New Practical Chinese Reader is an excellent textbook for beginners in Chinese. The materials are presented in a simple though explicit way, helped visually, which makes it easier to understand and memorize the contents.

hellow
I am a person who order the new practical chineses reader workbook, but I ordered wrong one. I should order "New Practical Chineses Reader Textbook" instead of "workbook."
The reason I ordered this book from you is you are living in indiana.
If you live around lafayette or west lafayette. please call me my number(765-714-3310) and leave a message if I dont pick up the phone. I will pay rest of money for the textbook. If I can pick it up I will do that. Thank you.

The Workbook is an excellent addition to the Chinese Reader Textbook; it helps you memorize words and practice pronunciation as well as develop basic writing skills. No question, you are not going to write like a native Chinese just by using the Workbook but it will certainly put you on the road to a better understanding of the characters and how they are combined to form complex words.

Think twice before buying workbooks, December 26, 2005
　

I recently purchased textbook 1, textbook 1 audio CDs, and workbook 1 for this series. Although the quality of the textbook lessons seems excellent, and the audio CDs for the textbook are very clear, I wish I had not purchased the workbook.

The workbook has various exercises such as matching the pinyin to the sound, matching the characters to the pinyin, writing the characters, completing sentences, and such like. The first puzzlement came when I listened to the audio CDs I bought with the textbook; there is nothing on them that resembles the "match the pinyin to the sound" exercises. The second puzzlement came when I tried to find the answer key in the workbook. After more research on Amazon and elsewhere, I was able to piece together what you would need to make a complete set just for book one:

New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1, $19.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1 Audio CDs, $29.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1, $12.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Audio CDs, $16.95
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Instructor's Manual, $14.95 (Amazon has it, but it's hard to find)
New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook 1 Instructor's Manual Audio Tape, $9.95 (Amazon doesn't have this; I found it at www.chinabooks.com)

I have nothing negative to say about the quality of the lessons, but I wish I had known how many things I needed to buy to make the workbook usable.

It would be good if Amazon would disclose this somewhere in its editorial descriptions of the books.