Integrated Chinese Level 2 Part 1 - Textbook (Simplified & Traditional characters)

A lot of text not always so useful, used to more traditional textbook style.

As a native English speaker and fluent French speaker Chinese was a great challenge. The Cheng-Tsui Integrated Chinese series is excellent. The books provide a clear, coherent and well-written guide to learning Chinese reading, writing, speaking and cultural education.There is a consistent set of characters you follow through subject-related lessons. Travel words, food, finding an apartment, seeing tourist sites, etc.The book has a set of great indices/vocabulary lists at the back of the book. One gives English->Pinyin and the other gives Pinyin->English.My class used the whole series of textbook, workbook, character workbook and online audio exercises.After 6 months of studying I spent a month in China. Great trip thanks to this book series!One note of caution: Books are available in traditional and simplified. Make sure you buy the one you/your course requires.

I love this series of books. I started learning Mandarin (simplified characters) through school last September, but I wanted to get ahead this summer so I took it upon myself to continue. I wanted to transition to traditional characters and this book helped be do just that. I don't have the recordings which makes it a little difficult, but I manage. Sometimes characters are used before they're introduced but that's ok, I use a Chinese-English dictionary on my phone to translate things and it's fine. The lessons are clear, themed, and systematic. My only complaint is that in the 5 chapters I've covered, I feel like the majority of the grammar was just review (though people who didn't use the first two books in the series might beg to differ). Overall good book.

I love how it has simplified and traditional chinese. I like how the textbook includes pinyin text and translation of the chapter text so you can fully understand what they mean. I also love how as you continue in each chapter, they reuse vocabulary words, grammar structures from previous lessons.

Absolutely fantastic series of books! The first two years of my Chinese classes in college used the Integrated Chinese series as the main curriculum material. The entire series incorporates vocabulary and grammar points that are relevant to the beginner/intermediate student. Rather than simply listing out dozens of vocab words, each chapter is prefaced with a dialogue or short commentary that uses the following vocab words. Teaching relevant words is one thing, but giving them in a relevant context was incredibly helpful. In addition, the dialogues and commentaries were not random stories - the Integrated Chinese series follows the lives of a handful of characters as they walk through life together, recording their conversations and experiences. It very much resembles Friends the way that the characters interact with one another, fall in love, go to school, express struggles, etc. For our class, we wanted to plow through each chapter for the sake of getting to the next drama-filled episode of Li You and Wang Peng's love story.The accompanying videos were the icing on the cake, as (very clearly) white actors were used with terrible dubs to tell the thrilling storyline of how Gao Wenzhong tries to intervene in the aforementioned love story. People have Bachelor parties and Gossip Girl get-togethers, but each day of class for us became an Integrated Chinese viewing party.All joking aside, the approach this series takes to teaching language (much less a language which is often deemed "too difficult" for native English speakers) is simple and natural and caters well to the cultural environments that college age students encounter. Each chapter concludes with a handful of vocab/grammar practices, and the workbooks (purchased separately) really helped to drive these points home for me. They also introduced new points that could be extrapolated from the main text. We tore the workbook sheets out each week when we turned them in as homework. Using these books four semesters in a row prepared me well for third year Chinese and I still have/read through all of these books. Thank you Integrated Chinese!