Product Description

A brand new title for the Modern Grammars series to add to the existing European Languages and to the forthcoming Japanese title. The grammar will present Chinese as spoken in the People's Republic of China (specifically, that spoken around Beijing) and give all examples in simplified characters, traditional characters, romanization (pinyin) and in translation. It will follow the series structure (two parts - one for grammar structures, one for functions), with an accompanying workbook. Linguistic jargon will be kept to a minimum throughout. We will also be creating an accompanying homepage for the workbook with additional exercises (and a reporting system enabling students to send their results to their tutors); this we hope will go further to enhance the performance of the workbook.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32862 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 396 pages

Customer Reviews

Very well done
If you are studying Chinese then you really need a grammar book as a companion to your other course materials. This will serve as a good reference which can be referred to when needed. The fact that the second half of the book focuses on functional (i.e. situational) grammar makes it easy to find the relevant grammar pattern. I won't go into too many details - you can read that in the review(s) below. I still have some grammar questions that the book doesn't answer but it is the best I have found so far. One area where the book is weak is on directional complements which can be unnatural for the western learner. Good luck on your learning!!

Replaced my old Chinese Grammar books
After having used previous Chinese grammar books, such as those from Yip Po-ching, I found this one to offer a better organization of grammar patterns. The book is split into two sections. The first focuses on grammar patterns and the other which focuses on situational aspects of the language. These two approaches works great when learning how best to put together sentences.

The book presents the material in Simplified/Traditional/PinYin. I also went ahead and got the workbook for this text and was also greatly pleased with the exercises presented.

I would follow up your Chinese studies with a character dictionary (focusing on the 2000 most frequently used characters), and a vocabulary book such as those offered by HSK. With these resources you'll likely succeed in your Chinese studies. Oh, and don't forget ChinesePod; it's a great resource for Chinese listening comprehension.

Excellent - even for a beginner
I just started to learn Chinese a couple of months ago, when I felt the need for a grammar book.

This book uses very simple vocabulary, which I can already understand. The grammar is explained with sample sentences all the time. The sample sentences are 'written' with both simplified and traditional characters.

PartB is the really rich part, where not only additional grammar is presented (past, future, location, etc.), but also common and everyday expressions and situations (phone, agreement, etc.) are also explained.

In my opinion it is very comprehensive, not only on beginner level. The grammar terms are simple - not like an 'official', heavy grammar book, which makes it easy for a beginner, but it is far from shallow for an advanced student either.

I can only recommend it!! Currently I don't think I'll need any other Chinese grammar book in the near future...