The Routledge Chinese Studies Portal

The Routledge Course in Modern Mandarin Chinese

by Claudia Ross and Baozhang He, both at College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, USA, Pei-Chia Chen, University of California, San Diego, USA, and Meng Yeh, Rice University, Texas, USA

“One of the very few accessible and clearly structured textbooks for the complete beginner…Absolutely designed with the non-native Chinese speaker in mind.” - Frances Weightman, University of Leeds, UK

The Routledge Course in Modern Mandarin Chinese uses a staggered introduction of characters to take the student with no prior background in Chinese from complete beginner to post-intermediate level in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Mandarin.

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Set your students on the path to communicating in Chinese

This course presents a unique approach to the introduction of characters. Words and characters are introduced separately and new words appear in pinyin only at first, allowing your students to master the pronunciation, meaning, and use before tackling the character form. Words are also introduced at a faster pace than characters so that your students can build a broad base of vocabulary for oral communication in their first year of study.

Lessons 1–5 use only pinyin in order to get students started. Beginning in Lesson 6, the introduction of characters is staggered and selective; characters are only introduced at the second or third occurrence of a vocabulary item with a focus on the introduction of high-frequency characters.

Once a character has been introduced, the pinyin is removed. This gradual but complete replacement of pinyin ensures recognition and use of characters. At the same time, the integration of pinyin in the text also ensures that students continue to focus on pinyin as a pronunciation guide and develop accurate Mandarin pronunciation.

Companion Website

Each level of the course is supported by workbooks with audio CDs and by a companion website, rich with additional resources for both teachers and students.

Teacher Resources (all material prepared in English and Mandarin)

lesson plans and answer key
activities for each lesson
audio track menus
instructions on how to use the features of the website
sample tests.

Student Resources

full-colour version of the traditional textbook character flow charts
downloadable character practice worksheets
pronunciation, vocabulary and character practice
sentence pyramids
structure drills
complete audio for the course linked on screen to relevant text from the books
Chinese Character Trainer app now available!

Download our Character Trainer App!

Character Trainer App

Available at:

Character Trainer App

The Routledge Chinese Character Trainer app is the ideal tool for learners using the course. It provides the 180 characters presented in Textbook Level 1 of the course. The app matches the characters presented in the course lesson by lesson, so students can practice all the characters encountered in each lesson and test themselves independently before moving on.

The Routledge Chinese Character Trainer app features three learning modes to take you from your first encounter with a new character through systematic practice to mastery of its structure and stroke order.

In Training Mode, you can view a stroke-by-stroke animation of each character and then practice drawing it yourself using the character outline provided. The app checks every stroke you draw, helping you recognize and correct mistakes as you go along. Once you've memorized the form of each character, you can practice drawing it without the outline.

In Drill Mode, you are prompted to draw each character in turn from memory. If you get a stroke wrong, the app shows you the correct version, and then returns the character to the deck to be repeated later, providing learners with targeted practice.

Over time you can measure your progress using Test Mode, which gives you just one chance to write each character correctly and displays your score at the end.

Additional features include Audio with each character pronounced a single time as the visual prompts are presented on screen and Score Reporting Functionality which allows learners to submit their score to their instructor at the end of each Drill or Test, making it the ideal substitute for character writing homework sheets.

A free demo version including the first 32 characters from lessons 6, 7 and 8 is available here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/routledge-chinese-character/id574205120?mt=8

The full app is available through both iTunes and Google Play: