So I’m trying to learn Mandarin now and looking for a good text+workbook and came across the “Integrated Chinese” texts. Has anyone used these before? There are so many different series and I don’t know which sets to buy and which come with what.
Also, most of the texts are in Simplified Chinese, but I heard most signs, etc in Taiwan are in Traditional Chinese.
Does anyone have any recommendations for texts and for which (Traditional or Simplified) Chinese I should learn?
Many thanks 
I used IC in the US. The book is alright because it explains grammar in detail in English and provides examples with practice activities. There is a traditional version – buy that one. Taiwan uses traditional characters, including on street signs.
If you search around Forumosa you’ll find that most people use the Practical Audio Visual Chinese book. This does not mean it is great.
It sounds like you are studying on your own. Go to a bookstore and look at the books. Find one you feel suits you best. There is a new series of small books on survival Mandarin topics (like transportation and eating in restaurants) for sale in Eslite that has a tiny CD in the back. The English is so-so and the layout makes me want to pull my hair out, but it is a quick study and has good key words.
[quote=“Honey-Lemon”]So I’m trying to learn Mandarin now and looking for a good text+workbook and came across the “Integrated Chinese” texts. Has anyone used these before? There are so many different series and I don’t know which sets to buy and which come with what.
Also, most of the texts are in Simplified Chinese, but I heard most signs, etc in Taiwan are in Traditional Chinese.
Does anyone have any recommendations for texts and for which (Traditional or Simplified) Chinese I should learn?
Many thanks [/quote]
I’m guessing you’re not in Taiwan now but are planning to come here soon? Most overseas textbooks for learning Chinese probably use simplified, since that’s what they use in China. However if you look hard enough, I’m sure you can find traditional material there too. Most textbooks to learn Chinese in Taiwan though use traditional, since that is what is taught and used here.
If you’re about to come to Taiwan, then wait and buy your books here, since there will be a bigger selection to choose from. However if you want to get a head start on your learning, then make sure you specifically look for material using traditional characters (unless you have ambitions to work in China in the future).
Hope that helps!
Yup I’m planning on coming to Taiwan next year and have started on learning Mandarin on my own and with language exchange partners.
Thank you all for your advice and I think I will change from learning Simplified to Traditional. At least this way I am learning the harder one so in the end it will be like learning both!
And I would have to get the books off Amazon as none of the bookstores where I live hold these Integrated Chinese books. There are just soo many that I don’t know which workbook goes with which textbook! It’s so confusing… 
Yes, that’s a good move. 
And after you’ve learned Traditional, simplified aren’t hard.
[quote=“Honey-Lemon”]Yup I’m planning on coming to Taiwan next year and have started on learning Mandarin on my own and with language exchange partners.
Thank you all for your advice and I think I will change from learning Simplified to Traditional. At least this way I am learning the harder one so in the end it will be like learning both!
And I would have to get the books off Amazon as none of the bookstores where I live hold these Integrated Chinese books. There are just soo many that I don’t know which workbook goes with which textbook! It’s so confusing… [/quote]
If it’s hard to get books where you are, there are a lot of online resources you can use that support traditional and simplified. The advantage is that you will get a lot more listening practice than you would in books. My website is a complete online course run from here in Taichung, so the speakers are all Taiwanese speakers and the content has both traditional and simplified. The lessons are free to listen to, but I charge for transcripts, exercises etc. It’s progressive, so you can start off from the lesson you feel most comfortable with, and it’ll get harder from there on. Work your way down this list and go from there.
PM me if you need more help.
Yes, that’s a good move. And after you’ve learned Traditional, simplified aren’t hard.[/quote]
Or the other way around, when you know simplified, traditional is not hard. There are exactly 350 differences between the two, systematic as well as some character remakes.
I personally consider simplified a little bit trickier task for memorization due to some writers’ laziness factor creating false friends, like 欢(歡)/对(對). Better to write by hand though.
You’re saying they redid the written language because it was too difficult. I’m saying that difficulty has nothing to do with it. It’s about the quality of the education. Just don’t expect someone like Mao to understand that.
Got it.
What I mean is that “being too difficult” and “poor education” are one and the same. Chicken and the egg scenario. Highly educated people don’t find XYZ too difficult. Difficult things require proper education. Round and round it goes.
They redid the language cause it was either too difficult or people were not educated enough. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other 
it’s obvious Mao was anti intelligence, and his education campaign probably reflects that decent enough.
Taiwan’s extremely high literacy rates have shown pretty clearly that the full forms of the characters were not a problem. The problem was getting everyone in school and teaching literacy.
There’s nothing really wrong per se with the simplified characters but it was a waste of time and effort to implement them when the non-simplified ones were fine.
Indeed, which is what I was saying. But it’s clear it was changed due to - whatever word people prefer to use for what has already been said above 
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I have been reading niche books targeted to adults even before I went to school and my parent’s did not push me to learn reading at all.
And there are kids who could read even at younger age than I did.
However I cannot imagine how anyone would read it and understand almost everything at 5, if was it written in Chinese characters.
Even some folks who know quite above average number of characters in their adulthood would not be able to read anything like that until several years later.
“But I could read the phonetic system…” just shows how the Chinese characters are flaw by design.
Of course, by removing the Chinese characters from schools and common use, it would cause even further illiteracy amongst average people, because they would not be able to read anything about their own roots and history.
It would not be the first nor last writing system created with the purpose of average peasants not understanding it much.
In ancient Egypt it happened too.
Phonetic system… every single word would need to be viewed in context to be understood or deciphered. Either that or the entire language would need to change.
You know that English is one of the hardest languages to learn how to read in the world, right? It is not a phonetically predictable language, and you need a very high level of phonemic awareness to read it.
Also, rates of dyslexicia are lower in countries that use the Chinese writing system than phoentic based languages. That’s because they are pictorial based, which makes it easier for dyslexic people to read.
Simplifying a few strokes in a haphazard fashion doesn’t make learning anything easier. You can say that Taiwan and Hong Kong, or even Japan are smaller than China, so that’s what makes education in traditional characters, in Japan’s case, some simplification but complicated by using 3 scripts, possible. I think it was purely down to effort though. I think Mao’s rhetoric was that educated people are the ones that needed to be reeducated by those working on the farms. In an environment when being educated could land you in hard labor far away from home, I doubt very many educated people would actually want to teach others how to read and write.
Learning English reading and writing is not that different from Chinese. There are tons of rote memorization required. Any phonetic hint in the writing system is often there just to trick you to make a fool out of yourself.
Of course, learning Japanese is 10 times harder.
Four! Romaji (example: “JR”) is commonly used in modern Japanese too.
Guy
If anything simplifying Chinese made it worse. For example, the characters 沖 and 衝 became a single character 冲。 However, the meaning is now lost, because 衝 is related to walking 行, 沖 is related to water 水 but neither are related to ice 冰, yet 冲 uses the ice radical.
There are many examples like that.
No, it really is not.
English is not my native language, but compared to Chinese (any kind of), English is a piece of cake to read despite my language has very different pronunciation from English.
The way different combinations of letters are pronounced differently takes less effort to learn than Chinese, especially traditional characters.
If you were raised reading Chinese characters, you might have forgotten how much effort you put into learning it.
If at least you said, that French is one of the hardest to read, I’d say we at least have a more serious competitor, but it is rather hard to write, reading it can be still learned much faster than Chinese despite it might have the most difficult pronunciation from all European languages.
Like when we had a beginner lesson of French, we had a text of a song and listened to the song a few times.
I did not understand the meaning much still, but I could read it without the CD like 90% correct.
With Chinese? No way, maybe recite or sing from memory, but to read…?
You’re using anecdotal evidence to support your hypothesis. However, research has shown that on average native English speaking children start reading later than any other European language.
That doesn’t mean it’s hard for literally everyone. For example, I was able to read before my brother, despite being 18 months younger than him.