Books to Assist Chinese learners

[Kapernaumov]

Does anyone know anything about Chinese textbooks aimed at teaching vocabulary? What I'm thinking of is the kind of book (albeit for English) you see high school students poring over on the MRT or buses. I'm currently using Practical AV Chinese but feel like my problem when speaking is more often that I don't know the word for something than I don't know how to grammatically structure the sentence.

[riceworm]

Mandarin Chinese the Easy Way (ISBN 0764193694) is the introductory book I'm using. The book features dialogues in pinyin, extensive grammar notes, and a glossary of words/phrases in traditional and simplified characters.

[LURKER]

These books - while old - are really some of the best books I've ever used.

http://www.archive.org/details/mandarinprimer00balluoft

http://www.archive.org/details/introduc ... 00branuoft

[nemesis]

Very Practical Chinese is a book / CD set for Chinese learners in Taiwan. The book uses pinyin and traditional characters throughout, and even has a section on local and Taiwanese slang, which I found interesting.

My company, based in Taichung, is the main VPC distributor in Taiwan, so I can provide more information if required.

I've been using this for awhile, and I love the fact that the Mandarin used is Taiwanese-style; I'm using it to unlearn some of the mainlandesque phrases and words that I picked up from other books. It's got a great vocabulary base and the website offers wordlists and flashcards to help with word identification and reading. It's a great book if you've got a bit of a background in Chinese, but as a first book would probably be a bit daunting. It's really helping me to consolidate my oral and reading vocabularies, which are disparate because of years of Asian-style self-study with books. (Good reading ability, but poor speaking ability). I'm enjoying it. It also has fun slang and the Study Guide offers great explanations of sentence patterns and how to use them in everyday speech.

[riceworm]

Practical Chinese 實用生活華語不打烊 (basic) by Christina Yang

This one is a bargain at 400 NT (CD included). It's illustrated in color, features humorous dialogues (in Traditional Characters and pinyin), contains clear and concise grammar notes, and includes plenty of exercises and cultural tidbits.

Other books by the same author:
Easy to Learn Chinese (chengyu) 華語趣味成語
Practical Chinese (intermediate) 實用生活華語不打烊
Practical Chinese (advanced) 實用生活華語：認識華人文化高級
Easy to Learn Chinese (basic phrases & glossary) 300句說華語

[ehophi]

No print books for me, thanks. I signed up for worthwhile RSS feeds, and I fell in love with this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/

I learn a helluva lot of vocabulary in the science, technology, and health section (科技健康). Plus, the articles are pretty bad-ass.

[bismarck]

No print books for me, thanks. I signed up for worthwhile RSS feeds, and I fell in love with this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/

I learn a helluva lot of vocabulary in the science, technology, and health section (科技健康). Plus, the articles are pretty bad-ass.

Good find!

[nemesis]

Good thread idea. I'll start.

The other day, I picked up a very useful book from the huge new Eslite store near Taipei 101. It's "A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese". It has 114 short units, each of which clarifies a particular usage point. It concentrates on common areas of confusion for learners of Mandarin and each unit typically starts with one or more erroneous sentences, then demonstrates the correct usage and gives a number of clear explanations and examples of the various common usages of the particular word or grammatical feature.

It is very useful for a learner such as myself who has heard and understood a fair amount of spoken Mandarin but is unclear on some grammatical points and words with similar meanings. It would also be very useful for a full-time student of Chinese.

It has Pinyin and traditional characters throughout.

A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese, by Tian Shou-he
SMC Publishing, Taipei
1989 and 1992 [I have the second edition so presumably that was published in '92]
ISBN 957-638-347-1

I'm interested in this one, but books.com.tw only has the simplified version. How's that for irony?

That being said, I'm finding the "Very Practical Chinese" Study Guide has lots to offer in terms of helpful grammar/syntax hints.