A unique and highly entertaining introduction to the richness of Chinese language, culture, and civilization, built on the groundbreaking and hugely popular Chineasy visual learning method. To educate the world about the richness and character of China’s people, customs, and heritage, entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh created Chineasy, a special building-block learning method that uses highly recognizable and appealing illustrations. She introduced her revolutionary teaching methodology and graphic language in her bestseller, Chineasy. In this standalone guide, she expands her scope to include all facets of Chinese life and culture, including Numbers, Time & Dates, The Solar System & the Five Elements, People, Nature, Animals, How to Describe Things, Health & Well-being, Travel, City & Country, Shopping, Food & Drink, and Internet & Technology. She begins all twelve sections with an overview of key Chineasy characters, then presents the specific symbols relevant to each—providing insight into how Chinese thinking has shaped its language and civilization in a way that anyone can understand and appreciate. Whether you are a student learning Mandarin, an executive pursuing business ties to Chinese companies, or a curious tourist traveling to China, this single-volume encyclopedia will stimulate the mind, enchant the culturally minded and inspire everyone who seeks new experiences and a wider understanding of our world.
Chineasy, the brainchild of entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh, has been a publishing phenomenon. Its special building-block learning method brought to life by highly recognizable and appealing graphic illustrations has attracted a substantial online following and has been published in fifteen languages. But it marks only the beginning of a larger ambition to educate the world about the richness and character of China's people, its customs and its heritage. The first volume of Chineasy introduced the method and visual language. This follow-up volume, which requires no experience of the first, expands the scope to include all facets of Chinese life and culture in twelve central sections. Each begins with an overview of key characters before a presentation of the subject using those characters as a basis, providing insight into how Chinese thinking has shaped its language and civilization in a way that anyone can understand and appreciate. As children are increasingly taking up Mandarin, and as business exchange with China develops, this is a single-volume encyclopedia on China that will stimulate young minds, enchant the culturally minded and inspire everyone who seeks new experiences and a wider understanding of the world we live in.
Learn to read and write Chinese with Chineasy—a groundbreaking approach that transforms key Chinese characters into pictograms for easy recall and comprehension. Chinese is one of the oldest written languages, and one of the most difficult to master, especially for Westerners. With Chineasy, learning and reading Chinese has never been simpler or more fun. Breaking down the Great Wall of Language, iShaoLan Hsueh draws on her entrepreneurial and cultural background to create a simple system for quickly understanding the basic building blocks of written Chinese. Working with renowned illustrator Noma Bar, she transforms Chinese characters into charming pictograms that are easy to remember. In Chineasy, she teaches the key characters, called radicals, that are the language’s foundation, and then shows how they can be combined to form new words and even phrases. Once you’ve mastered these key characters, you can practice your skills with three stories—a fairy tale, an Asian legend, and a contemporary fable—told using the radicals. With Chineasy, readers of all ages will be able to navigate a Chinese menu, read signs and billboards, and grasp the meaning of most articles in a Chinese newspaper.
The simple, super-smart way for children to learn their first 100 Chinese words A lively introduction for children to written Chinese, Chineasy® for Children makes learning Chinese fun and simple. The book features playful illustrations by Noma Bar that relate each character’s shape to its meaning, alongside games and activities to make learning interactive. Introductory spreads explain how Chinese is written in pictograms—characters form building blocks for other words and sentences. Subsequent spreads feature lively scenes that help children to recognize over 100 Chinese characters. The book is organized by themes such as numbers, family, animals, and food, each section covering vocabulary within that topic. Stories about the development of characters and customs provide the perfect introduction to Chinese culture, while games and activities allow children to put into practice what they have learned. The book also features a picture library of characters for avid linguists to memorize as well as guidance on Mandarin pronunciation.
This Box contains 60 flashcards that will help develop your Chinese vocabulary and pronunciation. To start learning the Chineasy way, just pick a card and flip it over.
Where Chineasy 's books, flashcards and memory game helped learners to recognize a diverse range of characters, this new workbook offers the opportunity to practise writing Chinese characters. Noma Bar's playful and appealing colour illustrations are interspersed with practical pages showing learners how to write the characters themselves. Short facts illuminate the meaning of a character or the origin of its shape, while a guide to the correct stroke order and grids to help with spacing allow learners to perfect their writing skills. Maintaining the innovative visual identity of the Chineasy brand, the workbook is the perfect complement to the existing range, but is also self- standing and doesn't require learners to be familiar with the method. Suitable for everyone from schoolchildren to businesspeople, it will foster a genuine appreciation of the Chinese language and provide a fun introduction to the art of Chinese calligraphy
At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character’s component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.
Shawn C. Smallman and Kimberley Brown's popular introductory textbook for undergraduates in international and global studies is now released in a substantially revised and updated third edition. Encompassing the latest scholarship in what has become a markedly interdisciplinary endeavor and an increasingly chosen undergraduate major, the book introduces key concepts, themes, and issues and then examines each in lively chapters on essential topics, including the history of globalization; economic, political, and cultural globalization; security, energy, and development; health; agriculture and food; and the environment. Within these topics the authors explore such diverse and pressing subjects as commodity chains, labor (including present-day slavery), pandemics, human rights, and multinational corporations and the connections among them. This textbook, used successfully in both traditional and online courses, provides the newest and most crucial information needed for understanding our rapidly changing world. New to this edition: *Close to 50% new material *New illustrations, maps, and tables *New and expanded emphases on political and economic globalization and populism; health; climate change, and development *Extensively revised exercises and activities *New resume-writing exercise in careers chapter *Thoroughly revised online teacher's manual
Learning Chinese can be frustrating and difficult, partly because it's very different from European languages. Following a teacher, textbook or language course is not enough. They show you the characters, words and grammar you need to become proficient in Chinese, but they don't teach you how to learn them! Regardless of what program you're in (if any), you need to take responsibility for your own learning. If you don't, you will miss many important things that aren't included in the course you're taking. If you study on your own, you need to be even more aware of what you need to do, what you're doing at the moment and the difference between them. Here are some of the questions I have asked and have since been asked many times by students: How do I learn characters efficiently? How do I get the most out of my course or teacher? Which are the best learning tools and resources? How can I become fluent in Mandarin? How can I improve my pronunciation? How do I learn successfully on my own? How can I motivate myself to study more? How can I fit learning Chinese into a busy schedule? The answers I've found to these questions and many others form the core of this book. It took eight years of learning, researching, teaching and writing to figure these things out. Not everybody has the time to do that! I can't go back in time and help myself learn in a better way, but I can help you! This book is meant for normal students and independent language learners alike. While it covers all major areas of learning, you won't learn Chinese just by reading this book. It's like when someone on TV teaches you how to cook: you won't get to eat the delicious dish just by watching the program; you have to do the cooking yourself. That's true for this book as well. When you apply what you learn, it will boost your learning, making every hour you spend count for more, but you still have to do the learning yourself. This is what a few readers have said about the book: "The book had me nodding at a heap of things I'd learnt the hard way, wishing I knew them when I started, as well as highlighting areas that I'm currently missing in my study." - Geoff van der Meer, VP engineering "This publication is like a bible for anyone serious about Chinese proficiency. It's easy for anyone to read and written with scientific precision." - Zachary Danz, foreign teacher, children's theatre artist About me I started learning Chinese when I was 23 (that's more than eight years ago now) and have since studied in many different situations, including serious immersion programs abroad, high-intensity programs in Sweden, online courses, as well as on the side while working or studying other things. I have also successfully used my Chinese in a graduate program for teaching Chinese as a second language, taught entirely in Chinese mostly for native speakers (the Graduate Institute for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University). All these parts have contributed to my website, Hacking Chinese, where I write regularly about how to learn Mandarin.
