Chinese for Beginners: Learning Conversational Chinese (Fully Romanized and Free Online Audio)

This book is an Excellent source for learning useful Chinese. My background: I have been to China 3 times in the past 12 months. I am not traveling for business, but rather for vacation or personal reasons. I am married to a woman from China, and she can speak fluent Mandarin as well as read it. My Mandarin self study is not extremely disciplined. I still study the lessons from this book, while also being sure to fully utilize the included audio portion to help make my pronunciation more accurate. In my experience tones and the pronunciation of words are hard to grasp for beginners without first hearing an example from a native speaker. That's why the included audio feature is important and better than other books/courses that don't also provide any audio tools. I like the organization of the book and how it is broken down into sections for each chapter which helps me practice in segments and at my own pace. Each chapter has a purpose as well like: introducing yourself, asking directions, business phrases and company related topics, how to interact in a restaurant, saying thank you, apologizing... In my experience I noticed that if I repeat each of the lessons a few times in a row before moving on it's easier to absorb. I simply will do a lesson until I feel I have committed about 70% to memory, again because it helps me feel that I retain it better. This is also better if you go a few days between lessons. I don't recommend rushing through each lesson quickly or doing more than one or two lessons in a day, that won't work for someone like me. After a few trips to China I am definitely still a beginner but I don't feel as helpless as I thought I would thanks to making the effort to learn from this book. I have ventured around completely on my own, without my wife, on numerous occasions and I got by just fine. Sure there were several times street vendors or merchants probably were asking me to buy something and I just said no thank you, as I walked by but I had no idea what they were asking me to buy. That will probably get better with practice and experience. Be forewarned that obvious (non-Asian) foreigners are asked to buy everything, be sure to learn how to say "no thanks". From my limited experience Chinese people almost entirely expect you to know absolutely zero mandarin, so when you can speak some mandarin and also manage to be polite as you do it you go from being just another foreigner to someone that is respectful of the local culture and you will get along much better with the locals. Overall; I have learned from this book, I have also learned by asking my wife hundreds of questions, and I have learned Mandarin in the car from lessons via Audible. Among many other useful things that I can say now I will mention that I can: introduce myself, ask where a place is, ask how much things cost, tell them I will be late and that I am sorry, order food and get leftovers in a To-go box...and many more. As for beyond that, I can sometimes understand or guess the subject of some of the simpler details (time or day) of what my wife is discussing with her parents in a full speed Mandarin conversation. I can pick out a word or two from each sentence and make a guess and I am usually correct but not always. Use this book if you want to travel to China. It has a great section that applies specifically to business travelers and the book is a useful for leisure travelers as well. I recommend Chinese for Beginners by Yi Ren, she is a very good teacher and this book will help you prepare for your travels.

I agree 100% with Paul Ramsey's review of, "Chinese for Beginners: Mastering Conversational Chinese." I took one of Yi Ren's classes offered at the library. I had always wondered why people said learning Chinese was so difficult. Now I understand that it partly has to do with the five possible different tones used to pronounce a single word that is spelled one way. The Chinese use symbols above the Roman letters, to indicate which of the five tones, or inflections of voice, to use to differentiate the possible meaning of a particular word. For example, the Chinese word, yu, depending on how it is pronounced, means either fish, rain, jade, or to become silted up. If that sounds difficult, consider this ... some of the characteristics of the English language can be challenging, as well. In the English language, a word spelled and pronounced one way can have multiple meanings. The word blue, can mean a color, or a melancholy way of feeling. Additionally, an English word can be pronounced the same way, spelled differently, and have different meanings. For example: hear and here. So there! :) Some of the sounds required of our voices while speaking the Chinese language, are not sounds we use when speaking the English language. At first, it feels challenging and odd to make the sounds required. With practice, though, it feels great to become proficient and master this skill. The big smiles on the students' faces reflect their sense of pride and accomplishment at rising to such an enriching challenge. I really appreciate the audio CD included with the very reasonably priced workbook. I found it invaluable to be able to follow the lessons in the book with the CD, while studying at home. And now, I have the CD and book forever, so that I can refresh my skills anytime I want. I have listened to the CD in my car and on my laptop. My 2 year-old grand daughter has listened to it with me. She now correctly says, "Thank you," and "Hello," in Chinese. And ... she caught on faster than I did! The Chinese culture, so ancient and rich, is to be admired. I loved reading the brief passages sprinkled throughout the book that give insight into the Chinese way of life. They add inspiration and intrigue, encouraging us to want to master the language on a higher level ... and perhaps, one day, even to visit China, and speak this remarkable language with the Chinese people themselves. If you ever have the chance to take Yi Ren's class ... as a beginner, I can honestly say it was very informative and enjoyable. Practice is essential - and this workbook and CD are at-home helpful companions for sharpening your skills for beginning conversational Chinese.

This book seems like a nice book for my kid. She enjoys learning Chinese with the book and the pictures in the book! Only one thing is missing, the grammar section (the other Chinese books all have it).

Mastering Conversational Chinese, Chinese for Beginners is the best introductory book for teaching Mandarin you could ask for. I spent 3 years in China. Yi Ren was my first Mandarin teacher. I studied with her before I left and remember her saying our book we used wasn't the best. I had just had a few months of lessons before I left and continued to study while in China. I had 4 teachers and 4 different books. Yi and I continued to stay in touch when I would be in town. When I ordered her book I was amazed at the way it was put together. I wished I had been able to have it in the beginning. The other books I had used were not as organized and easy to understand. The effort that was put into it made it so much easier and much more fun. The Special Notes, Useful Sentences and Extended Vocabulary were consistent with every chapter. The Cultural tips all throughout the book would have been so helpful to me in China if I had them in the beginning. To understand the culture helps so much in learning the language. The Poetry, Songs and Pictures are so interesting. The way sentence structure was taught was invaluable and not done well in the other books I have used. Not that I am living stateside again I use it to brush up on what I know and use the CD to practice as well. I highly recommend this book. I am hoping there will be another book as well.

I have soooo many books for learning mandarin. But I needed a refresher and being an overseas born Chinese this is a brilliant starting point. Best book I’ve come across yet.

Upon first starting this book, I loved the way each chapter was structured: you get a dialog with some key words, useful phrases, an "extend your vocabulary section," something neat like a poem that you don't really need to understand but is just for enjoyment, and some practice at the end of each chapter. However, the reason I am giving a 3 star review is because as I was reading dialogues, I would find that there were some things I didn't understand; of course, I would go to the chapter notes section as well as the vocab section, however, sometimes this yielded no balm, as the concept/word I was stuck on was not explained anywhere. Concepts weren't in the notes, words not in the "new words" section, and not even in the glossary. I would often have to look online for explanations on grammar structures/word usage, and would often still be confused. This book has tremendous potential as a learning resource if it were to be revised slightly to add explanations of topics it grazed over

Excellent book, with a lot of practical examples and nice audio. I suggest that you repeat every exercise several times before moving to the next one, because the tone is extremely important in Chinese. I bought several Chinese tutorials and tried following them simultaneously, and this was the best one.

I have no issues with this book at all. The more resources I have, the better.

Great book for beginners. The CD that comes with it is very useful too.

This book is a good resource to have to introduce you to learning Chinese. I used this in addition to other resources to complement different learning styles.

Me gustó mucho para complementar mis cursos de chino. El libro viene en inglés y chino. No traía ni bolsa no plástico protector adicional a la bolsa en la que fue enviado, sin embargo llegó en buen estado y antes de lo esperado. Lo super recomiendo.

I really like this book because it has every day life scenarios and is really very good for anyone who wants to learn the practical aspects of the language . Highly recommend !

Brilliant wee book. I love the cultural advice, would love to ask the author if she could do a whole book on just that, it would be a very interesting read. Im teaching myself Chinese, beginner, and everyones different and like to learn differently but I prefer to use textbooks. This is really good. You could just use it on a really basic level and do the bare minimum the book suggests and learn the basic phrases,which are all really useful everyday things, or if like me youre in it for the longhaul and want to learn the language more thoroughly (i want to take it all the way up to high level fluency) you can get a lot more out of this book by using it as a queue/starting point to go looking up more words/grammar points than you need to. For example, ive just nearly finished Unit 1 where she gives a very basic easy description of a couple of easy grammar points. But I then looked those exact same points she was making up in my really good grammar book I bought, which goes into it in much more detail. So I get the easy to understand version here, then can choose to look it up a bit more if I choose to. Also I love that she has a classical short poem and idioms/sayings in each chapter. Im going into my 1st poem looking up all the individual words (you dont need to, theres an English translation of everything in this book)because again that helps me to build up my vocab to a much higher level and helps me understand more how the language works. So this book is good on an easier level but can also be used at a higher level if you want to go there, and make extra work for yourself! Enjoyable to use, I would recommend it.