Maximum flexibility of use. Student and teacher needs and personalities vary widely, as do the types of programs in which Chinese is taught. We have tried to leave options open whenever possible. This is true, for example, in the question of how to teach pronunciation; whether to teach the spoken skills only or also the written skills; when to introduce reading and writing; whether to teach simplified or traditional characters or both; and which of the exercises to do and in which order to do them. There is detailed discussion of all these and other questions in the Instructor’s Guide for Basic Spoken Chinese and Basic Written Chinese.
Attention to sociolinguistic and cultural features. Knowing how to say something with correct grammar and pronunciation is not sufficient for effective communication. Learners must know what to say and what not to say, when to say it, and how to adjust what they say for the occasion. How do the gender, age, and social position of the speaker and listener affect language? Finally, language does not exist apart from the culture of its speakers. What are the cultural assumptions of Chinese speakers? These are some of the matters to which we have tried to pay attention.
Extensive built-in review. In order to promote long-term retention of the material learned, a great effort has been made to recycle vocabulary and grammar periodically in later units in the textbook and Practice Essentials after they have been introduced.
Attention to the needs of learners with prior knowledge of Chinese. While the course is designed for beginners and assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese, it tries to take into account the special situation and needs of learners who possess some prior knowledge of the language acquired from home or residence overseas. Consequently, there are special notes on features of standard Mandarin pronunciation and usage that differ from the Cantonese or Taiwanese-influenced Mandarin to which some learners may have been exposed.
Footnote
* Cf. Eleanor H. Jorden and A. Ronald Walton, “Truly Foreign Languages: Instructional Challenges” in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1987.
Organization and Use
Basic Written Chinese consists of twelve units. The first two are introductory units not directly related to the material in Basic Spoken Chinese.1 They are followed by ten units, numbered 1 to 10, that parallel the ten units in Basic Spoken Chinese. Each of these units in turn consists of four parts, with each part presenting six characters, common words written with them, and reading exercises to help you master the new material.
The twelve units of Basic Written Chinese introduce a total of 288 characters and about 700 common words and expressions written with them. Except for the two introductory units, the six characters in each lesson were chosen, based on frequency of occurrence, from the characters used to write the Basic Conversation of the corresponding lesson in Basic Spoken Chinese.2 Since each lesson of Basic Written Chinese was designed to be studied after the corresponding lesson of Basic Spoken Chinese and Basic Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials, when you begin a new lesson of Basic Written Chinese, you already know the pronunciations, meanings, and usages of the new words, so you need only learn their written representations. This considerably lightens your learning load!
Our guide in questions of frequency has been the general character list in the 现代汉语频率词典 Xiàndài Hànyŭ Pínlǜ Cídiăn Frequency Dictionary of Modern Chinese, published by Beijing Languages Institute in 1985. All of the characters in Basic Written Chinese were selected from the top 1,000 (and most from the top 300) characters in that dictionary, with three exceptions: the surname 李 Lĭ, the character 湾 (灣) in 台湾 (台灣) Táiwān, and the character 津 in 天津 Tiānjīn.
NEW CHARACTERS AND WORDS
The first section of each part or lesson in Basic Written Chinese is called “New Characters and Words.” It introduces the six new characters of the lesson as well as common words written with them. For each new character, the following information is provided:
1. Number. The blue-colored number at the beginning of the section for each new character is the number of the character in this course. Later in the course, characters are sometimes referred to by their number.
2. Simplified form. If only one large, blue-colored character is given, then the simplified form is the same as the traditional form.
3. Traditional form. If the traditional form of a character is different from the simplified form, it is given next, also in large, blue-colored font, but enclosed in parentheses. So that learners are always clear about which characters are simplified and which are traditional, whenever simplified and traditional characters occur together, simplified characters always come first, with traditional characters following, enclosed in parentheses.
4. Pinyin. The Pinyin transcription follows on the same line after the character.
5. English. The last item on the first line of each new character section is an English translation of the basic meaning of the character. The translation here is for reference only and does not need to be learned. The meaning of the individual character may be different from the meanings of words containing the character. Moreover, the English translation is not meant to be complete and includes only those meanings that are judged to be pedagogically useful for learners at this point in their study of Chinese.
6. Radical. Beginning on the second line of each new character section, the radical for the new character is given. If the character differs in its simplified and traditional forms, and if those two forms have different radicals, then both radicals are indicated. If the radical has a common colloquial name, that also is given.
7. Phonetic. If there is a pedagogically useful phonetic, it is indicated. If the character itself is a common phonetic, examples are given of characters in which the phonetic occurs.
8. Other components. Any other components of the character are mentioned and discussed.
9. Structural explanation. When something pedagogically useful can be said about the history and development of the character, it is included. Our primary consideration is helping students remember the character, so some explanations that have mnemonic value are mentioned even if they may not be historically accurate. On the other hand, explanations that are excessively complex and would not be helpful to the average learner have been omitted.
10. Similar characters. At the end of the new character section are listed any “look-alike” characters with which the new character should be contrasted.
11. New words written with the character. Indented under the section for each new character is a list of new words that are written with the character. These are given in simplified characters, traditional characters (if different from simplified), Pinyin transcription, and English translation. They are also recorded on the accompanying audio disc.3
12. New words written with characters you already know. This section, which is also recorded on the accompanying audio disc, presents new words occurring in the corresponding lesson of Basic Spoken Chinese that happen to be written with characters that have already been introduced in connection with other words in previous lessons of Basic Written Chinese.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO LEARNERS: What you must learn before beginning the Reading Exercises and proceeding to the next lesson is those new words in sections (11) and (12) that are followed by word class abbreviations in bolded brackets. Everything else is for reference only.
READING EXERCISES
The next section of each lesson is the Reading Exercises. These should be the focus of study and practice, since they present the new characters, words, and other features of written