Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition

This work, along with "Learning Chinese Characters" (LCC - Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters (Chinese Edition)), is a must-have manual when learning Mandarin. While LCC teaches the basics through interesting stories and relationships, this book is the next step in character acquisition. Similar characters are arranged in groups, with the stroke clearly shown for each character. Although I am still working on the basics with LCC, I fully expect Reading and Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition to seamlessly build my character inventory.

Firstoff, I will say that this book is very, very useful for learning characters. Other reviews have done a great job of praising its logical presentation and teaching methodology. I have used many products, and I believe this is the best for learning to write.

However, there are several areas where the book does fall short of what it could have been, had more attention been paid in its editing or writing. In particular, I believe these concerns require that readers use caution when learning from this book - it needs to be supplemented with other materials.

1) Often important meanings and pronounciations of characters are left out. Take for example, number 516 on page 104 - the book correctly gives the pronounciation of di4 and notes that it means earth or place. However, it fails to note that it also is pronounced de and in this pronounciation it is the grammer particle that is used to link adverbs to the verbs they modify - a more common and much more important usage, as this usage is basic to grammer and appears nearly as often as one uses adverbs.

2) The choice of example multiple character words, used to illustrate how the given charecters are used as part of larger words, is often very odd. Frequently extremely rare words are given, while common ones are never presented. Take for example kuang4 on page 220 (left side), which includes two examples words - jing4kuang4 and kuang4qie3. Both are rare - using the book's own method of judgment regarding importance and frequency of words, the HSK test lists (the book consistently notes whether the words it presents are part of the A, B, C, or D lists, descending order of importance to learn), the book itself states that neither of these words appear on any of the lists. Yet the book fails to include the most common word involving this charecter, qing2kuang4, which appears on the A list. This trend exists throughout - uncommon and odd words are used, and more basic ones essential for the language learner to grasp are neglected.

3) One of the best qualities of this book is the logical order of presentation, which groups and orders the characters in an effective sequence to learn - but, sadly, it begins to break down later in the book. Once you get the the second half, while you still occasionally encounter a grouping that makes sense, for the most part it appears a random presentation, and often you encounter charecters that obviously, by the books own stated logic (See the introduction) of grouping, should have been placed on a much earlier or later page. Some of this seems to be inattention, and a general laziness by the writer in compiling the second half, though some of it also seems to be an unthinking carryover from the traditional character edition, as often the order would have made sense in the older writing system, when the charatcer was composed of different elements. In the last 4th of the book all pretenses of logical ordering are dropped, and the author just proceeds alphebatically through the HSK lists. So, for example, the ku4 meaning storehouse appears much later than the ku4 meaning pants, even though the authors own logic would indicate they should be grouped together, with the ku4 meaning storehouse appearing first (as it forms a part of the ku4 meaning pants). This is a general trend throughout the later half, with many, many examples. Either way - the same attention, care, and insight that contributed to such an effective presentation in the first half should have been applied to the second, but largely was not.

4) Small typo errors exist throughout the book - which would be forgivable for a novel, but are very, very annoying in a learning material like this. For example, ji4, page 219 (left side), is drawn incorrectly, with a vertical line piercing a horizontal one and proceding all the way to the bei4 radical, when it should have stopped. Yes, this is a small error - but troubling because most readers will not realize it is a mistake and end up learning the character wrong. There are also frequent tone errors, especially in the small print showing the words being used in context, but also occasionally in the definition of the character itself. Again, a big problem for a learner who is trusting the book, they will end up learning the wrong pronounciation.

5) I believe the '3,000+' character boast on the front cover is NOT correct (the product description here on amazon does not contain the same claim). There are 1067 numbered charecters in the first half. We have to rely on some arithmatic, because the book dispenses with numbering the second half. In the second half, there are 22 characters to a page from pages 216-272, plus 18 on page 215 and 5 on page 273. That makes a total of 2,344 characters, meaning the front cover of the book exagerates its scope by 656 characters.

6) In the later half of the book, the author only gives a definition of the majority of characters, and fails to give any examples of the character being used as part of a 2 character word. This is a serious issue, as the definitions are so vague as to leave the learner with little idea of what the actual meaning or use is. Take for example long3, second to the last character on page 259. The author gives a definition of "ridge in a field; raised path in a field" The problem is, that in modern use this character is pretty much just used in words meaning monopoly, like fan3long3duan4 for antitrust laws, or long3duan4 for monopolize. No hint of this is given in the definition. This is a big problem, as most of the characters in the later half really should be learned for their meaning in combination words - learning their isolated definition is not very useful in modern language. There is no justication for omitting example combinations - there is plenty of white space in each of the character's definition boxes, and the author correctly uses this space to provide examples in the earlier parts of the book. Sadly, it does really seem that the author 'phoned it in' for the later parts of the book.

However, I still give the book 4 stars - I have not wanted to simply repeat the praise given in other reviews, but, as I noted at the begining, the book is a great learning material, and is better than the alternatives. I hope that the next edition will take care of these concerns, and it will become the 5-star product it should have been - with better attention to correcting errors, and a consistent excellence that doesn't taper off in the later half.

In conclusion, I recomend buying this product - but be careful of the above concerns, and supplement with other materials so as to avoid missing out on learning common usages of the characters you are learning to write, and avoid being lead astray by the errors.

This book is useful only if you are taking a Chinese class, not if you are trying to learn on your own.

This is a must for accurate learing of the pinyin characters. Each page explains each character, stroke order & number in a clear & concise order. Every chinese learner must make this one of their encyclopedias of learning.

I haven't used (and wouldn't bother using) this book. It is a great book for learning characters, but only if you are excellent at rote memorization. It far surpasses other books which simply don't have enough characters, but I would highly recommend Tuttle's Learning Chinese Characters, as it has far more resources for remembering the characters, which, for me, is an obviously important aspect of learning the script...
All of Tuttle's books on learning characters have great reviews online, but comparing the books side-by-side in a book store, I think Learning Chinese Characters stands out quite a bit, with this book as a second-place.
Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters