Books in Pinyin through to Intermediate Level

[zhouhaochen]

we have about 600 books at our school, I have been to every book shop in Beijing and I still havent found what I need, so I thought I ask here (and will be horribly embarassed once someone points out to me that its very easy to find - I then lower my head and accept to have been 教育).

I am looking for a Mandarin book series that uses Pinyin all through the book (grammar, exercises included) up to the intermediate level or at least intermediate-beginner level.

While there is some academic discussion whether Characters should only started to be taught after an initial phase to get the speaking up or not (both arguments have merits - I wont get involved into that here), leaving characters away until an intermediate level, will certainly results into massive problems when trying to reach an intermediate-advanced level.

I would never use a book as described above for a serious student of the language, however there are some students who do not aim to get to that level, but just want to speak and accept that it will all disappear again after a few years once they returned home. Of course a lot of problems can be solved with writing stuff in the book etc. with the teacher, but a book that really uses pinyin in all situations past the absolute beginner book, would be the best.

Any advice?

[Gharial]

For my money, the best course I've ever seen is the original edition (by T'ung & Pollard) of the Colloquial Chinese course published by Routledge. Loads and loads of lively and often amusing dialogues, and plenty of exercises, all in Pinyin (though there are Simplified and Traditional character texts, sold separately, that cover IIRC about 800-900 characters), and that will all definitely take one to intermediate level. The only drawback is that a few of the vocab items are a bit dated, and that it may stop being reprinted (or the reprints will sell out) and very likely isn't sold in China (i.e. you'd need to have it shipped in from abroad), so it could be a bit too inconvenient and/or expensive. But most other courses I've seen seem very lightweight in comparison, and start introducing characters (which takes up space that could've been devoted to more language in Pinyin) before one has reached even pre-intermediate/post-elementary level. You sometimes see complaints online about no answers being provided for the exercises, but as the authors say, the plentiful material provided should resolve, by sheer force of example, whatever doubts the student might have about their answer(s), and it's probably the less conscientious, committed, or thorough student who wants rigid cast-iron answers anyway (i.e. that they can often prematurely look up and then not have to think about anymore).

Another fine Pinyin-only course (also by T'ung, but this time in collaboration with Baker) is Chinese in Three Months, and some might prefer it to Colloquial Chinese as it isn't nearly as detailed/"demanding", plus it has plenty of audio (4 tapes in the book+audio pack I bought). But again, it's from a western publisher. I guess it reaches about the same level (pre-intermediate, not quite intermediate?) as Scurfield's Teach Yourself Chinese (which is ostensibly Pinyin-only, but from about halfway through devotes some space [though not too much] to perhaps a few hundred characters in all, for those who want to start learning them after or indeed before the course is over).

[imron]

I think it will be difficult if not impossible to find such a book (depending on your definition of intermediate). Your best bet would be to find books that have a reasonable amount of pinyin in them (e.g. full pinyin for all dialogs) and just ignore the characters.

[zhouhaochen]

@gharial

thanks a lot, thats very helfpul. I dont think a book that includes traditional characters would be effective (sorry to all our learners out there in Taiwan, its beautiful, but a bit much for a beginner and not very useful in Beijing), but will look at the other two. Troublesome to order from abroad though, if anyone has a recommendation for something in Beijing, that would be fantastic.

@imron

its fine for there to be characters too (I think there should be), as long as there always is pinyin too.

Problem is for example 口语速成 has all pinyin for the first book, for the second for all besides the exercises and none by the third. If we had the same book for all three with pinyin - that would be perfect (for that specific type of student at least)

[DespikableMi]

So far I've only seen one book entirely in pinyin. The name of the book is "Pīnyīn Rìjì Duǎnwén" and it should be around intermediate level. You can read the book at http://www.pinyin.info/readings/pinyin_riji_duanwen.html for free. I suggest zooming in a bit when reading since diacritic marks can be hard to see.

[Gharial]

Well, the main CC coursebook is like I say definitely all Pinyin-only. The purely supplementary character text meanwhile is available in both Simplified and Traditional versions, but the beauty of them (judging from the Traditional version that I have) is that whilst the actual text (i.e. the reading practice) in each is only supplied in one or the other type (depending of course on the version one chooses), the stroke order guidance in each doesn't stint on offering stroke-by-stroke diagrams for both types, and there aren't many books that do that! Plus it's all handwritten (but very very neatly, beautifully in fact!) and therefore exactly the right size for copying compared to the machine-printed fonts in most other books. But it's mainly Pinyin that you're after, and books produced in China would be much more convenient for you for sure. (If I think of or see anything else, I'll let you know pronto!). One advantage though of the three courses I've mentioned is that they are all just a single self-contained volume, as opposed to a series, so at least the expense would be a one-off for each. Another more important advantage is that the pronunciation and especially the grammar explanations will likely prove a lot better (more comprehensible and usable) than those offered in many a textbook produced in China. (But hey, if it's grammar you're after, you can probably get by with supplementing whatever mainland textbook with the likes of Yip & Rimmington's, or Ross', grammars - see here http://www.chinese-f...post__p__237767 for a 4-page thread where I and others give our thoughts and opinions about that range and more!).

Another thing I really liked about the original CC course was that the audio was pretty realistic, not too slow like it is in many courses including TYC (though again, some learners prefer audio that takes 3 seconds or more, rather than little more than 1, to spit out basics like e.g. 我喝茶 wǒ hē chá). There are certainly not many courses like CC, that devote much if any time to presenting Chinese as a genuinely social language (i.e. as used between the Chinese themselves, as closer friends), so one gets more of a "fly on the wall" feel with the original CC dialogues and their audio. Here is a link to Columbia's re-recordings of the CC dialogues http://ealac.columbia.edu/language-programs/chinese/clp-learning-materials/clp_lm_colloquial_chinese/ , but unfortunately it's a lot slower and less lively (and therefore not nearly as good, IMHO) than the original audio; it could however still make reasonable listening comprehension, and perhaps (due to its slower speeds) provide the basis e.g. for dictation exercises into Pinyin.* The CC coursebook itself is available for limited preview on Google Books. As for Cin3Ms, there is plenty of audio available for that (4 tapes, with IIRC almost the entire first tape devoted to pronunciation), and the dialogues, whilst not as social and lively as the CC ones, are solidly functional (e.g. introductions, asking directions, prices, shopping etc).

One last thing I thought I should mention are the dictionaries I know of that provide full Pinyin (for all example sentences in addition to head and compound entries). Here they are, arranged from more basic to more comprehensive:

- Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary. The dinky vinyl-bound Oxford Chinese Minidictionary is identical except for lacking most of the appendical material. The characters in both are simplified only, i.e. no traditional are provided.
- Langenscheidt/Berlitz bilingual dictionary. Various titles. The characters are simplified only, i.e. no traditional are provided.
- Fred Fangyu Wang's venerable Mandarin Chinese Dictionary: Chinese-English, and Mandarin Chinese Dictionary: English-Chinese. Dover reprints. The characters in both are neat handwritten traditional ones only. The C-E volume is generally the more useful (the E-C one isn't really comprehensive enough), but both have an abundance of snappy Chinese examples that will be very useful for anyone wanting to learn the patterns of Chinese more as it is spoken rather than written.
- Collins Chinese Dictionary, Third Edition. Includes traditional as well as simplified forms in the entries but not however in the index (which includes and allows the look up of simplified forms only). In the entries, there are a number of unfortunate "(over)mapping" errors between the original meanings of certain forms and their later simplified uses (i.e. when being borrowed for their sound rather than their original meaning) - see the third paragraph of the following post (a detailed review I wrote of the CCD3): http://www.chinese-f...post__p__240942 . Still a useful work though, especially for the appreciable number of examples provided.
- ABC ECCE Dictionary. Excellent coverage of tone sandhi, and of simplified and traditional character sets. (Here's the comprehensive review I wrote: http://www.chinese-f...924#comment-237924 ).

There are a few dictionaries that I'm not familiar enough with from a Tuttle author, but I'm pretty sure they also provide full Pinyin, and coverage-wise I guess they would slot in somewhere between the Oxford and the CCD3.


*FWIW, here's my condensation of all the tone mark placement rules and algorithms down to something very short, easily remembered, and not at all technical: "The tone mark goes over the first vowel present, unless it is an i or u, in which case the mark simply moves one letter to the right i.e. to the very next vowel along. (Note that this next vowel can then be an i or u)." Hope it might be of use!

[Phil]

Here is a link to Columbia's re-recordings of the CC dialogues http://webcache.goog...2520chinese.htm

This is a very valuable link, particularly as I have just ordered a 2nd-hand copy of Colloquial Chinese by T'ung & Pollard, based on recommendations in another thread. But I am intrigued by your report that these recordings are "a lot slower and less lively (and therefore not nearly as good, IMHO) than the original audio". Can you add anything to this ? Do you know, for example, whether they were re-recorded by Columbia using different speakers to the original, or have they simply taken the original recordings and massaged them in (e.g.,) Praat or Cool Edit PRO ? If I were to want to restore them to the original rate of delivery, by what factor (approximately) should they be speeded up ?

[Gharial]

Hiya Phil, I have the original recording and can confirm that the voices, pace, and vitality are all different (i.e. worse, IMHO) in the Columbia re-recording (and I'm pretty sure it is a genuine re-recording rather than a "massaging". EDIT: Yup, just had a quick re-listen, the original doesn't have a woman repeating the shengci/new vocab for Lesson 1 for a start!). The original is just so much snappier, and gets one into better listening and speaking habits, I feel (certainly, real-life rapid speech will come as less of a shock to a student who's practised with the original). I'll have a listen to the first few dialogues in each version a bit later today, and time them; it'll be interesting to see if I've been exaggerating (probably a bit, but hopefully not too much!).

[Phil]

Hiya Phil, I have the original recording and can confirm that the voices, pace, and vitality are all different (i.e. worse, IMHO) in the Columbia re-recording

OK, many thanks Gharial. Do you happen to know whether the original Routledge recordings are still online, and whether the printed text will contain a URL for them ?

** Phil.

[Gharial]

I'm not aware of the original being online, but there may still be tapes (bear in mind the coursebook was first published in 1987!) floating around at Routledge, or maybe Amazon, and maybe even at SOAS in London (which is where the original CC course was developed and tested). I'll look into it anyway, and get back to you if I find anything. The Columbia version will be OK in the meantime though I'm sure!

[Phil]

OK, many thanks. Incidentally, as far as "but unfortunately it's a lot slower and less lively (and therefore not nearly as good, IMHO) than the original audio" goes, I have to say that when I was a complete beginner (and I don't claim to be much better now !) I did find that "slower is better". At a certain speed (e.g., the introductory material in Lesson 1 for the Columbia link you supplied), I can clearly visualise the pitch contours, and this really helps in re-creating the tones when speaking. At normal speed, my inbuilt processor (a.k.a. "brain") can't convert from sound to visualisation quickly enough, and although I can still recognise the tones in at least 95% of cases, I could not attempt to re-create them from a stored visual model.

** Phil.

[Gharial]

I guess I've always preferred more subtle tones, general contours within which there are key syllables, to (too-)explicit tones (and I think they can actually be made too explicit sometimes!), plus I wanted my speech (such as it was) to be closer to native-speaker rates than not. But sure, there may be advantages sometimes or at first to slowed-down texts.

[Gharial]

OK, I had a quick listen to both versions of Lesson 1, and found the following:

Presentation (课文) 1-3: 25 vs 43 secs (so original is only 58% as long, i.e. the re-recording is almost twice as slow)
Dialogues (对话) 1-3: 40 vs 56 secs (= 71%).

(The Presentation is from 2:25~3:08, and the Dialogues from about 3:14~4:10, in the Columbia re-recording of Lesson 1).

I might compare a few further lessons, from midway through and then towards the end of the course, but the above comparison is probably sufficient (i.e. indicative enough).

One thing I didn't really take note of before but have to now highlight and give the Columbia guys genuine credit for is their recording the Speech Patterns (句型) of the CC course; these are not part of the original Routledge recording (i.e. the Routledge recording has only the New Vocabulary [生词], Presentations, and Dialogues). So the Columbia recordings will now be very useful in this other respect also!

 

EDIT: I've added an mp3 of the original audio for the first lesson to the following, more recent thread:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/46855-tung-pollards-colloquial-chinese-is-this-the-right-text-and-accompanying-audio/?p=355024

[tec]

I'm not sure what their availability in Beijing is, but the Defrancis series is entirely pinyin, though it does have companion (traditional) character materials.

The Foreign Service Institute course, while not a traditional textbook series, is entirely pinyin as well.