'm also around HSK5 and find those articles much better (more interesting/relevant) than business text books for vocabulary. Of course, reading that way is unlikely to help your grammar much. Try using the Chinese Word Extractor to pre-study the 10-15 most frequent words in the article prior to reading it, which helps a lot. I aim to read a long form article per day from one of those two.

[ZhangKaiRong]

@icebear

Thanks for the advice! I just had a look at these magazines' online versions, seem to be really helpful. Grammar should be no problem, last semester I had 语法课, which covered the Chinese grammar up to the upper-intermediate/lower-advanced level, so I hope it won't be a problem.

I also thought about following some Weibo accounts concerning finance, but I don't really know which one should I follow Some podcasts would help me as well.

[gato]

Oops. Posted in wrong thread.

[icebear]

@ZhangKaiRong

I also follow Weibo, but a problem I have is that its hard to get in a good habit since its so sporadic, and the quality varies a lot - and there's the whole question of who to follow, how often to read, etc. I feel that until I'm really reading comfortably/as second nature I need a regular reading activity that is easier to structure/measure than just "read some Weibo everyday".

Following a respected business/news magazine ensures you're learning commonly accepted/used words by professionals in the real world and that the topic is current and important broadly in China. Its also easy to keep pace of an article a day (average around 3000 words, although features can be as long as 10000). I've found that my news listening abilities have improved significantly since starting reading those magazines also, as much of the vocab I pick up there will be used the same day/week on the radio, on TV, among Chinese colleagues that are chatting in the office about some big news item.

[Guest realmayo]

You might find http://www.ftchinese.com/ helpful too, especially the articles which give you the English version next to the Chinese.

(Need to register for free to see more than a few articles)

[ZhangKaiRong]

Thanks for the suggestions, I started to read 财新 on daily basis, it's a little bit complex now, but after a week, I start to feel some improvement.

I also ordered 经贸中级汉语口语下, it seems to be helpful. I will write some notes about the book after I get it.

[ZhangKaiRong]

Here is a quick review on the BLCU's 经贸中级汉语口语下 book.

I've been using it for more than two months for self-studying, I guess it's quite OK. There are 20 lessons in total, each one represents a specific field in economics&business (e.g.: technology trade, retail trade, commerce insurance, financial services, capital market, etc.). The first lesson is a little bit boring, but apart from that one, all of the others are really interesting with heavy vocab and good expressions. New vocab is mostly from the HSK6 word list, but after getting to the more specific topics I discovered that more and more 生词 are out of the HSK list. There are four of five grammar points per lesson, but most of them are known if you have already reached the HSK5 level. Grammar instructions are in English, which is a good point, there are some example sentences to know how to use the "new" grammar. The excercises are not that great, however, there are the classic chengyu/new expressions fill-in-the-blanks excercises, the practice the new 口语 expressions excercises, and there are some talk-about-a-problem ones. The dialogues use Hanzi, but the English translations can also be checked.

Overall, it is a good material for learning business Chinese, I feel some progress since I started to use it (I'm at the tenth lesson now). Of course, it's just a 口语 book, so it should be used simultaneously with other learning materials, I read 财新 every day and listen to some podcasts about three times a week.