Hi,

Can anyone recommend a textbook or reader that one should start working through after they've reached certain milestones of the first RTH/RSH book? Say, after having learned 500/1000/1250 characters, etc?

Thanks for your time.

Best,
Isaac

I would recommend the use of Integrated Chinese, 3rd Edition. We've been using it in our college-level Chinese class and it works quite well. You may be underwhelmed by some of the explanatory material because it's for complete beginners, but the truth is, when it comes to speaking (and even writing) Chinese, even those who have studied all 3,036 characters in the book but don't have any other practice are complete beginners, since they don't yet know how to put characters together to form words (most of which are two characters), and they don't yet know how to put words together to form sentences.

I'd recommend learning pronunciation, especially tones. I know too many people who have focused too much on the written language, and as a result have trouble making themselves understood with even the most basic sentences. The FSI Pronunciation and Romanization module is still the best thing I've come across for pronunciation.

The problem after that is that the recordings accompanying most courses tend to have really slow speech. This will give you unnatural intonation and make it hard to understand normal speech from native speakers. I don't know of a beginners' course that uses audio at a natural speed, unfortunately. My solution for this (for Japanese) was to hire a native speaker to re-record the entire course, asking him to say each sentence the way he would in Japan. It wasn't cheap, but it was well worth it.

As far as which beginners' course to use, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese is the standard in Taiwan. Far East Everyday Chinese is also good. In China I know of New Practical Chinese Reader and Boya, neither of which I've used but both of which seem very good. Pick based on which character set you're learning, or where you think you'll spend more time.

Thank you guys for your input. I'll look into the textbooks mentioned and dig up that FSI module. I'm a Mandarin Chinese heritage learner but my pronunciation ability has certainly slipped so I could most certainly use some work on that end -- I've been listening to one too many Jay Chou songs!

Are you able to take a Chinese class? I know they're not cheap (unless you're in school and paying for education anyway), but they can be extremely useful in that they hold you accountable and give you a chance to learn from a teacher in addition to the textbook.