The Routledge Course in Modern Mandarin Chinese Textbook Level 1, Traditional Characters

"I am deeply impressed by the pedagogical considerations that Prof. Ross and her team put into the project.The approaches to teaching Mandarin Chinese in this series reflected the authors' rich knowledge of the Chinese grammar and their vast experience in teaching the language. The materials developed are pedagogically well conceived and equally well supported by theories of language learning/teaching. A truly innovative and delightful addition to the Chinese teaching field."- Cecila Chang, Williams College, USA

"This text offers a refreshing approach to learning Chinese that is lacking in the vast majority of learning materials. Each dialogue is contextualized so learners better understand how the language is used in a variety of communicative situations. Students learn not only what to say, but how to use the right language in a given context based on their role, and when and where the situation occurs. Sentence pyramid exercises provide a stepped approach that allows students to actually rehearse and perform the dialogues.

The material is presented in manageable units with clear and concise explanations that are understandable to students not familiar with linguistics jargon. Valuable information on the social and cultural implications of the language is also provided.

This is one of the few textbooks on the market that delays the introduction of Chinese characters. This insightful approach allows learners to gain a foundation in the spoken language before being inundated with characters to which they have little context in which to place them. Furthermore, these materials use an innovative diglot approach to introduce Chinese characters where newly learned characters are incorporated into pinyin texts. This effectively eases students into reading without overburdening them. By the end of the text, dialogues and other materials are presented almost entirely in Chinese characters. This approach provides excellent spiraling and reinforcement of characters learned."- Matthew Christensen, Brigham Young University, USA

"One of the very few accessible and clearly structured textbooks for the complete beginner in Mandarin, which is absolutely designed with the non-native Chinese speaker in mind. The gradual introduction of the script, together with the clear but not overly simplistic grammatical explanations, will prove particularly useful for beginners."-Frances Weightman, The University of Leeds, UK

"An excellent introductory course from a dedicated team. This course serves as a practical guide with the language knowledge and cultural tips you need for daily communication with the Chinese people."- Wei Jin, The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK