Sticking to one textbook vs Using multiple textbooks ?

[sydneyy]

I've been studying Chinese for about 6 months and I think I've recently developed a habit of collecting textbooks and graded readers.

 

I thought being exposed to various resources is the natural way in language learning, and using multiple textbooks of the same level would always help.

 

But there are some people who say mastering and internalizing already learned content is important than going through lots of different stuff. What are your opinions?

 

 

 

[Silent]

I would say that it's important to learn and internalise what you have learned. If you just go through the lessons from one textbook that's insufficient to internalise it. Of course you may and should go over it and review it a couple of times but that will become boring and you'll have still only very limited number of examples. So I think just a textbook is insufficient and you should supplement it with other material. A second textbook with additional examples and a different way of explaining things may be a good choice.

 

Specially at the beginner level textbooks tend to cover the same material in roughly the same order while there is little suitable native material.  So there's nothing wrong to use several textbooks. At more advanced levels differences may be bigger. Nevertheless you still can use more then one textbook, topics will be more spread out but it still results in repetition and still be explained in different ways.

 

With advancing in level you may however prefer to supplement your textbook with native material as that way you will move away from textbook style conversations and stories to more real world ones. It will help to put your language skills to practical use.

[Shelley]

I too have been collecting textbooks, dictionaries, and anything else associated with Chinese and learning Chinese for years (30 years). If you are interested you can see most of my books in the popular "shelfies topic" here. http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/43797-the-share-your-shelves-thread-post-a-photo/

My posts are #7 and #11.

 

I used to dip into this textbook for awhile then this one and then another one, when I took lesson in a small private group we used the Practical Chinese Reader. when I did an evening class at the Uni we used Chinese in Steps now I am self studying I am using New practical Chinese Reader.

 

I have now decided to use the NPCR as my core material but not to the exclusion of other texts, books, audio ect. I also use Pimlseur, Shcaums Outline Chinese Grammar and so on.

 

My advice would be choose a core textbook with lots of material, for example NCPR has textbooks, workbooks, audio, and video and an answer key which is good if you are self studying, and have this as your main study book but also read, listen etc to other things.

 

I think if you use your core material on a regular basis, you can dip in an out of other things to help round out your knowledge.

[Johnny20270]

I agree with Shelley. You need a 'core'

 

After a lot of trail and error I personally think having 3 Core books to be useful

 

1. Formal text book like New Practical Chinese Reader. I like this series. Its good for development of the language including grammar etc

2. A more spoken series, We use Short Tern Spoken Chinese Series in class and although its not great, the style of language is different than 1 above. Chinese pod can be another alternative.

3. A decent grammar book

 

Any more books are just secondary sources. They can be useful (i.e. to see a language point from a different perspective) but be confusing for me at my stage 

[eion_padraig]

Starting to read with graded readers as soon as you have the sufficient knowledge of characters is a huge help, but you don't want to be stopping to translate every 5th word. These strike me as way more helpful in developing literacy skills than text books.

A few books start at the 300 character mark (Chinese Breeze, Mandarin Companion). These really helped me with locking in the character's meaning, and I started to see some of the basic grammar patterns at work. I've finished one book that requires you to know 1,000 characters, but it's looking like the 1,500 character one might be a tad above my level at the moment.

Good luck.

[Johnny20270]

although i find these graded readers a bit of a pain as I am always guessing what everything means and i am a very pedantic style of learner

[Lu]

My advice would be choose a core textbook with lots of material, for example NCPR has textbooks, workbooks, audio, and video and an answer key which is good if you are self studying, and have this a your main study book but also read, listen etc to other things.

This is good advice.

 

Generally, it's better to stick with one textbook and work hard on that than to skip around from one textbook to the next. There are good and bad textbooks, but you will learn more from just digging into a mediocre textbook than from collecting a shelf full of great ones.

 

The same, by the way, goes for electronic resources. Some people like to play with computers and as soon as they start studying Chinese get great ideas about the perfect study app/program/website. Ideas are nice, but don't go spending time on building the perfect study tool when you could spend that time actually studying with the existing tools.

[mouse]

 

 

Some people like to play with computers and as soon as they start studying Chinese get great ideas about the perfect study app/program/website. Ideas are nice, but don't go spending time on building the perfect study tool when you could spend that time actually studying with the existing tools.

 

Yeah this is very true. You can find yourself spending more time reading about Chinese rather than reading it. This can be a problem with dual-language textbooks as well. Also can apply to this website 

[Flickserve]

I found my initial set of lessons (online one to one) rather overwhelming. I paid for another set of lessons just to do reviews which I felt much more at ease with.

I agree a core learning material is best with dabbling in and out of other resources.

[sydneyy]

Thanks for everyone who replied. I was thinking that I was spending too much time on looking for the right textbooks and methods and such. With all those efforts I think I could have already finished one of my textbook   At this point I should really stop and be more focused on actual studying.