Practical Chinese Reader

The Practical Chinese Reader (Chinese: 实用汉语课本; pinyin: shíyòng hànyŭ kèbĕn) is a two-volume series of Chinese language teaching books developed to teach non-Chinese speakers to speak Chinese, first published in 1981. In fifty lessons, the reader studies a vocabulary of 1,000 words, and basic Chinese phonology and grammar. The lessons tell the story of two foreign students of Chinese, Palanka and Gubo, first in their own country (Book I) and then in China (Book II). They give priority to everyday topics that Gubo and Palanka encounter (e.g. clothing, entertainment, socializing), and also provide background information on Chinese culture, society, and history.

Contents

• New practical chinese reader 1 lesson 1
• New practical chinese reader 4 chapter 39
• New Practical Chinese Reader
• The characters
• References

The Practical Chinese Reader was the first set of dedicated textbooks on basic Chinese for use by foreign students of Chinese sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Education, who commissioned three professors at Beijing Languages Institute (now Beijing Language and Culture University) to write it in the 1970s. It was praised by American and German academics in the early 1980s as practical and advanced. It also received a warm domestic welcome for its "meticulously planned" educational content and innovation in "using the communicative principle and strengthening cultural knowledge education", and won the second prize inaugural Beijing Philosophy and Social Sciences Award for Excellence.