Fundamental Written Chinese: Simplified Character Version

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 istaught.

This text is designed for students with some spoken Chinese vocabulary on the writing system in that language. The main chapters are uniformly designed, each containing a long written text; a list of vocabulary items being used for the first time in the book (with pronunciation guide); exercises related to the passage; charts introducing new independent characters and new compound characters; new radicals; suggested mnemonics and other clues; character, vocabulary, and structure exercises; supplementary texts; and empty squares for writing practice. The text covers simplified characters. Character indexes are included at the end, including a chart comparing simplified with traditional characters. The text may be useful for heritage Chinese learners in addition to second language students. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)