If you are studying Chinese, then you’ll quickly realize that mastering the written language simply requires practice, practice and more practice. Integrated Chinese: Character Workbook is a place where you can learn and practice writing Chinese characters. If you’ve been studying the language for a while, you may be familiar with the 1st and 2nd edition of this workbook; so what’s new about the third edition?
Much is still the same; the book provides you with new characters, brush stroke order, and space to practice. But the third edition offers students both traditional and simplified characters. In addition to this, the radical of each character is highlighted. This is important because it helps you to look up the word in the dictionary and identify “like words”. While the radical won’t always give away the meaning of a character, it may give you a few clues. Other books ignore teaching students about radicals, so this is a big plus for the book.
While the stroke order was already displayed in the older versions, the third edition makes it much clearer to understand. Each stroke is numbered in a way that is easy for the student to understand and put into practice. There are also grids which will help you to write each character in the appropriate proportion.
The book starts by first introducing all of the radicals. The student is given the opportunity to practice writing each individual radical prior to writing whole Chinese characters. This is an interesting approach which may help the student to feel more adept at writing in Chinese.
"Presenting the characters in topical lessons makes it easy to use the workbook in conjunction with any other Chinese study book."
After that, the characters are presented in “lessons”, much like many beginner Chinese books. The first lesson focuses on words that one would use in a greeting. Words such as “name”, “me”, “sister” and so forth are in this chapter. Presenting the characters in topical lessons makes it easy to use the workbook in conjunction with any other Chinese study book. Using this workbook alongside a typical beginner Chinese book, will help you learn to read and write the same things you are learning to say or understand.
If you teach Chinese, then you may want to advise your students to use this workbook. It’s a great way to assign relevant homework that you can easily grade in or out of class. Your students will be able to practice their writing skills on their own, leaving you more time to cover other aspects of the language in class.
