Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to a number of people for their assistance in the preparation of this volume. It’s not possible to mention everyone who participated, but special thanks are due the following for their contributions:
For writing the simplified and traditional characters on the character practice sheets: Su-Ling Huang, Yun-O Huang-Li, Minjun Jiang, Jerling Guo Kubler, Ching-yi Sun, and Zhe Zhang. Youlin Shi and Xiaohong Wan also assisted in selecting characters for revision.
For assistance in drafting the map exercises: Hoyoon Nam.
For assistance in drafting the paper flash cards: Nikki Fang.
For creating the electronic flash cards: Daniel Nelson.
For allowing themselves to be photographed: Kevin DeWar, Boji Lam, Zachary Whitney, and Dongshan Zhang.
For advice and assistance with computer-related work: Adam Jianjun Wang, Senior Instructional Technology specialist at Williams College, and Peter Leimbigler of Asia Communications Québec Inc. All of the Chinese language content in this volume was processed using the KEY 5.1 Chinese language software that Dr. Leimbigler and his colleagues developed.
For meticulous editing and many other helpful suggestions during the production of this course: Sandra Korinchak, Senior Editor at Tuttle Publishing. I also wish to express my appreciation for their enthusiastic support of the project and its development to Tuttle’s Publisher Eric Oey and Vice President Christina Ong; and my heartfelt thanks for their expertise and assistance throughout go to Nancy Goh, Loh Sook Fan, and the entire Tuttle Sales and Marketing team.
Logistical and financial support from Dr. Jenny F. So and staff of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong is gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to express my appreciation to Clement Chu-sing Lau and Celia Lai Ngo Poon for helping make our stay in Hong Kong in spring 2011 so productive and pleasant.
Last but not least, I wish to thank the students in the Basic Chinese classes at Williams College from 1993 through 2010 for their corrections, suggestions, encouragement, and inspiration.
Cornelius C. Kubler
Department of Asian Studies
Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA
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Includes practice materials for these 12 topics:
Unit A: Numbers, Personal Names, and Place Names
Unit B: People, Places, Streets, and Roads
Unit 1: Greetings and Useful Phrases
Unit 2: Introductions
Unit 3: Numbers, Dates, Time, and Money (I)
Unit 4: Numbers, Dates, Time, and Money (II)
Unit 5: Locating Persons, Places, and Things
Unit 6: Biographical Information (I)
Unit 7: Biographical Information (II)
Unit 8: Getting Around Beijing (I)
Unit 9: Getting Around Beijing (II)
Unit 10: Weather
How to Use These Materials
Basic Written Chinese Practice Essentials is the workbook designed to accompany the textbook Basic Written Chinese. It offers you a wide variety of activities for both in- and out-of-class learning, to help you reinforce and “activize” your learning of the new characters, vocabulary, grammar, and related material introduced in the textbook.
The pages of this workbook have been perforated to facilitate their removal for correction by an instructor (or by a tutor or native-speaking friend, in the case of independent learners). Furthermore, the pages have been three-hole punched so that, once they have been corrected and returned to the learner, they may conveniently be filed in a three-hole binder for future reference.
Character Practice Sheets
The first section of Basic Written Chinese Practice Essentials consists of character practice sheets for all the new characters in units A, B, and 1–10 for you to study, fill out, and hand in to your instructor or mentor for correction and comments. A sheet with the six characters for a lesson in simplified form always comes first, followed by a sheet with the same six characters in traditional form on the back side of the page. We recommend that you eventually learn to recognize both types of characters, though it’s sufficient if you learn how to write only one type.
Being able to handwrite characters is important not only for writing but also for reading, since if you can write a character correctly from memory, you’re more likely to be able to recognize it and distinguish it from other similar characters. Later on in your study of Chinese, you’ll also want to learn how to process Chinese characters using computers, but we feel it’s important for beginning students to have experience in writing characters by hand.
On the practice sheets, there are two kinds of model characters for your reference. To the left, in the large boxes, are large versions of each character with small Arabic numbers indicating the order and direction of the strokes. Note that the location of each number indicates where that stroke begins. Then, to the right of the large characters, in the smaller boxes, there is a stroke-by-stroke build-up of each character which further clarifies the stroke order. The purpose of the handwritten characters is not to serve as examples of calligraphy, but rather to instruct learners in accurate and legible handwriting of the characters, as written with pen or pencil by ordinary Chinese writers today.
Be sure to follow the correct stroke order and direction. If you don’t, your characters will not only not look right, but you might have difficulty in using dictionaries, since these are traditionally based on the number of strokes in characters or character components. The accuracy of handwriting recognition