Chinese Characters for Beginners (Book & CD-ROM)

Book: It is a very well organized book. Every page features the traditional character with pinyin and zhuin. When a simplified character exists, it is also there fore reference.

The characters are essentially only those that have a pictorial evolution. It is fun/interesting to see them. There is also a list of words that is made up of the character. At the bottom of the page there are blank squares to practice the stroke order. Definitely for learning the evolution of Chinese characters, the traditional script makes more sense than the simplified script. At any rate, among these 100 characters there are very few that have different strokes for simplified and the traditional characters. So I would definitely say that this book is appropriate for those who want to learn simplified characters.

At the end of the book there are written exercises for every 10 characters in the book. Part one is for matching the character to pictures. Part two is a multiple choice test on picking out the correct pinyin to the character.

CD-ROM: The CD-ROM is produced with Macromedia. The first game is a memory game. Eight characters per game (16 squares). Pronunciation is given whenever a card is flipped. The second game is a stroke count test. A character is presented, and one has to guess the correct stroke count. The third game tests listening comprehension. It's a multiple choice test in which one hears a word and must pick out the correct character and pinyin.

My biggest complaint with the CD-ROM is that one must finish the entire book and learn all those 100 characters before one can use the CD-ROM games. It would have been much better if the games can test groups of 10 characters at a time. Or, even better, the first level tests the first 10 characters, the second level tests the first 20 characters, etc, thereby keep testing characters that have been learned.

I would say that the usefulness of the CD-ROM is minimal in its current format. I would give it at most 2 stars for the CD-ROM.

The list of 100 characters is good. However, it's only for getting one's feet "wet". It would be much nicer if this is part of a big series of systematically learning Chinese characters.

This is by far my favorite Chinese learning product to date - it's a great, very organic way to learn Chinese characters. I haven't tried the CD ROM yet but I consider that a plus - the book on its own is fabulous.

I found this book very helpful during my recent trip to Taiwan. I basically started learning the traditional characters with this book and found it well done. I wish there were even more games on the CDROM, but I guess I'll have to get the next book.

Good luck learning Mandarin!