Integrated Chinese: Level 2, Part 1 Workbook (Simplified and Traditional Character, 3rd Edition) (Chinese and English Edition)

Absolutely fantastic series of books! The first two years of my Chinese classes in college used the Integrated Chinese series as the main curriculum material. The entire series incorporates vocabulary and grammar points that are relevant to the beginner/intermediate student. Rather than simply listing out dozens of vocab words, each chapter is prefaced with a dialogue or short commentary that uses the following vocab words. Teaching relevant words is one thing, but giving them in a relevant context was incredibly helpful. In addition, the dialogues and commentaries were not random stories - the Integrated Chinese series follows the lives of a handful of characters as they walk through life together, recording their conversations and experiences. It very much resembles Friends the way that the characters interact with one another, fall in love, go to school, express struggles, etc. For our class, we wanted to plow through each chapter for the sake of getting to the next drama-filled episode of Li You and Wang Peng's love story.The accompanying videos were the icing on the cake, as (very clearly) white actors were used with terrible dubs to tell the thrilling storyline of how Gao Wenzhong tries to intervene in the aforementioned love story. People have Bachelor parties and Gossip Girl get-togethers, but each day of class for us became an Integrated Chinese viewing party.All joking aside, the approach this series takes to teaching language (much less a language which is often deemed "too difficult" for native English speakers) is simple and natural and caters well to the cultural environments that college age students encounter. Each chapter concludes with a handful of vocab/grammar practices, and the workbooks (purchased separately) really helped to drive these points home for me. They also introduced new points that could be extrapolated from the main text. We tore the workbook sheets out each week when we turned them in as homework. Using these books four semesters in a row prepared me well for third year Chinese and I still have/read through all of these books. Thank you Integrated Chinese!

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The workbook is a good tool to further study the textbook and practice Chinese. It doesn’t come with the audio so that is frustrating and you would have to purchase that separately to finish sections of the workbook. Also, if you are self studying, there are no answers page to see if you are doing it correctly. I do like how it provides both traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

These books are amazing! They focus on vocabulary, grammar, and phrases that are actually practical and useful in normal, human conversation (unlike other books I've used). They're organized and written very well, and they explain complicated nuances of Chinese grammar and speech to the non-Chinese student. Normally I sell off all textbooks as fast as I can after the course is done, but I've kept all my Chinese books because they're so useful and a great resource for anyone looking to actually learn the language. The entire Integrated Chinese series is very good.

Honestly, this whole textbook series is amazing. The workbook in particular is useful in that it walks you through initial understanding of the material and gradually becomes more difficult within each portion of each chapter, ending in full-fledged paragraph translations and plans for speaking performances. Although doing every exercise in the workbook is obviously impossible because of the sheer amount of material, there are many excellent exercises to choose from to fit all difficulty levels. This is the best set of language materials I have ever used (and i have used many, having had 5 years of Spanish and 3 years of Arabic.)

It is fitting in difficulty the level you are at. kind of bothers me that the simplified and the traditional characters aren't separate workbooks. If that bothers you just crossed them off before you start working so it doesn't distract you

I love IC, because I have learned so much from their books. However, the way that they smashed traditional and simplified together was just some kind of nightmare. It would have been better to split them up, at least where one is in the front and one is in the back.However, not regarding alginment, IC is fantastic for learning Chinese. If you want to learn Chinese, you need to buy this book.

The workbook cost quite a lot, but that's probably because this is used in a college classroom. They know you're probably expected to purchase the workbook along with the textbook so they rip you off. The quality of the practice problems are pretty good.