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Organization and Use

Basic Written Chinese consists of twelve units. The first two are introductory units not directly related to the material in Basic Spoken Chinese.¹ They are followed by ten units, numbered 1 to 10, that parallel the ten units in Basic Spoken Chinese. Each of these units in turn consists of four parts, with each part presenting six characters, common words written with them, and reading exercises to help you master the new material.

The twelve units of Basic Written Chinese introduce a total of 288 characters and about 700 common words and expressions written with them. Except for the two introductory units, the six characters in each lesson were chosen, based on frequency of occurrence, from the characters used to write the Basic Conversation of the corresponding lesson in Basic Spoken Chinese.² Since each lesson of Basic Written Chinese was designed to be studied after the corresponding lesson of Basic Spoken Chinese and Basic Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials, when you begin a new lesson of Basic Written Chinese, you already know the pronunciations, meanings, and usages of the new words, so you need only learn their written representations. This considerably lightens your learning load!

Our guide in questions of frequency has been the general character list in the 现代汉语频率词典 Xiàndài Hànyŭ Pínlǜ Cídiăn Frequency Dictionary of Modern Chinese, published by Beijing Languages Institute in 1985. All of the characters in Basic Written Chinese were selected from the top 1,000 (and most from the top 300) characters in that dictionary, with three exceptions: the surname 李 Lĭ, the character 湾 (灣) in 台湾 (台灣) Táiwān, and the character 津 in 天津 Tiānjīn.

NEW CHARACTERS AND WORDS

The first section of each part or lesson in Basic Written Chinese is called “New Characters and Words.” It introduces the six new characters of the lesson as well as common words written with them. For each new character, the following information is provided:

1. Number. The blue-colored number at the beginning of the section for each new character is the number of the character in this course. Later in the course, characters are sometimes referred to by their number.

2. Simplified form. If only one large, blue-colored character is given, then the simplified form is the same as the traditional form.

3. Traditional form. If the traditional form of a character is different from the simplified form, it is given next, also in large, blue-colored font, but enclosed in parentheses. So that learners are always clear about which characters are simplified and which are traditional, whenever simplified and traditional characters occur together, simplified characters always come first, with traditional characters following, enclosed in parentheses.

4. Pinyin. The Pinyin transcription follows on the same line after the character.

5. English. The last item on the first line of each new character section is an English translation of the basic meaning of the character. The translation here is for reference only and does not need to be learned. The meaning of the individual character may be different from the meanings of words containing the character. Moreover, the English translation is not meant to be complete and includes only those meanings that are judged to be pedagogically useful for learners at this point in their study of Chinese.

6. Radical. Beginning on the second line of each new character section, the radical for the new character is given. If the character differs in its simplified and traditional forms, and if those two forms have different radicals, then both radicals are indicated. If the radical has a common colloquial name, that also is given.

7. Phonetic. If there is a pedagogically useful phonetic, it is indicated. If the character itself is a common phonetic, examples are given of characters in which the phonetic occurs.

8. Other components. Any other components of the character are mentioned and discussed.

9. Structural explanation. When something pedagogically useful can be said about the history and development of the character, it is included. Our primary consideration is helping students remember the character, so some explanations that have mnemonic value are mentioned even if they may not be historically accurate. On the other hand, explanations that are excessively complex and would not be helpful to the average learner have been omitted.

10. Similar characters. At the end of the new character section are listed any “look-alike” characters with which the new character should be contrasted.

11. New words written with the character. Indented under the section for each new character is a list of new words that are written with the character. These are given in simplified characters, traditional characters (if different from simplified), Pinyin transcription, and English translation. They are also recorded on the accompanying audio disc.³

12. New words written with characters you already know. This section, which is also recorded on the accompanying audio disc, presents new words occurring in the corresponding lesson of Basic Spoken Chinese that happen to be written with characters that have already been introduced in connection with other words in previous lessons of Basic Written Chinese.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO LEARNERS: What you must learn before beginning the Reading Exercises and proceeding to the next lesson is those new words in sections (11) and (12) that are followed by word class abbreviations in bolded brackets. Everything else is for reference only.

READING EXERCISES

The next section of each lesson is the Reading Exercises. These should be the focus of study and practice, since they present the new characters, words, and other features of written Chinese in context. When working with the Reading Exercises, you should practice both oral and silent reading. Be sure to make frequent use of the accompanying audio disc to hear and practice correct pronunciation, phrasing, and intonation.

The Reading Exercises are presented twice: first in simplified characters in horizontal format, and then again in traditional characters in vertical format.⁴ This is done to provide learners with practice in reading both types of characters and both formats. Of course, learners may choose to read only one version of the Reading Exercises, or they may read one version first and the other version several months later.

The Reading Exercises for Units 1 to 10 consist of the following components:

1. Sentences. These illustrate the use of the new characters and words in context. There are always ten sentences in this section, and they exemplify all the new characters and most of the new words of the lesson.

2. Conversations. The conversations are in spoken style. The name or role of each person speaking is included and should be studied along with the conversation itself. During class or practice sessions, you should find a partner or partners, and each of you should take a role. Then switch roles, so you get practice reading all of the lines.

3. Character Differentiation Drills. In the same way that drills can be useful for teaching spoken language, they can also help teach written language. The purpose of the character differentiation drills is to give you practice in differentiating “look-alike” characters that learners new to Chinese might confuse. Pronounce each drill out loud and think of the meaning of the character you’re pronouncing.

4. Narratives. The purpose of the narratives is to give you practice in reading connected prose, which is different in a number of ways from a series of independent sentences. A few of the narratives include some elements of written-style Chinese. The first time you read a narrative, you should read it out loud; the second time, read silently and try gradually to increase your reading speed. Always think of the meaning of what you’re reading.

5. Notes. These are miscellaneous comments to help you understand the meaning, structure, and cultural background of the material in the Reading Exercises. No attempt is made to provide systematic treatment of grammar, since that is provided in Basic Spoken Chinese.

Some of the lessons include additional sections on special topics such as numbers, personal and place names, money, times, and dates. There are also a total of 18 supplements presenting examples of popular culture and realia ranging from tongue twisters and riddles to tables and handwritten notes.

Footnotes

1. The two introductory units take up numbers, personal names, and place names and are designed to familiarize learners with the basic strokes of characters while they (in many cases) are learning pronunciation and romanization from Basic Spoken Chinese. One advantage of numbers and names, besides their obvious utility, is that they can occur by themselves and require no grammatical knowledge to be understood.

2. On the rare occasions when there were no appropriate characters in the Basic Conversation of the corresponding lesson, characters from the Supplementary Vocabulary of the corresponding lesson were chosen, or characters from previous lessons where there had been an excess of appropriate characters.

3. Be aware that, when reading characters out loud, Chinese readers have a tendency to give syllables their full tone, so that some syllables that are neutral tone in conversation are pronounced with a full tone instead (e.g., 朋友 “friend” may be read off as péngyŏu instead of péngyou). Our advice in such cases is to follow the pronunciation of your teacher, mentor, or the audio recording that accompanies this text.

4. The main exception to this is Unit A, which is exactly the same in simplified and traditional characters; therefore, it is presented only once, in horizontal format. Although in this book simplified characters are presented in horizontal format and traditional characters are usually presented in vertical format, which reflects general practice in the Chinese “real world,” learners should be aware that simplified characters can also be printed or handwritten in vertical format, and traditional characters can also be (and not infrequently are) printed or handwritten in horizontal format.