Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises?

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - Printable Version

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Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - jishera - 2011-08-22

I'm trying to put together a plan for future Chinese study. Right now I have Beginner's Chinese by Yong Ho. Haven't done much with it yet, but the explanations look pretty good and I like how there's audio for everything. One thing I have noticed, however, is that most of the exercises are translation exercises (from English to Chinese, and from Chinese to English). While this isn't terrible, and I much prefer translation to "fill in the blank" exercises, my Japanese textbook has much more "fun" exercises.

I'm using Japanese for Everyone, and they try to give the exercises some context. For example, you are given a map, questions are asked about the location of items on the map, and you have to answer them. This makes things much more interesting, plus things are generally all in Japanese.

Do you know of any textbooks or workbooks (edit: or free websites!) that have more engaging (and preferably mostly Chinese-only) exercises? I've looked at samples for some textbooks but most seem to use translation exercises like this one.

In general even the format of the textbooks seem different than Japanese ones! It's rather interesting Smile

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - gdaxeman - 2011-08-22

If what you really want are books full of exercises, I've read that many Chinese language courses around the world use either Boya Chinese (博雅汉语) or New Practical Chinese Reader; I don't know which of these series have the most engaging exercises for you but they are both full of fill-in-the-blank ones, choose-the-right-word, complete-the-dialogs, use-the-pattern and such. Maybe the New Practical Chinese Reader has more of what you want exercise-wise, but Boya has better audio and as a whole is more complete — it can even guide you, if you care about it, from HSK levels 1 to 11, which is the highest one (if you don't know, HSK is what we could call the "Mandarin Chinese JLPT"; TOCFL is the Taiwan's equivalent.) Well, have a look at both if you haven't already.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - jishera - 2011-08-22

Thanks for the ideas gdaxeman. Unfortunately, I'm trying to find exercises that aren't translations, fill-in-the-blank, matching, etc. In fact, I hate fill-in-the-blank more than translations Smile

.

I like exercises that force you to use the native language naturally. So using relatively full sentences and being asked to answer/understand in Chinese is what I need. Sadly, the sample on Amazon for Japanese for Everyone doesn't contain an actual chapter so you could see an example. In general, I like exercises that mimic things you'd encounter in real life. So listening/reading comprehension exercises are great, as are being asked to answer questions in a more fun context (such as reading a map and giving directions like I described earlier).

JFE isn't perfect either. It also contains some fill-in-the-blank, matching, and complete-the-sentence exercises in addition to the ones I enjoy.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - gdaxeman - 2011-08-22

jishera Wrote:I like exercises that force you to use the native language naturally. So using relatively full sentences and being asked to answer/understand in Chinese is what I need.

Ah, I misread what you wrote. Both books I've listed have these; I suggest you to have a look, even if you have to download them (then delete, or whatever; I say this because there's no way to buy something suitable without having ever seen a page of it...) They seem similar to what you're asking, if I'm not misunderstanding you. I only had a glance at them because the method I'm using is different, but I think that's basically it.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - gdaxeman - 2011-08-22

Just to make it more clear, take a look at these examples:
[Image: 20aq74i.png]

So, is that it what you're looking for or is it something else entirely?

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - jishera - 2011-08-22

I actually can't read those yet Smile

, but from the looks of the format I don't think that's quite what I want. It's a bit closer though.

I actually feel somewhat stupid because I just remembered that I also have a pdf version of JFE :-). So after some copying and pasting and photobucketing, here are a couple examples of what I'm looking for:

[Image: JFE1.jpg]

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - gdaxeman - 2011-08-23

I see... It's similar but not quite the same. I don't know where you could find a book full of exercises like those you want though, but maybe that's because I haven't searched for it. Perhaps there is a library full of books like that — let's wait and see if someone answers. If not, you could try your luck at the Chinese-Forums. Wink

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - jishera - 2011-08-23

It wouldn't necessarily need to be full of such exercises. 20% of the exercises in JFE are probably like that, and the rest are a bit more stereotypical. I just like having some variety Big Grin

. Thanks for the help. I'll see if anyone has other ideas.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - nadiatims - 2011-08-23

jishera Wrote:I actually can't read those yet , but from the looks of the format I don't think that's quite what I want. It's a bit closer though.

Those dialogues were all extremely simple Chinese. I might suggest you to focus on finding materials that will help to boost your comprehension quickly. For that purpose, phrasebooks or learner materials that present a large volume of Chinese sentences/dialogues with translations, preferably something relatively comprehensive and ordered simple to complex, will be better. A good way to process the material would be to read through it in order, reading the Chinese sentences while covering the English, and then checking your comprehension, reading any grammar explanations as necessary and noting down new vocabulary (which will be easy because the translations are right there). This way you get more reading practice and cover a larger base of material (vocab and grammar) and can distill out the difficult parts (focus on what will benefit you the most) for restudy. Try to find materials that are thick and represent a lot of useful data. Textbooks/exercise books of the kind you describe tend to be vary limited in their scope (pattern coverage and amount of vocab) and contain huge amounts of filler such as pictures, unnecessary grammar explanation, introduction and cultural information (all written in English), exercises of dubious importance and so on.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - jishera - 2011-08-23

Thanks nadiatims for the advice. Right now I'm focusing mainly on Japanese, but in the near future I'm going to start Chinese. I have barely done any Chinese. I'm going through RTK now so I can recognize some of the characters, but other than that I've only practiced a bit of pinyin. At the moment I'm just trying to do some planning about the materials I will use when I start studying Chinese more seriously. I like having a roadmap (of course it changes as I learn, but I enjoy being organized and knowing the strengths/weaknesses of the various resources, and having an idea of where I'm going).

Edit: While textbooks certainly have many weaknesses, some of which you have described, I like them for their structure. No resource is complete or perfect and I've learned to take the best parts and make them work for me.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - zer0range - 2011-08-23

For textbooks, you could try getting ahold of DLI Mandarin materials. If I recall correctly, some of the advanced materials are mostly Chinese.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/22450-dli-mandarin-cantonese-materials-for-download/

I think there is a torrent out there somewhere as well.

There is also http://gloss.dliflc.edu/.

Do you really enjoy doing exercises?

I do understand the need for feedback and for a more involved, active approach. Maybe consider using something like lang-8. As an example, you could pick an article, read it, study it, write about it in your own words and then have native speakers correct you and offer feedback.

Good luck!

edit: I've just realized that you said you're just beginning, so perhaps scratch my lang-8 recommendation.

Good exercise book or textbook with engaging exercises? - aphasiac - 2011-08-25

What about the Chinesepod exercises?

http://blog.chinesepod.com/2011/05/05/adventures-of-a-newbie-courses-courses-courses/

You have to pay, but they look pretty good and maybe similar to what you want:

http://i.imgur.com/xwYwC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3wxZh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lkEb0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lAr9W.jpg