Nora Yao

Fundamental Written Chinese teaches both mastery of individual characters and reading comprehension. It introduces characters gradually, moving from simple independent characters to more complex compound ones. How characters are organized and constructed is taught through the liberal use of charts that display the structural and organizational regularities of each character, that is, its radical, phonetic component, shared graphic components, stroke order, and principles of proportion. This knowledge is then reinforced by exercises at the end of each chapter that require students to draw on the compositional information presented in the charts. Reading skills are taught through written passages that are accompanied by questions and exercises. Chapters begin with a reading passage and end with one or two shorter supplementary passages. Because words in Chinese are often composed of two different characters and because the optimum method for introducing new characters requires limiting the number of new radicals and structurally unrelated characters that can appear in any one character, many of the written texts in ""Fundamental Written Chinese"" make limited use of a Hanyu Pinyin-plus-character system of writing. This makes it possible for the text to remain faithful to a very controlled approach to character learning while allowing students to read passages that are within the scope of their abilities in spoken Chinese. The authors of ""Fundamental Written Chinese"" and its accompanying text, ""Fundamental Spoken Chinese"", treat written and spoken language as two different but related systems that are most effectively learned by delinking the sequence in which the particulars of each system is taught.

Fundamental Spoken Chinese introduces most of the basic grammatical patterns of modern spoken Mandarin in a carefully planned, graduated fashion. Every chapter follows the same organisational format and includes: key grammar points, new vocabulary items arranged by part of speech, sentence patterns, and four or five short dialogues illustrating contextual use of each new grammar pattern and vocabulary item. Non-technical explanations of grammar are written from the perspective of the English-speaking learner and are illustrated with multiple sentences in simple chart form. When appropriate, vocabulary and culture notes are provided, together with numerous drills, exercises, and in-class activities. Finally, English-Chinese translation exercises help determine how well students have mastered the chapter’s grammar and vocabulary. The authors of Fundamental Spoken Chinese and its accompanying text, Fundamental Written Chinese, treat spoken and written language as two different but related systems that are most effectively learned by delinking the sequence in which the particulars of each system are taught. Such an approach insures that reading and writing skills are firmly grounded in the spoken vocabulary and grammar previously learned. Both volumes are designed to provide students with a systematic, knowledge-based approach to speaking, listening, reading, and writing Chinese.