Contemporary Chinese, a complete adult-level textbook series, is tailored to beginners of the Chinese language and is aimed at developing the abilities of listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing of the language. This series has been widely used at home and abroad since its initial publication. Based on teachers' impressions of, and suggestions for, the books over the past decade, the following changes have been made to the revised edition: restructured content and teaching procedures for a greater ease of use for both students and teachers; updated and relevant topics; increased exercises and class activities; two new sets including Testing Materials and Supplementary Reading Materials. The revised edition embodies a new process-oriented, task-based and interactive teaching method.
The series includes:
◇Textbook (Volumes 1-4) contains words and expressions, texts, notes, language points and cultural notes. Pinyin is offered for each text and the texts from Volumes 1 and 2 have English versions.
◇Exercise Book (Volumes 1-4) covers listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation exercises and is able to meet the demands of learners at different language levels.
◇Character Book (Volumes 1-2) focuses on Chinese characters and offers a variety of exercises.
◇Teacher's Book (Volumes 1-4) elaborates on the purpose of the textbook design, its general framework and suggestions for use. It also offers the listening scripts, test papers and exercise keys.
◇Testing Materials (Volumes 1-4) supplies learners with test questions so as to examine their learning outcome at different stages.
◇Supplementary Reading Materials (Volumes 1-4) offers learners ancillary reading materials based on textbook vocabulary so as to improve their Chinese reading ability and help them to gain a better understanding of Chinese culture.
Each volume of the series is accompanied by an MP3 disc and a CD-ROM of Putonghua recordings.