Reviewing in Taiwan some commonly used textbooks

[zhe]

There are some posts over about textbooks that people have used while studying in Taiwan (read MTC) to supplement studies. So I decided to gather them under one topic, since I didn’t study in MTC and felt that posting in NTU’s thread just scatters information.

 

Here is link for the etm001’s reviews in MTC thread and here is link to OneEye’s blog. And here’s my review:

 

EDIT: There is also review of PAVC5 book by etm001 here.

 

PAVC Series

 

More or less everything has been said, PAVC is still de-facto standard of Mandarin learning textbooks in Taiwan, PAVC serie consists of five books. I never studied the first book, so no comment on that. Second book namely covers complements, 把-sentence and 被-sentence, around 20 per chapter with focus on simple everyday stuff. On third book more complex grammar structures and topics are introduced, e.g. 非…不可, 由…來, lessons in history and geography of Taiwan and so on, around 50 words per chapter. Forth book is kind of small-talk book, finally enables students properly converse multiple topics, around 80 words per chapter. I haven’t studied the fifth book.  

 

Usually programs cover the first four books and then change into another series, like Far East Everyday Chinese. I guess the reason is that the fifth book is in written style and thus much harder than the first four ones, as a result students do not enjoy it so much/find it too hard/think it is not so useful. PAVC series is nothing fancy but studying these (four) books foundation is set and further study can commence.

 

However, at least MTC and ICLP is changing into another series of textbooks called A Course in Contemporary Chinese (volumes one and two are presently published). So in the future could be that PAVC becomes history and Mandarin programs in Taiwan start to use this, more modern series instead. Until then it’s hard to avoid PAVC in Taiwan.         

 

Mini Radio Plays

 

This is one of the ICLP books, first edition in 1984 and current edition in 2000, only traditional characters. Readily available at Lucky bookstore, price is a bit more than 300NTD. Lucky also carries CD that has to be bought separately, around 300NTD too. The CD is essential in order to study this book.

Book basically consists of 12 scripts of small radio plays, each with length of about 15 minutes, each lesson covers more than 100 vocabulary items. Even if the book is quite old the vocabulary is spot-on, you surely encounter it later or sooner. After each script there is few discussion questions about the play and around ten sentence patterns to study. There are no example sentences of vocabulary items nor grammar explanations, however it’s this book is not hard, so with help of Pleco these weaknesses can be easily overcome.  Please notice that language is influenced by mainland Chinese, so there is some 兒話 and some words that do not conform to Taiwanese standard, but for me this is only a positive factor.

 

I really enjoyed this book, could be because I had a crush on one of the voice actor’s voice which kept me listening over and over the same radio plays. I really feel that listening these radio plays day after day really helped my listening comprehension, actors speak almost at native speed but still very clearly (native speakers do not speak very clearly). Recommended buy.

 

According to the ICLP webpage Mini Radio Plays is on the fourth level (compares to PAVC4), but what I’ve heard ICLP students take this in their third semester and I agree that it is not very difficult, lots of vocab but  grammar is quite simple. Thus, I would recommend study this book with PAVC3 (or similar level book).

 

Taiwan Today

 

Taiwan Today consists of twelve chapters about different cultural issues in Taiwan, all texts both in simplified and traditional characters. Also available at Lucky Bookstore, but I don’t know the price or the CD situation since I didn’t buy it from there, however Taiwan Today is not edited by ICLP so there shouldn’t be any restrictions.

 

Every chapter introduces around five grammar points with 50 or so vocabulary items. Also includes lots of exercises like fill-in-the-blanks, translations, reading comprehension and discussion items. Even though texts are not very demanding fact-wise, they still contain quite a lot complex grammar structures and also some written-style language, I felt that the difficulty level was somewhere around PAVC4. Overall nice, smooth introductory book for written language even if texts are not very deep.

 

I enjoyed the essays and they helped my essay writing, but for the to buy or not to buy recommendation, please see review of Far East Everyday Chinese Book 3.

 

Far East Everyday Chinese Book 3

 

Far East Book 3’s newest edition is published in 2014, consists of 16 lessons and every two lessons with common theme. Every odd chapter has colloquial dialogue and every even chapter written-style essay. Themes include computers, economy, society, environmental protection etc. Around 40 vocabulary items per chapter and also some exercises. Book includes CD but workbook has to be bought separately, I cannot recall the prices. Many bookshops carry this series.

 

As this book was used in the class the texts didn’t matter so much, because the conversation in the class follows more material that teacher has prepared (at least so in my case). Also I had already studied Taiwan Today so this book was more like a review for me. Now browsing through the texts, literary pieces seem to be solid and dialogues normal textbook dialogues that are quite a lackluster.

 

Compared to Taiwan Today, Far East 3’s texts are much more modern, about current issues. They both introduce more or less the same grammar structures, Far East introduces few more since there are more chapters but difficulty level is more or less the same. Since Far East 3 and Taiwan today more less cover the same difficulty of material, I feel one should not study both books. As for whether to study Far East 3 or Taiwan Today, student better to decide upon his/her likes/dislikes, Far East’s material is more modern but studying Taiwan Today introduces essential points in Taiwan society.

 

Mini Radio Plays

 

Mini Radio Plays consists of 12 radio plays that introduce everyday life dialogues, very similar to New Radio Plays. However, contrast to New Radio Plays, MRP is more modern in its’ themes and the vocabulary choices are much more closer to in Taiwan spoken Mandarin.  The first chapter only has 27 items while last chapter has 88 items so there’s definitely steep progress in difficulty. Mini Radio Plays also has workbook but I didn’t use it, all available at Lucky Bookstore.

 

In the end I can’t grasp why MRP is harder than New Radio Plays, other than it is officially ranked quite high in difficulty. I studied Mini Radio Plays while I attended Far East Book 3 in the class and it felt like a breeze, compared to New Radio Plays there’s much less is vocabulary items, grammar is not so much harder, also both books have some 成語s. However like New Radio Plays, I studied MRP as complementary, my classes didn’t cover it, thus I only studied the scripts, as in what the actors said and skipped character’s mood instructions. Maybe because of that (and my progress) MRP felt quite easy.Nevertheless I liked the book, it was fun listening the plays. Somewhat recommended buy depending student's needs and wants.

 

Learning Chinese with Newspaper (I)

 

This “book” consists of twelve chapters on authentic news published around 2000, commonly used book in MTC. Newspaper (I) nails down the basic structures that newspapers normally use and some more. Every chapter has main text and supplementary text, for main texts vocab is introduced with example sentences and some simple grammar points, for supplementary texts only English translations of words is given. Around 40 words per text, so in total about 80 per chapter.

 

I studied this book at the same time with Far East book 3, and all the vocabulary that I didn’t know as included in the vocabulary lists.  However, because of written style the texts are harder than colloquial language, my study was quite slow. Also Newspaper (I) contain more complex structures than normal, everyday Taiwanese newspapers like Apple Daily, Liberty Times and Taiwan Times, where colloquial language is quite common nowadays.

 

In theory I should like Newspaper (I), since it helped me to read newspaper but still something puts me off. Maybe it’s because there is no audio component with the book so internalizing the vocabulary was much harder or maybe it’s because vocabulary is more specialized so there is much less use for it, thus I feel like there isn’t much progress with this book. For students, whose goal is to learn to read newspaper, this book is good introduction to newspaper language the vocab progression is smooth, however directly tackling current news could be more interesting, even if it requires much more work.

 

Conclusion

 

It is hard to formulate the overall ranking in difficulty since the complementary books are so close in difficulty. But this is what I came up with: PAVC levels per se, Mini Radio Plays close to PAVC3, Taiwan Today with PAVC4, Far East 3 and Mini Radio Plays on their own and finally Newspaper (I). Please notice that the levels are not equal of “length”, especially after PAVC4 everything is kind of hazy. Only Newspaper (I) is clearly harder than the others.

 

And what level I am right now? Few weeks ago I passed TOCFL Level 4 quite easily both in listening and reading, I feel like I have solid foundation, even if communication problems in everyday life are still frequent. After all these are only textbooks, the real life language is much more lively, pronunciation is not so clear and so on.

 

EDIT: I changed the topic several times before posting, couldn't get my head around it at all, now it's the worst, lol.

[dtails]

Great reviews! I'm studying in Taiwan but not in Taipei so it's nice to have a separate topic not mixed in with a specific university. As you said it seems PAVC is being replaced at some schools but the review is definitely useful because outside of Taipei, PAVC is still by far the most used. In fact, I am studying book 5 now because the university I study at continues with that textbook instead of some of the other intermediate options you mentioned. What's next for you? Have you looked at Thought and Society yet?

[Naphta]

Thanks a lot for this very useful post!

 

 

Few weeks ago I passed TOCFL Level 4 quite easily both in listening and reading, I feel like I have solid foundation, even if communication problems in everyday life are still frequent.

 

Would you say that the contents taught in PAVC4 are enough for passing TOCFL Level 4? Or were you already in a "higher" level than PAVC4 by the time you passed it?

[zhe]

What's next for you? Have you looked at Thought and Society yet?

 

 

 

Yeah, I've had a look at Thought and Society, and it will probably be the next textbook I am going to study. I am just kinda terrified with the amount of vocab it has, so I'm postponing it for now.

 

My speaking skill lags other skills so I am going to try copy OneEye's TV show study, now I have my set on 兩個爸爸. On top of that some extensive shadowing and chorusing using sentence books and old textbooks. 

 

Any chance of you writing review of PAVC5? It kinda intrigues me since the essays seem solid and fortunately doesn't introduce crazy amount of vocab per chapter.

 

EDIT: I only now noticed there was review of PAVC5 already posted here. 

 

 

 

Would you say that the contents taught in PAVC4 are enough for passing TOCFL Level 4? Or were you already in a "higher" level than PAVC4 by the time you passed it?

 

 

 

I had almost finished Far East book 3 when I took the TOCFL. For the reference I had some friends in CLD who were at the time studying end of PAVC3, they almost passed level 3. Another friend at ICLP, also studying PAVC3 passed level 3, for listening almost passed level 4, so I guess it would be doable, depending how much you've studied extra. Biggest hurdle might be reading speed as at that point there hasn't been much reading practice. My friends didn't manage to answer half of the questions in reading comprehension, but I think they didn't have any strategy for the exam.