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Ultimate
to Advanced
Guide to Chinese Textbooks: Beginner

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Learning Chinese is difficult as it is. No need to complicate that

more with hard to track resources or unknown textbook gems.
Below, I’ve created the ultimate guide of Chinese textbooks. These
are the best of the best on the market. These can be used both in
the classroom but, for Chinese self-learners like me, I completely
understand the struggle of identifying which books you should buy.
Are they the correct level? Is there English also? Are the
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explanations good? Will my listening improve? And many more
questions. The struggle is real, I know. So, I’ve made this list with
only the best books, for beginners up until the advanced level.
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I previously written an article listing the Best Resources for
Learning Chinese. In this article are the best apps, dictionaries, and
more. Now, onto the textbooks.

Beginner Stage
At this point, you are just starting off, so the main things you want
to focus on when purchasing a textbook are:

Radicals
Vocabulary
Grammar

When you are starting off, I recommend following a textbook series,

that can guide you through the beginning stage. This will leave you
ultimately with a strong foundation. There’s four options I
recommend.

1. Integrated Chinese

This is perhaps the most famous one, used by the majority of

professors and a common choice for beginners in Mandarin.

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Above is what the older 3rd edition used to look like. Below is the
new editions. Aren’t they pretty?

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The updated 4th edition series comes with 4 volumes of Textbooks,
each with an accompanying Workbook and Character Workbook.
The Character Workbooks in particular are super helpful when
starting and the set up they have make it easy to learn the stroke
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order and practice making your characters legible. The Workbooks
also complement the Textbooks nicely.

2. New Practical Chinese Reader

As you can see there are six levels in the New Practical Chinese
Reader series. These roughly correspond to the HSK 1-6 levels, so
it’s convenient if you want to continue with one single series.

They’ve updated the volumes 1-4 editions recently. Volumes 1-4 all
include a Textbook and Workbook. There is also an option for a
Character Workbook and a Companion Reader to practice reading,
but these are definitely harder to track down. Volumes 5 and 6 only
come with a Textbook.

There’s also a Test and Quizzes booklet you can purchase for
Volume 1 to use as a self-test to verify your knowledge.

You can continue with this both these series until you
complete them, but in general, they are ideal for the beginner
who is just starting out. The beginning levels, Volumes 1-2, are
what I recommend. Personally, I believe there are better
options for the Intermediate and Advanced stages.

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Intermediate to High-Intermediate
Stage
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At this stage, you should know an acceptable level of vocabulary
and the majority of the primary grammar. Here, you want to focus
mainly on:

Idioms (成语)
Sentence structures
Vocabulary
More complex dialogues/longer text

This is the awkward middle stage of language-learning where

textbooks are a bit harder to find and quality ones are extremely
difficult to locate. Below are the cream of the crop, as they say.

1. Beyond the Basics

This is by far, one of my favorite Chinese textbooks books, along

with the next recommendation.

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After completed the Level 2, Part 2 of the 3rd Edition Integrated
Chinese series, I transferred over this Beyond the Basics. It was a
big of jump in level, but a challenge that I loved. I found the
Integrated Chinese books to be quite repetitive and predictable, so
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Beyond the Basics was the perfect next textbook.

It has nice, long passages, a huge variety of words, including

useful supplementary vocabulary. A balanced range of idioms, and
useful exercises integrated at the end each chapter are also super
useful in increasing your vocabulary range. Each chapter has a
different topic, unlike the Integrated Chinese series which is based
on a set of characters and their life in school. At the intermediate
level, it is definitely more interesting to speak about social issues
and more practical conversations you might actually have in
Chinese, if you know what I mean.

Another option you could go for is the A New China textbook, which
is the textbook that comes before this next book recommendation.
While I have used the next book, I have never used A New China,
so I cannot vouch for its quality. Nevertheless, briefly looking at the
content, it appears to be a slightly easier textbook compared to the
Beyond the Basics.

2. All Things Considered

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This is my other textbook love, in addition to Beyond the Basics.

This is called an Advanced Reader, but I would actually classify it is
being at the High-Intermediate stage. It introduces the learner
perfectly to the Advanced stage.

This is like the advanced continuation of Beyond the Basics. The

transition from one to the other is so smooth and the vocabulary is
extremely useful and practical. There are so many useful sentence
structures and grammar examples. There’s also numerous
exercises at the end of each chapter that emphasize synonyms
and grammar points.

This textbook is split into two parts. The first 12 chapters are in the
format of dialogues. Chapters 13 to 32 are real newspaper articles
that were published in the past. This is a great way to smoothly
switch into the advanced stage of Chinese.

Advanced Stage
Actually, at this stage you can experiment with simpler novels or
reading newspapers. You don’t need to stick to the traditional
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textbook approach. However, I fully know that having the structure
of a textbook is something many people like, so I’ve included a few
of my favorites below. If you do want to buy a textbook at this
stage, you should focus on:
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Diverse vocabulary
Idioms (成语 and 俗语)
Oral/Colloquial Chinese
Advanced sentence structures

1. Discussing Everything

This is a 2-volume set, the first being advertised at the Upper

Intermediate level and the second at the Advanced level. To be
completely honest, both should be classified as advanced. I
remember taking this book around the time of Beyond the Basics
and it was too difficult and overwhelming. A challenge is nice, but it
needs to be a suitable one when it comes to languages like
Mandarin.

In any case, this series is structured with main chapters with an

overall, looser theme, and then subsections with more specific
dialogues and paragraph text.
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Many colloquial and informal Chinese words are introduced, which
is super helpful. A wide range of advanced vocabulary is also
listed, as well as a huge range of example sentences.
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2. Advanced Spoken Chinese

If you want to improve your colloquial Chinese and, at the same

time, learn more about Chinese culture, then look no further. This
book is a set of 2 and provides dialogues according to common
daily life scenarios. There is almost no English in these books,
which is something to note, in comparison with the others
mentioned.

There are also supplementary texts that are provided that are
useful, as well as a comprehensive lists of idioms and commonly
used advanced phrases.

By this point, read novels, articles, and newspapers. Immerse

yourself in different media forms. Listen to Chinese podcasts and
music, watch Chinese TV shows and TV programs. The more you
immerse yourself, the faster and better you will learn. It’s that
simple.
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If I had had this list when first starting to learn Chinese, I
would have saved so much time and energy searching for the
best resources. So, I really hope you find this useful. If you
have any questions, let me know in the comments below and
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share this with all your friends! Invite more people to learn
Chinese!

By Ludovica Fonsato | April 20th, 2018 | Categories: China,

Chinese, General, Language, Tips | Tags: Chinese, general,
language, resources, tips | 1 Comment

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One Comment

Enid Childers December 11, 2018 at 4:35 pm - Reply

Hi Ludovica,

这些书 有什么绿意部分？

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