Lingo Mastery
2023
272
Paperback
Bilingual Reader
Gift
So, you’re learning Mandarin Chinese… but just can’t find the ideal reading material?
Good news – we’ve got you covered.
Many students of Mandarin Chinese constantly find a massive obstacle when trying to develop their reading skills – a total lack of high-quality reading material. This can not only make the learning processes tougher but also force the student to lose interest.
This is why we’ve created a sequel to our highly successful previous Short Stories book – with Chinese Short Stories for Beginners Volume 2, we want to continue helping students build their Chinese connection with 1.2 billion Mandarin speakers worldwide!
20 easy-to-read, entertaining and interesting stories await inside, along with the best tools to help you practice once you’re done reading each tale. Our book will ensure you not only can read something that will expand your knowledge on Mandarin Chinese, but that you will understand and be able to pick it apart piece by piece in your quest for learning.
I picked up Chinese Short Stories for Beginners Vol. 2 after I had previously gone through the Japanese and Korean books from the same publisher and found them useful. Unfortunately I did not have as good an experience with this one as I did with those, the main reason being that the level felt completely off. With the Japanese and Korean versions, I felt that the beginner volume was suitable for that level, as was the intermediate one that followed. Here, though, the beginner volume feels more like a mid-intermediate level in many of the stories. Some of the vocabulary are words I wouldn't know even in foreign languages where I am at a high intermediate level or above. Of course, it should not be so easy that it is boring to read, but the choice of stories led to some vocabulary that was definitely what I would call 'advanced' and specialised terms and not everyday words. Yes, those words were defined in the glossary, but seeing so many unrecognisable words in several of the stories was really off-putting and demoralising. I ended up with volume 2 instead of volume 1 after a shipping issue and then a mix-up in the sending of the replacement copy. Perhaps volume 1 is simpler and would have been a better place to start, but even if that is the case, I would call this one 'intermediate' rather than saying it is suitable for beginners. I worked my way through it, but I had to rely on the English translation far more than I would have expected or liked and as such it felt like I would have done better employing my limited study time in other ways. I am therefore giving this book 2.5 stars. I would give it 4 stars if it was aimed at intermediate learners, but for something purporting to be suitable for beginners, it doesn't work well at all.
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