Textbooks for writing Chinese

[roddy]

I think the biggest failing in my Chinese at the moment is that I can't write - not just being unable to write characters (a computer will fix that) - but write sentences, paragraphs and so on.

Does anyone know of any decent textbooks which cover this?

Roddy

[Guest ciwei]

Roddy

I'm not sure I understand you when you say that you cannot write Chinese. I assume it's not that you simply don't know how to write the required characters (hence your reference to computers) Do you mean you that your style of spoken Chinese is not suitable for written communication because it's too colloquial?

But sorry I can't help you with your question, whatever you meant :-)

Ciwei

[skylee]

Right, I wonder the same. roddy did write something in Chinese here. I mean, just write what you would say. It can be wrong, but people will understand you, and they can point out what's wrong.

[roddy]

Sorry, I'll try to be clearer.

What I'm interested in is NOT learning to write characters (heng, heng, shu, heng, etc . . .) but how to write letters, essays, articles, in Chinese.

Things about types of language you should use (ie formal / informal), structuring the information (因此, 所以) - that kind of thing.

Roddy

[PollyWaffle]

hi roddy,

i started keeping a diary in chinese a few months ago... my chinese friends correct it... at fiorst there were many corrections but the last thing i wrote only had one!

my writing has improved rapidly via this method... it is all just practice i spose

polly

[roddy]

Yeah, I've been thinking about doing that. Could put it on the internet, and let everyone laugh at me . . .

Roddy

[Quest]

Yeah' date=' I've been thinking about doing that. Could put it on the internet, and let everyone laugh at me . . .

Roddy[/quote']

that would be cool, I will read it

[skylee]

And I will do the laugh part .

[PollyWaffle]

mine is on the web... notice i didn't put the link?! LOL!

[ChouDoufu]

that's a good idea by polly. everything i write my chinese friends laugh at before correcting. I understand how Roddy feels though, it's very frustrating not being able to write in a way that is consistent to how Chinese people write. Most of the time I could get my point across when writing Chinese, but it's never even close to the way a Chinese person would write it....

for formal type letters, BLCU publishes a book for 2nd year students called, 《汉语写作教程》 It's pretty decent at introducing how to write formal letters and so on, but it's not the most inspiring books to study from. Has lots of exercises that may help your writing as well. It runs at 42kuai...

[roddy]

And I will do the laugh part .

That's what I love about this forum - the supportiveness . . .

Part of the problem is that at the moment I really have no need to write in Chinese. I know it's something I should work on though. . .

Roddy

[889]

One of the most useful books I've got is 中国现代应用文 Zhongguo Xiandai Yingyong Wen produced by the 北京语言学院 Beijing Yuyan Xueyuan and published in Hong Kong (1986). I believe it's still being produced and available on the Mainland as well.

It's a textbook, in Chinese, to producing letters and other forms of standard documents and contains lots of useful vocabularly. Probably similar to the book mentioned above. Very handy when you can't remember what character to put at the end of your name on the return address of an envelope.

If you want more books of this sort, check out your nearest Xinhua Shudian: there are quite a few books on language usage published in Chinese for Chinese.

[Guest ciwei]

Hello Roddy

I was in a bookshop yesterday and noticed a title called "Developing Writing Skills in Chinese", by Boping Yuan and Kan Qian, published by Routledge.

It is way above my level so it's very difficult for me to judge. But it looked as if it might be quite useful. It covered various subjects such as such as formal business letters, requests for grants, reported speech, writing an advertisement, etc, etc. It also had several exercises (and answers) with each lesson.

It is available on (US) Amazon where you can also view the first few pages. These include the contents which will give you a better idea of what the book covers.

Hope this helps.

Ciwei

[trooper]

I have that book. It's aimed at post-intermediate learners.

About half of it is devoted to teaching you how to write simple letters, notes, adverts, etc, mostly by giving you model texts and phrases that you can adapt for your own purposes. The rest of the book is more general and attempts to expand your writing vocabulary by showing you new words and expressions that you can use for specific topics. For example, one chapter is about describing people's character. In that chapter there are many expressions to describe people's disposition along with exercises for you to try out what you've learnt. Another chapter shows you how to use comparisons, similes and metaphor.

What's good about the book is that it is focused and structured, with many small exercises (some with answers) for you to practice. You learn by following the model sentences and texts. Because it's focused, it's scope is limited. The topics cover areas like describing people, the weather, places, etc. It's a good book to develop functional writing skills and gives you some tips for more free-form and general writing, but if you are looking to develop essay or article writing skills, you'll have to get another, more advanced book (which I don't have).

I found this book on Amazon: A Guide to Chinese Essay Writing for Foreigners by Qiao Huifang, publisher: Peking University Press; ISBN: 7301026188. It might be what you are after.

[trooper]

Hey Roddy, for practise, why don't you make some of your posts, or portions of them bi-lingual? Doing this, we could all admire your writing ability, discuss suggestions and corrections and learn a lot in the process. Writing all your posts or long posts in both English and Chinese would be too much trouble, but it's seems easy to do for some of the shorter ones, occasionally.

Hey, it seems such a good idea I might even do it myself. Anyone with me?