A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese
The fellow who lived in my room before I moved in left me a bunch of books. Included in the pile were a few aimed at self-learners of Chinese. "A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese" is by far the most useful amongst them. This book is meant to supplement one's study of Chinese. It is by no means a stand-alone text book. Guide to Spoken Chinese aims to clear up a large number of grammatical and vocabulary issues often encoutered by English speakers learning Chinese. This is exceptionally helpful as the issues tackled are just the sort often overlooked by broader ranging textbooks, and even by teachers in the classroom.
The book aims to clear up incorrect usage before it becomes "fossilized" by helping students to learn where they may have misunderstandings, and clarifying the rules for them. Those who will benefit most from this book are intermediate Chinese learners. They will have a sufficient language base to be able to understand the lessons and examples given, but will still benefit greatly from the clarifications provided.
The book is not written in such a way as to require reading from front to back. One is free to browse through the lessons to focus on the areas where she has difficulty. There are 114 lessons in this slim book. As a result of covering so much ground they could be slightly more indepth. Most of them are sufficiently detailed, but others could use more example phrases to help clarify the distinctions made. For those who wish to practice there are exercises and an answer key in the back of the book.
This book is useful. It does what it sets out to do, which is all that can really be asked of it. It won't teach you Chinese, but it might help fix and improve the Chinese you already know. I recommend it to supplement one's studies with more indepth clarification of grammar and vocabulary usage.