Grammar/ Vocabulary Texts

[Ding Yiyi]

大家好！

I'm looking for a good text to help me with my grammar that I could cover over my summer break from college (approximately 12-15 weeks) what would you suggest? I'm also interested in a book that presents vocabulary that would be interesting and useful but gets passed over often. Anything that presents vocabulary should contain a CD set because my home is in an area with limited contact with native or other Mandarin speakers.

Some information on the level I'm at: I'll have completed my first year of college-level Mandarin (Beijing-standard) and I've been using the New Practical Chinese Reader Level 1, and will probably be beginning Level 2 by the end of the school year.

Recently I've been looking at lovemandarin.com and their prices are amazing, but it seems like they're going to take forever to ship from China, so I'd like to get some responses soon.

Any reccomendations are welcome, and I'm fairly motivated, so a longer textbook isn't a problem. Any good dictionary suggestions are also welcome, I'm surrently using the Oxfors Starter Chinese Dictionary, but wouldn't mind a desk-size one for personal reference. So, in other words I'm looking for enough Chinese study materials to last me through armageddon for a between first and second year student, and then some.

谢谢你们

[elina]

Recently I've been looking at lovemandarin.com and their prices are amazing, but it seems like they're going to take forever to ship from China, so I'd like to get some responses soon.

I’d like to make some explanations:

The price of books in China mainland is extremely cheap, so that one book can be very big and heavy with a cheap price. But the delivery units we use (China Post and FedEx Express Company) charge us according to the WEIGHT of the package. It causes that sometimes the delivery fee for some remote regions can be equal with or more than the price of the books.

Before we started our online shopping website, we had been doing market research for about half a year, i.e. we have already compared the prices on other competitive websites, and then decided our pricing policy.

We provide 3 delivery methods on our site for overseas customers to choose according to their needs:

1. Surface mail of China Post (usually by sea), 60% of our overseas customers choose it, we are sure the price in this way can be cheaper than that on other websites.

2. Airmail of China Post, 30% of our overseas customers choose it, we are not sure the price in this way is cheaper or more expensive than that on other websites, it depends.

3. Express Service of FedEx, 10% of our overseas customers choose it, we are sure the price in this way is more expensive than that on other websites.

But I can bet that other websites always use the first delivery method (surface mail of China Post) to buy the books, and keep them in their stock, then quote the books’ price on their website. If they use the second and third delivery methods, the price on their website can be increased greatly. The reason for us to provide these 3 delivery methods on our site, is that sometimes some of our overseas customers are impatient to get the books, and they do not care about the cost, they simply want to get the books as quickly as possible.

Our books on learning Chinese and Chinese culture for foreigners are very complete and various than some other sites, so far as they are published in China mainland. So our overseas customers cannot find some books elsewhere. This is another reason that they want to order from our site.

To know the price of the books on our site is cheap or expensive finally, please add the price of the books and the delivery fee, and then feel free to compare with some other websites and your local bookstores.

If you like, keep any your comments and enquiries frankly open in the public, we are happy to see it, which can improve our services. Thank you very much!

[Ding Yiyi]

Hi, I understand why it takes so long to ship from China, I am looking for responses now so that I can order and have the books shipped to me by the time I have all my free time this summer. Thank you for your response though.