I followed the old DeFrancis way of learning the spoken language and characters separately. DeFrancis reasoning for the separate approach was the simple spoken phrases to begin with were different from the simple characters and thus warranted a different approach for spoken and written language.
I started the written language in March of this year, but my progress has been slow. I have been copying 100 characters each day from McNaughton's book, but retaining them has been challenging. I am continuing to learn this way but decided to try a different approach as well.
Among current university textbooks, the one published by Cornelius Kubler has the same approach as DeFrancis with separate spoken and writing books. This week I started studying using Kubler's "Basic Mandarin Chinese" Reading and Writing book. The book has 12 chapters with 4 parts each so 48 parts total each introducing 6 new characters. The order in which new characters are introduced is quite different from McNaughton. While I found it dry to copy characters from McNaughton's book I am quite enjoying Kubler's book. Characters are introduced in a way so you can form basic words using them making the studying a bit more interesting. Each lesson has reading exercises where past characters come back and the new characters are introduced. So it's a fun way to learn and practice.
Other than McNaughton and Kubler I continued to revise Linguaphone and Colloquial this week.
Chinese Journey
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Re: Chinese Journey
My sense is that Kubler has had a good amount of inspiration from DeFrancis. I say that because on one hand his books are divided in speaking and reading/writing. On the other hand the audio cd for the book is eerily similar to the DeFrancis tapes. There's minimal amounts of English and it's jam packed with pure chinese speaking. Unlike most audio cds that come with language books there's no distracting/time wasting music that plays. You're just listening to chinese 95% of the time.
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Re: Chinese Journey
For characters you might want to try Clozemaster. You can do it so that you're forced to input the Hanzi. Of course you'll need a Chinese keyboard on your phone or PC.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I continue to thoroughly enjoy Kubler's book. I've also continued to work through McNaughton's book.
I've finished revising Linguaphone and went book to revise the last 1/5 of Assimil. It's interesting to see how much further the Linguaphone book goes than Assimil.
I've finished revising Linguaphone and went book to revise the last 1/5 of Assimil. It's interesting to see how much further the Linguaphone book goes than Assimil.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I finished revising Assimil and have moved on to revising the book "Daily Life Talk" by Sinolingua. This is one of a series of books that are quite similar in format to Assimil but are not for the beginner. They're quite helpful in picking up everyday vocabulary and just becoming more familiar with the Chinese language.
I'm at Unit 4 of Kubler's book continuing to progress at about a unit per day or 6 characters per day.
I'm at Unit 4 of Kubler's book continuing to progress at about a unit per day or 6 characters per day.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I continued at my regular pace going through McNaughton and Kubler. I've also started revising the earlier lessons in Kubler.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I'm nearing the end of the Kubler book and I'm quite satisfied with the progress i have made in reading characters. I have progressed much faster through the Kubler book than I have through McNaughton. With Kubler I have learned 200 characters now in a month or so. With McNaughton I have been going for 4 months or so and don't even know 200 characters all that well. My next will be to get the next Kubler book to continue learning characters.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I continued the last few months going through Kubler's Intermediate Written Chinese and I am finishing up this week. I stopped using McNaughton's book because I felt like I'm not retaining any of the characters.
The next book on my list is "A New China" from Chih-p'ing Chou. I picked it because Middlebury College uses it for its Pre-Advanced Chinese class. Since the Kubler book is a second year book I figure that would be a good pace for me. Also it sets me up to continue using the books for 3rd year by Chih-p'ing Chou.
I also noticed that I am capable of reading the hanzi side of Etape par Etape and Linguaphone. So overall I am very happy with the progress I have made using the Kubler book.
The next book on my list is "A New China" from Chih-p'ing Chou. I picked it because Middlebury College uses it for its Pre-Advanced Chinese class. Since the Kubler book is a second year book I figure that would be a good pace for me. Also it sets me up to continue using the books for 3rd year by Chih-p'ing Chou.
I also noticed that I am capable of reading the hanzi side of Etape par Etape and Linguaphone. So overall I am very happy with the progress I have made using the Kubler book.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I just finished working through "A New China" for the first time. It's a great book with lots of new vocabulary. The beginning of the book was quite appropriate for my level, but the learning curve of the book is quite steep. I will take some time to revise it a few times so that I retain more and more of the new vocabulary.
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