HSK Level of "A Course in Contemporary Chinese" Series

[AR]

Hi everyone!

 

I am thinking about buying one of the "A Course in Contemporary Chinese" books, but I am not sure which one and since I have to import them from Taiwan, I would like to be sure that the level suits. I am about to finish the HSK Standard Course 4b book, but already took other language courses at my university which included HSK 5 vocabulary and grammar. So I guess I am somewhere between HSK 4 and 5. Maybe someone who has worked with the CCC books can tell me a bit more about the content, grammar or vocabulary, or maybe point to a page where I can find these information. 

Thanks in advance!

[amytheorangutan]

I’m the same as you and just very recently made the switch to  A Course in Contemporary Chinese from HSK4B. I’m using book 4 in ACCC but if you want something more challenging maybe go for book 5. I still learn some new grammar points and vocab from book 4 but I generally understand their dialogues and articles without too much difficulties. The reason I went for book 4 is because I don’t feel like I’m really ready for anything more advance. There are quite a lot of intermediate vocabularies and grammar that are not covered in HSK4 so I want to consolidate my knowledge and learn more intermediate stuff not covered by HSK4. 
 

If you want to get a feel of the difficulty level you can go here and preview a few pages, this is the link for book 4 https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010736532?sloc=main_mb

You can search for book 5 and preview it also for comparison. I hope that helps. 

[AR]

Thanks a lot! I think CCC 4 seems pretty suitable, since I just started to learn the traditional characters. The dialogues themselves don't seem too challenging like you said, but they seem to come with also a conversion to simplified (is this the case for all dialogues or just the one in the sample?) which is probably pretty useful for getting used to traditional.

 

Thanks!

[amytheorangutan]

Haha I completely ignored all the simplified text so had to open the book and check. It seems only the dialogues and articles are provided in simplified in all the chapters. I checked the last chapter and the simplified text is still there. 
The grammar, new words and exercises are all only in traditional characters. Also I bought the e-book because it was so much cheaper almost 1/3 of buying the physical book especially if taking shipping into consideration. 

[AR]

Ah that's great.

Where did you buy the ebook? I tried to download samples of the CCC 3, 4 and 5  on the Rakuten kobo store, but for some reasons the app tells me that they are not available. So I am a bit afraid that if I buy the entire ebook, I might not be able to download it as well. 

[amytheorangutan]

I bought it from the link I shared previously. There is an option to buy ebook 電子書 the problem is I don’t know if you can download it. At the moment I’m accessing it by logging in to their site and and open it in a browser. 

[AR]

Okay, got it. Thanks a lot for your replies!

[amytheorangutan]

No worries. I read on your other post that you are applying to MTC. Would love to hear your experience on the application process and the actual program once you complete it. This is something that I’m considering though probably not in the near future. 

[AR]

I am currently applying for the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. In case I get it, I'll apply to MTC which means I won't start the program until September next year. But yes, sure, I'll write a post about my experience