Interactions I [Text ] Workbook]: A Cognitive Approach to Beginning Chinese

by Jennifer Li-Chia Liu and Margaret Mian Yan

Book Overview

The need for a modern text to teach Chinese to English-speaking students has long been recognized. Even today Chinese tends to be taught by rote rather than concept for the want of pedagogically sophisticated course materials. Jennifer Liu and Margaret Yan, two Indiana University professors, have now produced a cognitively based first year course for learning Chinese. The innovative features of their texts include.

* An introduction to the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253211220
• ISBN13: 9780253211224
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 8.5" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Chinese is difficult, but...

I took a semester class with this book. I know that the other people seem to think that it moves too fast, but that really depends on the teacher. What it's trying to do is give you a relatively authentic Chinese learning experience in a way that you can still understand. Chinese, unlike Spanish or French, requires your hand to be held as you go through, regardless of the book. If your teacher doesn't speak any English (ahem - even outside of class time) then you will struggle a lot with the book. If your teacher can speak English, then this book is excellent. It really depends on what kind of help you get. I used this in a class at IU and I found that the 2 quizzes + test/quiz at the end of the week was an extremely taxing way of using this book. You're learning 70 or so words per week, in Traditional and pinyin, plus 20 characters in correct stroke order. If you were bad at language in high school, don't use this book. Ability to look over a huge list of words and be able to write them in pinyin after 10 minutes is a must. (The alternative is the teacher-suggested 1 hr. of study time per day) Learning Simplified comes later on.

Best I've found so far.

Recommended. I have switched to Interactions/Connections textbooks after using the Integrated Chinese course for a semester. Please see my full review and a comparison of the two courses under the textbook "Interactive Chinese by Yao and Liu". Interactions I is challenging: before you tackle it, I absolutely recommend Pimsleur Mandarin I audio full course. And you will need a tutor or a class for any Chinese textbook. Classes are a lot of fun, but check the textbooks they are using before you sign up -- Chinese textbooks seem to be about 50 years behind other foreign language offerings. I have not tested the Interactions audio CDs ($100 from Indiana University Press). Textbook courses typically assume you will continue your study in a language school in China/Taiwan/Hongkong, so they prepare you for student life. If you want Chinese just for travel, especially business travel: go with the Pimsleur full courses: Mandarin I, II, III. They are the BEST purely audio (speaking, no reading) courses. For just speaking Chinese, there is no textbook course that will take you as far and as fast as Pimsleur: you won't be able to read Chinese street signs, but you will be comfortable asking directions!

Recommended by my girlfriend from Taiwan

I bought this book today, as recommended by my girlfriend who is a Taiwan native. Meeting her in June of 2001, I became interested in learning the Chinese language. This would be my second foray into attempting to learn a foreign languge, as my first one, was back in the spring of 2001 with the Russian language.As before, I went to bookstores, and looked and studied the different methods available. I found what I thought were some good methods, but thought I would wait until she came to visit me so she could advise me of the best one.She came here over X-Mas, and we looked at many books in the bookstores. This is the only one she recommended.Now, I cannot rate it just yet, but I will give it 5 stars based on her recommendation.She chose it because she felt that it had the best presentation of the traditional and simplified characters, their pinyin pronunciation, and explanatory meanings. And she liked the fonts.It is so fascinating in trying to learn a new language. It makes you think, about how did you learn your native language in the first place. In my first attempt to learn a new language, the Russian language, I was faced with some soul searching about this. I realized that aural assimilation and imitation, was probably the earliest learning method. Then, the study of the written character and alphabet, and word formation, then grammar.So, probably no one method can cover it all, but a combination of methods would be comprehensive.I guess it depends on your agenda and time frame.I had purchased the "Chinese Now" by Transparent Language, I thought it was a good aural and imitation learning program, but my girlfried didn't like it. One thing I realized, is that it doesn't show you characters, only pinyin equivalent pronunciations. Anyway sorry for rambling on, but I will let you know more after my studies, on how this particular book works out for me!

Simplified characters hard to distinguish

I'm going to be living in China in the coming year, and I was hoping to use this text as a means to get some knowledge of the language beforehand. I will be living in Beijing, where the simplified characters are popular. In contrast to the previous review, I found distinguishing the simplified characters from the traditional to be quite difficult, and I'm somtimes left to wonder if they are even there at all. It is also not set up in a very easy to learn format: they start you out from the beginning with entire dialogues in Chinese characters (albeit, they then repeat the conversations in Pinyin and English) so they don't offer much in the form of grammar instruction, just jumbles of words with no explaination as to why or how the sentence is structured in that way.One last qualm: The workbook has many activities involving the tapes for the books (which are not included, and I wouldn't even know where to find). As a plus, it does give you the selected characters in each chapter with the number for each stroke, in addition to aides for remembering the meaning. It also offers a section on Chinese culture at the end of each chapter.All in all, this would be a good book for use in the classroom with a teacher who would be able to answer your questions.

Traditional, simplified, pinyin and English

I think this book is great. Each dialog is given four times. Once each in traditional writing, simplified writing, pinyin, and English. This really helps in learning to read. Each chapter has the same set of sections. Some of the sections are on:The dialogVocabularyHow to write characters, including stroke order. Culture.Explanation of grammar. I find these very helpful.