Modern Mandarin Chinese is a two-year undergraduate course for students with no prior background in Chinese study. Designed to build a strong foundation in both the spoken and written language, it develops all the basic skills such as pronunciation, character writing, word use, and structures, while placing strong emphasis on the development of communicative skills.

Each level of the course consists of a textbook and workbook in simplified characters. A free companion website provides all the audio for the course with a broad range of interactive exercises and additional resources for students’ self-study, along with a comprehensive instructor’s guide with teaching tips, assessment and homework material, and a full answer key.

Key changes to this new edition:

• This revised edition of level 2 introduces over 200 characters and over 400 new vocabulary items.
• Additional exercises in the workbooks and online support the expanded number of words and characters incorporated into the textbooks.
• New cross-references between the textbooks, workbooks, and companion website facilitate using all the resources in an integrated manner.
• The website has been redesigned and greatly enhanced.

Retaining its focus on communicative skills and the long-term retention of characters, the text is presented in simplified characters and pinyin with a gradual and phased removal of pinyin as specific characters are introduced and learned. This approach allows students to focus on the pronunciation and meaning of new words before the corresponding characters are introduced, ensuring they are guided and supported towards reading only in characters.

Claudia Ross is Professor Emerita of Chinese at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, USA. Her publications include Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (2014), co-authored with Jing-heng Sheng Ma; Outline of Chinese Grammar (2004); and Traditional Chinese Tales: A Course in Intermediate Chinese (2001).

Baozhang He is Associate Professor of Chinese at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, USA. His publications include Difficult Grammar Knots Unravelled (2015), co-authored with Nansong Huang and Wenzi Hu and Elementary Chinese (2006), co-authored with Pei-Chia Chen.

Pei-Chia Chen is Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the Chinese program at UC San Diego, USA. Her publications include Elementary Chinese (2006), co-authored with Baozhang He.

Meng Yeh is Teaching Professor in the Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication at Rice University, USA. Her publications include Chaoyue: Advancing in Chinese (2010) and Communicating in Chinese: An Interactive Approach to Beginning Chinese, Student Lab Workbook (1999).