This book has 16 lessons which are divided into 3 units: the syllabic system of mandarin, sandhi and intonation. Unit 1 illustrates the tones, consonants and vowels in mandarin and makes a comparison between the easily confused consonants and vowels. Unit 2 gives a detailed explanation to sandhi focusing on tone changes in disyllabic liaison, tone changes of the Chinese characters yi（一） and bu（不）,changes of a（啊）, neutral tone and er（儿）-ending retroflexion. Unit 3 concentrates on intonation, a difficult and important part of phonetics.
This book helps students grasp the methods of articulation and main points of Chinese pronunciation in a direct and vivid way with illustrations of the positions of the tongue and lip. Each lesson is accompanied by excellent exercises of different levels. It also provides MP3 disks of all the texts and exercises free of charge for students to learn and practise by themselves.