i would like to jump start a thread on suggestion for good book for learning chinese for intermediate level learner. I've been looking for one for a long time. Anyone have some books they have and really love to share?

Thanks,

Hello, I use the "New Practical Chinese Reader" because my teacher chose this one, I don't know if it's the best, but it is quite good. The structure of each lesson (Text-New words-Difficult points-Phonetics training-Grammar-Reading comprehension) allows one to really get a feel of the way the language is used, so I find it works for me.

I also bought "Reading and Writing Chinese" 3d ed. by William Mc Naughton (the name in Chinese is ”常用汉字“ (which literally translates to "frequently used characters")) which is basically a dictionaryfor the 3000 most used words, but also gives the stroke order, etymology (if available) and remembering tips for each character (at least for the first thousand, the rest of the words are only given as simple dictionary entries, without stroke order).
The thing I like the most about this book is that there are warning notes for the characters that would look the same to an untrained eye and could lead learners to confusion.
For instance: 文又，夫天， 王玉主，失矢， 土士（tu3: earth and shi4: gentleman look really the same when you type them lol) 八人入， 毛手，力刀， 我找， etc.

My teacher tends to not teach us words that look similar at the same time because she believes it will confuse us, but I think I prefer to see the two (or three or more) confudible characters side-to-side, in order to really see the difference and avoid confusion later on.

All the other books I got (mainly about grammar, history and culture) are in French so I guess they're f no use to you. But I do recommend the NPCR series, they offer a good basis for learning and with the help of the cds you don't really have to have a teacher (but it helps ).
I hope you'll find your dream book soon
Keep searching and good luck,
Cha

I picked up Interactive Chinese, a software package while in Beijing. It instructs the old fashion way with conversations. I have the Chinese in a flash flashcards which are great. Picked them up at Amazon. Great for watching the game and reviewing vocabulary.

I have used a few, so I will share my experiences so far:

Integrated Chinese. I think this is the best, but it's very expensive. If nothing else, the layout is the best: For each lesson, you get vocab first, then text, then notes, then grammar, then (here's the best part) lots of pattern drills. The pattern drills are purely mechanical with the first one done as an example, so you don't need an instructor's manual to check the answers. But running through lots of examples is the best way I've found to make things stick. I also like that the pinyin for lessons is NOT inline with the Chinese characters like many other texts who somehow think this is a good thing. In those texts, it's almost impossible to force your eye to not see the pinyin. In Integrated Chinese 1 the the pinyin text is next to the characters (whole text next to whole text, NOT character for character), so it's there if you really need to refer to it. Starting with book 2 it's at the end of each lesson. There are also workbooks, cds, and character workbooks. I recommend the character workbook for level 1, but I found that I never used it for book 2. Once you've learned a couple hundred characters, you don't really need a separate character book to learn new characters, since the mechanics of stroke order has become sufficiently engrained. And for the odd character that poses a challange, you need...
(this is getting long, so I'm going to break it up, also because I have to go)

Oops. Just realized my previous entry about Chinese dictionary started a new thread. Oh well. Anyway...

I've also used New Chinese Practical Reader (finished through book 2). This book definitely focusses on the written, not spoken, style. I don't really like the layout of this book. The text comes before the new vocab. That's only a minor irritation in the text, but since the audio follows the same flow, that means if you want to hear the new words before the text you have to do a lot of manual fast-forwarding and rewinding. Unlike Integrated Chinese, they only have one track for each lesson, which means again more skipping ahead/back to get to what you want. I don't really care for the subject matter in this text. It's often not day-to-day life stuff. Texts about stuff like Beijing opera, rural farming, etc. In book two, they tried something which I haven't seen elsewhere: they put the tone marks above the characters. At first I thought this would be really great. But after a while, I couldn't wait for the book to end so I could get rid of them. I find them highly distracting when trying to read, and also a crutch (a quite quite as bad version of having the pinyin). This series also has workbook. In China you can get the entire collection (volumes 1-5, with textbooks, workbooks, cds, teacher guides) for like $100. This is a fraction of Integrated Chinese. I'm not sure what it costs outside of China. The bext place to buy in China is direct from the publisher (Beijing Language and Culture University Press): http://www.blcup.com/en/list_2.asp?id=39[/url]

Lastly, I've used Short-term Spoken Chinese, also from BLCUP (http://www.blcup.com/en/list_2.asp?id=1805). This definitely lives up to its name, offering more colloquial Chinese at all levels (I'm 1/2 way through 3rd book). This is actually the most challenging of the three text series I've tried, mainly because the explanations are brief in the extreme. You really need to have a native speaker available to ask questions to or study with. Unlike Integrated Chinese and NCPR, audio segments only come in one speed, which of course is normal speaking (or at least seems that way to me). This can be hard. Often lessons will introduce more than one word with the same English translation, with no attempt to disambiguate between them. Grammar sections are inconsistent with the amount of examples they give for a given rule, ranging from lots to zero. Sometimes I see what appears to be new grammar with no explanation whatsoever. In short, it's a challenging series to work through, but seems to be closest to what people actually use.

BTW, the Short-term Chinese series uses a naming sequence that was not immediately obvious to me. The sequence is: Threshold 1, Threshold 2, Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate.
That's all there is right now in the new 2nd edition. There's an advanced level, but it's old. Presumably they're still working on the new version, since the second edition is new.

I find the one of the best way to study Chinese is on the computer. Books are great but it takes too much time to look up words.

On the computer, you can cut and paste and find out the meaning of works rather quickly.

Also with the nciku http://www.nciku.com/
someone posted on this forum, it is really makes life much easier.

Peter

I use New Practical with my class at school (we've just started Book 2--Curt, do you know 丁力波，林哪，and 马大为?) and I like that it's all stories and dialogues. I'm not sure if other books have this quality or not, but I find the continuity of characters helps to build a good framework. By answering the teacher's questions about the stories, I get to use new vocabulary immediately. But I'm sure that's not unique to this series.

I liked a few intermediate textbooks:


Beyond the Basics, Communicative Chinese for Intermediate and Advanced Learners, Jianhua Bai ISBN-13: 9780887272509

Shifting Tides: Culture in Contemporary China. (textbook, CD Rom) Hong Gang Jin and De Bao Xu, ISBN-13: 978-0887273728

Crossing Paths: Living and Learning in China. (textbook, CD Rom) Hong Gang Jin and De Bao Xu, ISBN-13: 978-0887273704

Taiwan Today, Shouhsin Teng, Perry Lo-Sun, ISBN-13: 978-0887273421

I've used Integrated Chinese and like it, but these texts are a little more interesting. Nice for a change.

I like to read Chinese material on the net using the Mozilla Firefox browser,
it has a great feature using the Chinesepera-kun add-in program that you can download with the browser. It works great for reading on line Chinese material .

Corry, I'm using mozilla, and I guess I can't find that feature. Is it only on Mozilla?

I think it is only available on firefox, look here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349