Last but not least, I wish to thank the students in the Chinese classes at Williams College from 1993 through 2014 for their corrections, suggestions, encouragement, and inspiration.
Cornelius C. Kubler
The Johns Hopkins University—Nanjing University
Center for Chinese & American Studies
Nanjing, China
Contents
2. Reading and Writing Exercises
Includes practice materials for these 14 topics:
Unit 11: Getting Around Taipei
Unit 12: Shopping (I)
Unit 13: Shopping (II)
Unit 14: Eating and Drinking (I)
Unit 15: Eating and Drinking (II)
Unit 16: Eating and Drinking (III)
Unit 17: On the Telephone
Unit 18: Visiting People (I)
Unit 19: Visiting People (II)
Unit 20: Leisure Time Activities (I)
Unit 21: Leisure Time Activities (II)
Unit 22: Emergencies
Unit 23: Hong Kong and Macao
Unit 24: Singapore and Malaysia
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How to Use These Materials
Intermediate Written Chinese Practice Essentials is the workbook designed to accompany the textbook Intermediate Written Chinese. It offers you a wide variety of activities for learning both inside and outside of class, to help you reinforce and activate your learning of the vocabulary, grammar, characters, 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 Intermediate Written Chinese Practice Essentials consists of character practice sheets for all the new characters from Units 11-24, for you to study, fill out, and hand in to your instructor or mentor for correction and comments. For each lesson, the first page contains the six characters in simplified form, followed by the same six characters in traditional form on the next page. Since both types of characters are frequently encountered throughout the Chinese-speaking world, we recommend that you eventually learn to recognize both, though it’s sufficient if you learn 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 input Chinese characters on the computer, 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 beautiful calligraphy, but rather to instruct learners in accurate and legible writing of the characters, as written with pencil or pen by ordinary Chinese writers today.
Be sure to follow the correct stroke order and direction. If you don’t, your characters will not only look wrong, but you might have difficulty using dictionaries, since these are traditionally based on the number of strokes in characters and character components. The accuracy of handwriting recognition software might also be affected if strokes are written in the wrong order and direction. Furthermore, if you’re not familiar with correct stroke order, you may in the future have problems reading and writing Chinese cursive script, since the way strokes are connected is closely related to the order and direction of the individual strokes.
Beginning with the first box after the end of the stroke-by-stroke build-up, you should write the entire character in each empty box until all the boxes for that character have been filled. Write slowly and carefully, often referring back to the stroke direction and stroke order of the models. We recommend that you use either a number 2 pencil, or a black or blue pen. As you write each character, say its pronunciation out loud and think of the meaning. You’ll probably want to have your textbook open for reference. Many learners find it helpful to write on the practice sheets the Pinyin and basic English meaning of each character to the left of the large character.
Even though there is an agreed-upon stroke order for the majority of characters, there exists a small number of characters that have common alternate stroke orders, for example, the character 方. For the sake of consistency, in the case of simplified characters we follow the stroke order promulgated by the Working Committee on National Language and Script, published in Beijing by Yuwen Chubanshe as 现代 汉语通用字笔顺规范 (5th printing 1999). In the case of traditional characters, we follow the stroke order promulgated by the Committee on the Promotion of Mandarin, published in Taipei by the Ministry of Education as 常用國字標準字筆順手冊 (3rd revised printing 2008).
Reading and Writing Exercises
This book includes reading and writing exercises for each of the four parts of every unit of Intermediate Written Chinese. The first section consists of three phrases or sentences for dictation*. You should listen to the audio and transcribe what you hear using Chinese characters. Since this is for practice and not a test, you’re encouraged to listen as many times as you wish and, when needed, to consult your textbook or the glossaries at the end of the book.
The second section includes four