Product Description

Integrated Chinese Level 2 is intermediate-level textbook for students who have completed one year of study at the high school or college level, or for anyone seeking to communicate effectively in Chinese wherever it is spoken. This acclaimed, best-selling series is successful because it "integrates" all four language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Integrated Chinese helps you understand how the Chinese language works grammatically, and how to use Chinese in real life,how to understand it on the street, speak it on the telephone, read it in the newspaper, or write it in a report. The materials within Integrated Chinese's set of textbooks, workbooks, character workbooks, and audio CDs are divided into sections of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Two types of exercises are used: traditional exercises (fill-in-the-blank, sentence completion, translation) to help learners build a solid grammatical foundation, and communication-oriented exercises (speaking drills, discussion topics, etc.) to prepare them to function in a Chinese language environment. Frequently, authentic materials written for native Chinese speakers and real-life (newspaper clippings, signs, tickets, etc.) are used. Notes on language use and Chinese culture are found throughout the textbooks. In Level 2, simplified and traditional characters are combined in one book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84392 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

Customer Reviews

Good introductory textbook
This is a good introductory textbook for learning Chinese. It follows the standard format of dialogs followed by vocabulary lists and grammar explanations. The dialogs cover a variety of everyday topics, and refreshingly enough, are not centered around tourist activities like other textbooks. I would have liked to see more reading passages in addition to the dialogs; the textbook does not introduce reading passages until the latter half of the book (although I suppose it could be argued that students don't have the vocabulary to read much before then).

I have to disagree with the reviewer who claims that the book uses vocabulary which is never introduced. When I was using this book, I never encountered a word which was not in the chapter's vocabulary list or a previous chapter. Occasionally the chapter vocabulary even lists words that were introduced in previous chapters, but might have been forgotten.

I found the grammar explanations in this book helpful and easy to understand. The critical reviewer failed to mention that the grammar explanations provide example sentences which make the particular grammatical concept quite obvious (at least to me). Many Chinese textbooks use very formal language to describe simple grammatical concepts; Integrated Chinese is no exception, but the example sentences and any English dictionary will help you to understand them.

"de hua is a particle. It is used in a hypothetical clause. It must be followed by another clause"
A hypothetical clause is just that; a clause introducing some kind of hypothetical situation. "If X, then Y" - the first clause would be the hypothetical clause. The book clearly demonstrates this with example sentences(this is taken from page 106):
"If you are going, make sure that you give me a call."
"If Mother insists on my studying medicine, then I'm not going to college."

"sui zhe is used in the first clause to indicate a changed circumstance. The second clause introduces a concomitant change."
"Concomitant" means "accompanying", or something going "with" something. And this is exactly what the examples given in the book demonstrate:

"With economic development, people's living standards are improving."
"With economic development" here is the clause with the changed circumstance, "people's living standards are improving" is the concomitant change.

Integrated Chinese is as good a textbook as any for learning Chinese. I think the New Practical Chinese Reader series is a great choice as well, especially since they come with DVDs. You can find audio CDs for integrated Chinese, but you will have to purchase them from Cheng & Tsui at a premium.

Good only if you use the online resources
If Integrated Chinese, Level 2 were for any other language, I would say it was a lousy textbook. But, unfortunately, there don't seem to be that many good Mandarin Chinese textbooks available for college use. I may be wrong - I haven't seen all that many - but there must be some reason Integrated Chinese is used at so many colleges, and that reason is probably that not many other, better ones are available.

One problem is that the vocabulary translations are poor - it would be better, when a word is a compound of two characters, to give a separate meaning to each character - this makes it easier to memorize each character.

Also, there is no English translation to the text, and it's not always obvious what the sentences mean, even when you have translated every individual word. (The examples in the grammar section are, however, translated into English.)

And the other reviewer is right about the poorly explained grammar - there is so much IC2 doesn't even begin to explain, and what it does explains it does an incomplete job of, not answering the obvious questions any student would have. To be fair, however, comparing Chinese to English grammar is very difficult, and a thorough exploration of all the differences in each short text or narrative would take a couple dozen extra pages. (A good book for beginning grammar is "Chinese Made Easy.")

Now, to the advantages of IC2: Everything in the textbook is given in both traditional and simplified characters, except for the index at the back of the book. (See caveat about workbook below.)

The workbook has a good amount of exercises and also an additional text, a little story or anecdote (that you also have to look up the vocabulary for, however). As another reviewer noted, though, the workbook is mostly in traditional characters: only the additional texts are given in both traditional and simplified; all the exercises are in traditional only. (Once again, editorial inconsistency.)

A final, and most important, advantage is that there are lots of resources for the IC series on the Internet. Lots of teachers who use this textbook have set up websites for their students (and everyone else who surfs) with voice recordings of the text, simplified transliterations, pinyin transliterations, flashcards that you can print out, flashcard and other games that you can play on line, grammar lessons, etc. All you need to do is search "Integrated Chinese," "Integrated Chinese English translation text," etc., for what you need to supplement an otherwise frustrating text.
And, of course, buy a few additional references like "Chinese Made Easy," "Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary," McNaughton's "Reading & Writing Chinese," etc. The "Oxford Starter Dictionary" I especially recommend.

A solid continuation of Integrated Chinese I
This textbook serves as a solid continuation of its first-year Chinese counterpart, with a useful mix of review and new materials for the vast majority of students who will begin second year Chinese after a long summer hiatus. It does not baby you throuh every single grammar point and vocabulary item, but this is the preferred method since if one is to succeed in advanced Chinese he or she must be able to absorb a mix of familiar and unfamiliar characters and grammar points. This is an important skill which will be mandatory for anyone who pursues Chinese to an advanced level, as even those foreigners who think they are "fluent" in Chinese will consistently encounter characters and grammar points they do not know and must make educated guesses based on their knowledge of grammar and past vocabulary. As always, however, no textbook is a substitute for a poor teacher, and those students unfortunate enough to both be unmotivated and have a bad teacher will likely find this textbook frustrating due to the fact that is a model representation of what further studies in Chinese will inevitably encompass - that is, neverending frustration overcome only by long nights with a dictionary.

Integrated Chinese II includes both traditional characters and simplified, and introduces extremely useful vocabulary and grammar which will be essential for any intelligent speaker of Chinese to know. After over a year in Taiwan and China, and being more or less fluent, I still find my personal Chinese vocabulary largely made up of the vocabulary and grammar points first encountered in this textbook and learned back when I was in my second year Chinese class.

Simply put, for the motivated, serious student of Chinese who aspires to eventually fluency, there is no better textbook available. Those who feel otherwise are misplacing the inherent frustration of learning 3,000 Chinese characters mistakenly onto this textbook rather than on the nature of the Chinese language itself (and possibly their subpar teachers).