The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries

Reviews for the First Edition

The authors have done an amazing job in presenting the cultures of contemporary China, integrating the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, providing extensive and various linguistic input, and consolidating learning through systematic review... this book is useful not only as an advanced textbook for achieving language competence but also as reading material for courses with a cultural emphasis ...The most outstanding components within each lesson are the grammar explanations and the Chinese character analysis exercises. The grammar explanation component explains each sentence pattern in great detail and with extraordinary accuracy. More important, simple, focused, and clear exercises follow each detailed explanation of a sentence pattern, immediately enabling learners to digest and reinforce the mastery of a grammar point quickly. The Chinese character analysis exercises provide a systematic review of frequently occurring phonetic sets of Chinese characters, helping learners decipher Chinese characters and synthesize the Chinese characters they have learned.

The unique feature of this book lies in its emphasis on the link between cultural literacy and language competence...The tremendous amount of online audio and visual supporting materials constitutes a second outstanding feature of the book, which provides learners with extensive and authentic exposure to the Chinese language and culture. Another valuable feature comes from the book's emphasis on the transition from spoken language to written or formal language...In conclusion, this is an excellent textbook for advanced CSL/CFL learners...Due to its special emphasis on culture and formal language, this book could also be a good choice for Chinese courses designed for Chinese heritage learners. - The Modern Language Journal 97 (2013)

Reviews for the Second Edition

The second edition of The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries is an excellent textbook for advanced learners of Chinese, which successfully integrates development of linguistic competence and cultural literacy. The online supporting materials accompanied with this book are impressively rich, practical, and innovative. Han Luo, Northwestern University, USA.

This textbook provides a rich resource for expanding advanced vocabulary, studying complex sentence patterns and learning about formal writing style. It is a dynamic textbook that generates great activities in class. While learning linguistic items, students gain an understanding of Chinese society, culture and history. My students enjoy the book very much. William Zhou, Yale University, USA.