What To Look For In A Learn Chinese Book

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Learning Chinese entirely from a book is not recommended. Because learning Chinese is all about listening for sounds, accents and words, a book will not be of much use to you unfortunately. We only suggest you use a book to learn Chinese if the book gives you simple, quick facts.

Because you're learning a new language (the main basis of communication throughout the world), you need to listen to people speaking Chinese and saying the words in order for you to progress. It's very easy to learn it all from a book, but once you begin to try and speak to Chinese speakers, you will fall flat on your face.

This is not us trying to get you to buy a course or to turn you off from learning Chinese forever... it's just how it is. "Practice makes perfect" is an adage which is entirely true with Chinese. Any bilingual person who's learned Chinese as their second language will tell you about how important listening and speaking are in the learning process.

The books we recommend using to help your Chinese along are more often than not called phrase books and are only small (usually designed to fit in your pocket). These books give you an unparalleled advantage over other Chinese learners because they basically give you the resource you need to learn Chinese right in your pocket. We only suggest the use of these books if you've already learned quite a bit of Chinese and need some help in the real world when talking to Chinese speakers.

Phrase books only work as reminders of phrases and words which are used the most often. They are NOT dictionaries and are NOT full fledged Chinese courses, meaning that you cannot learn Chinese directly from them. When looking for a learn Chinese book, you will have the most success by purchasing one with the following traits:

• It's small enough to fit in your pocket yet the text is big enough to actually read

• It has plenty of information and reference material inside

• It covers a wide range of topics/areas of the language

We suggest that, if you're looking for a resource from which to learn Chinese, you don't use a book on its own. We recommend you use a full Chinese course such as Rocket Chinese or Rosetta Stone Chinese to be sure that you're not only learning the correct information, but you're also learning it in the most productive and effective way possible.

If you're looking to learn Chinese and don't know where to start, or just want to start to learn for whatever reason, why not take a look at our homepage?