Book on Formal Chinese Writing

[gato]

As you may know, formal written Chinese is a very different animal from spoken Chinese. I've looking for a usage guide to formal written Chinese so I could sound more like an adult when I write Chinese. I think I've found just the book. It's not perfect, but it comes close. The author uses the first 80 pages or so to give an overview of the grammatical structures (like preopositions and conjunctions) used in formal written Chinese but not in spoken Chinese. If you want to write formal Chinese, it's critically that you know how to use these. There's another 30 pages or so on the the structures of academic essays, formal letters, news reports, and advertising. There's also a chapter on common classical idioms (chengyu), which includes 92 of them. The author says that he designed the book as a guide to reading formal Chinese. The book is also completely bilingual, with almost everything in both Chinese and English. As a result, it's not as in depth as I would like. However, it's the best book I've found on the subject so far.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9622018688/102-8383693-0060157?v=glance&n=283155

A Learners' Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions (Paperback)

by Yu Feng

The writing books published in the mainland I've seen are very formulaic and impractical (all have nearly the same chapter headings) . They are typically organized by the topic of your writing and don't spend any time discussing the grammatical and vocabulary difference between written and spoken Chinese. They have chapters like how to write a deeply felt reflection of your recent trip to the local zoo. That's all very nice, but it's useless to me.

You can see this old thread for some examples of these mainland-published books. Some of these just give you sample writings without really teaching you how to write something of your own.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/82-mulan85&highlight=writing+book

[jbradfor]

I happened to come across this book on amazon, and searched here to see if other people have found it, and, voilà, here I am..

I am interested in this book not to learn to write Chinese (that will need to want for another decade....), but rather to ease the transition from reading comics / light fiction to reading heavier material (news, serious fiction).

For those that have read/used this book, do you think this book would be useful for that, or is there another you would recommend?

[gato]

Teaching reading is indeed the intent for the book.

The author says that he designed the book as a guide to reading formal Chinese.

[jbradfor]

Well, I know that's the intent...... [Which is why I first got interested in it.] However, on searching these forums, it seems that most of the discussion about it was using it to learn to write.

[gato]

Well, you have to be able to read before you can write ;-). The book works even better for learning to read formal Chinese because that was its designed purpose. Its focus is mostly on vocabulary and grammatical elements that are more prevalent in formal Chinese than spoken Chinese. Those are the basics you need to be able to read more smoothly. To learn how to write formal Chinese, you would need a lot of more writing samples and in-depth analysis of those samples, which it does not have.

[Flickserve]

I have a question on this. I have been told my chinese expressions are very colloquial and thus not very professional. It’s probably the influence of Cantonese and also trying to improve listening skills.

 

From experience, sometimes it is nicer to use more formal expressions during conversations. Can this book help that?

[akdn]

On 1/7/2012 at 10:13 PM, gato said:

Well, you have to be able to read before you can write ?

 

...which is the thinking behind this: Reading to Write: A Textbook of Advanced Chinese (Zu-yan Chen, 2019)