Study Chinese Online From China

Books For Studying Chinese Will Drive You Crazy

September 17, 2006 on 8:50 am | In Misconceptions, Studying |

BOOKS PASSE - I recently bought some books on learning Chinese, they are targeted at upper intermediate and advanced students. I felt I had to buy them because they explain parts of Chinese that I don’t yet know, and the authors have good concepts and explanations.

The one book has a chapter on how to write about a sequence of events, like cooking a recipe or describing a series of events.
For example, it says

“In describing procedures and processes, the following expressesions are often useful:

首先 first of all
然后 then
随后 soon afterwards
最后 finally

They also then nicely introduce,

“When presenting one’s point of view…it is more forceful to list them…by using the following words and phrases

首先 first of all
其次 secondly
除此之外 besides
不仅如此 not only that

Here’s what REALLY bugs me. I just DON’T GET it. I got in a pretty big argument/discussion with a Chinese person about how my viewpoint was wrong, almost offensive. WHY is there no pinyin? If I already know the word, well then I sure do hope I know how to use it.

If the authors think that I don’t know how to use these words, and they don’t since they are explaining their usage to me, then how do they expect me to know the sounds for the word? I think they are just LAZY, the book publishers want to keep the total pages to a minimum, I don’t know but it’s batty.

Why do authors feel like they need to mix up memorization and recall with explanations? It’s like explaining to me how to tie my shoes while spinning me around.

I’m used to studying online, where I can do this:

首先 然后 随后 最后 首先 其次 除此之外 不仅如此
shǒuxiān ranhou suihou zuihou shouxian qici chucizhiwai bujin ruci

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