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Rating: 
Summary: Ah, Palanka and Gubo!
Review: Granted this series is rather old and slightly outdated, but it has been in my experience that such methods are actually some of the better finds on the market. There is nothing wrong with the vocabulary as the Chinese taught is the modern standard speech of the People's Republic and the English employed is that of the British Commonwealth: This is not surprising as the ones who would have the copyrights to either language would be the Chinese and the English. The word "zuqiu" is based on the word "football" as "soccer" is primarily American usage; the word "keting", which roughly translates to "guest hall" (the place where one receives guests), has its equivalents in "drawing room", "living room", or "salon" - all of which refer to the same thing. There are some words which may have dwindled in usage in the past five years like "tongzhi", comrade, but these are moot points as they are in the minority. The pronunciation and grammar are impeccably explained and demonstrated but do use a good amount of linguistics vocabulary, a method not frequently used in overall language instruction in the United States. There are plenty of exercises; stroke order charts for newly learned characters are only in books I and II. It is highly probable that after the diligent completion of this six volume course, one will have a solid foundation and a strong command of Chinese. One will also have a better understanding of China or the Chinese as the dialogues and readings illustrate everyday life, common situations, modern Chinese thought, modern Chinese behaviour, and explain items of artistic and historical cultural interest. There is no propaganda in these books... and if it seems like there is, it only reflects the overlooked obvious fact that Communism has permeated all facets of life in China including the culture and overall outlook on life, not to mention that the Commercial Press is a state owned enterprise and that these books were composed long before the recent commercial and societal reforms, both of which have been questionably beneficial to China despite Western approval. Many of the images do recall the nineteen seventies, but with the recent retro-revival style trend that began in the early to mid-1990s, they are now more delightful than they are distasteful. The typography is excellent; the books were actually typeset by metal press rather than typewritten. The print quality is not terrible, but for improved quality, there are editions printed in Hong Kong with bleached paper (or high grade off-white paper), richer inking, and sturdier binding. These are more difficult to find unless one has a good Chinese bookshop in the area. The paper used in the Mainland produced editions is unbleached natural pulp based paper; it is somewhat better than newsprint despite how it looks. I have had the original edition for more than ten years without a problem with the binding. The Pracitcal Chinese Reader series is available in Arabic, French, Spanish, German, and Russian editions, and probably not as widely distributed as the English series is outside of China. There are tapes available from a company in San Francisco, but I would advise against it as the speakers are not native Northern Chinese speakers. Audio supplements are generally not provided for Asian and African languages as they are for most European languages. The best bet is to find native speakers from Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei province, and so forth, or to watch or listen to Chinese Central broadcasts via satellite television or internet radio as the standard is specifically Northern based. VCD format of well-produced television series - Chinese telenovelas - from China are now available; there is ample dialogue, scenes of Chinese life, and subtitles in Chinese for those who need them (non-speakers, the deaf, and students). Be warned that overseas Chinese may not be a good barometer or a way of comparing your progress as the majority of them come from areas that do not naturally speak Northern Chinese, or areas that speak a highly mutated form of it from inundation by Southern Chinese languages. Moreover, the level of language that these books instruct may be more elevated, cultured, and intellectual in flavour than one would encounter from overseas Chinese who were not raised or educated under the PRC system. Overall, I highly recommend this series as one of the best ways to begin studying Chinese and to advance solidly in the language. Equip yourself with a good dictionary, a guide to master handwritten Chinese («Learn to Write Chinese Characters» by Johan Bjorksten, Yale, is spot on), and a few Chinese friends, and you will be on your way to linguistic success. Also, remember to practise, practise, practise. Chinese is not a difficult language to learn as many of the myths about the language would have us to believe, but the key lies in devoting time to practise it. Good luck!...
Rating:
Summary: Good book, but need tapes also.
Review: I am a college student in my second year of Chinese, this book and the second are great, over the past two years going pretty much straight from the book I have learned to write around 1,000 characters and am starting to feel pretty confident using the language. However anyone who intends to study Chinese NEEDS tapes with pronunciations on them or else you will be lost. Chinese is a tonal language and someone without the right pronunciation could easily get horse and mother confused!
Rating:
Summary: I have found it very useful
Review: I have purchased this book together with an accompanying set of cassettes and have found both to be very helpful and easy to follow. I should point out that I am studying Chinese on my own (without an instructor) and have purchased just about every book and program I could find and particularly value those which have cassettes and CDs available with the program. I don't think that anyone will master a language by reading just one book and each program has its strengths and weaknesses. And yes, errors do sometimes occur with printed material, but if you are using many different sources to study, that should not be a problem. Few words in this book may not be in use any more, and as another reviewer pointed out if you can find the New Chinese Reader, it may be your better option - nevertheless, you can make wonderful progress even with this book. And if are studying on your own, I highly recommend you also get the audio material to accompany your study. It will make your studying even more enjoyable experience and much easier. The audio tapes that accompany this book have very good sound quality.
Rating:
Summary: I like this book and tapes, but ...
Review: I have used this book and tapes and they have worked well for me - in spite of outdated language. It's in these reviews that I've learned of the New Practical Chinese Reader, which doesn't seem to be available yet through the amazon.com - but then I found that Chinasprouts.com has a wide selection of books and tapes, New Chinese Reader series and many others you may enjoy checking out to find what may work best for you.
Rating:
Summary: Best Product for Learning Chinese Currently Available
Review: I started using the Chinese Reader books by John DeFrancis roughly twenty years ago. These are some of the finest works for studying the language available but I found that they placed language learning (ie. spoken) in one book and character study (written) in a parallel book. This may work for some but I found it somewhat confusing although the presentation of grammar is excellent! I used DeFrancis as a supplement to the Practical Chinese Reader series.
In college my teacher used the Practical Chinese Reader books. The entire series is six volumes in length with a companion CD/tape set. The grammar/vocabulary is presented alongside the characters. Interesting and pertinent stories (throughout all six volumes) guide the student through different situations such as life in school, a party or a dinner at a friend's house, a trip to the hospital, a train ride, cultural notes, selected works of well known Chinese drama, fiction, etc. This is just a sampler of the tremendous amount of material provided in the entire series.
Those who wish to learn the spoken language and then the written characters may do better with the De Francis series. Students looking to learn grammar, new vocabulary and characters simultaneously should turn to the Practical Chinese Readers. Other Chinese study programs teach all of these elements, spoken and written, at once but none do so with the depth and relative ease of PCR. For these reasons, the PRC books are highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: The best starter
Review: I used this book for 2 Chinese college courses and it's really great. The way you learn new vocabulary by immediately seeing how they are used in sentences is fantastic. Also, they don't have any sentences that are translated word for word. You just learn to use the words and grammar correcty by seing them used over and over again, which I think is the best way to learn a language. DO NOT GET THIS BOOK WITHOUT GETTING THE AUDIO TAPES WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!! If this is your first chinese learning program, then there is NO way that you can pronounce the words correctly without hearing them on the tapes first! The tapes' pronounciation are crystal clear, pronouncing the "x, q, j, and zh" perfectly (the best Mandarin pronounciation I've ever heard). It is true that the book does contain SOME errors and I had a teacher who gave some commentary on some of the things (really not that serious), but I think this book with the tapes, is an excellent starter for conversational Chinese Mandarin.
Rating:
Summary: Ah, Palanka and Gubo!
Review: My two best language-learning buddies. It just wouldn't be a Chinese textbook without those two! This is an excellent series, by far my favorite of all the Chinese primers out there. As the previous reviewers have mentioned, yes, it's a little outdated and there's a bit of communist propaganda-type stuff in there sometimes, but it's still the BEST primer around! 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: The good books always fall apart
Review: There are three main points I'd like to make about this book, but first here's what I think about it. The book takes the reader at a decent pace, explaining pronunciation, grammar concepts, and whatnot in great detail. There are exercises to practice that one can do with a partner or by himself. Vocabulary is relatively slow at the beginning, but so it is with all language books. It's great if you want to learn Chinese and have had a little bit of exposure to a language with a different writing system. Finally -- the reader must decide if this is okay with them -- in every chapter, the beginning text is written in both Chinese characters and pinyin (english letters), so you can't really be sure that you are reading it on your own or using the pinyin as a crutch. However, there are practice texts throughout later chapters that give you the chance to read characters alone. The second volume of this book takes away the pinyin, so you can't use it like in the first book. Here are my points:
(1) THE BINDING ON THIS BOOK IS OLD, AND THUS IT FELL APART AFTER TWO DAYS OF READING IT. I'm not too sure if this is a problem with this particular shipment, or if all these books will do that, but I didn't buy the book to look pretty, I'll just tape it up.
(2) THE BOOK IS BEST FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN LEARNING ANOTHER LANGUAGE AND THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO LINGUISTICS TERMS AND IDEAS, OTHERWISE YOU NEED A TEACHER. Thankfully, I am both, so this book is incredibly helpful. They have diagrams to show the position of the tongue, and use words such as "fricative, affricative, hard palette, aveolar" to describe how to pronounce the words. If you don't know these words, you'll be confused on pronunciation; you should get help from someone else. However, if you know linguistics, this is what you're looking for.
(3) THE BOOK IS OLD, SO THERE ARE SOME PHILOSOPHIES AND TERMS THAT ARE NOT USED TODAY. Based on another review, I've learned that some of these words are incorrect. As well, the book usually mentions something about the Chinese attempting to create an alphabet, and thus they use simplified characters as a bridge to get to that point (...). As far as I know, the Chinese have no intention of doing such, because to be honest, learning Chinese characters is not that hard for Chinese. Enjoy the book if you get it, because it's a good one, but make sure you have some tape handy to bind it back together.
Rating:
Summary: The good books always fall apart
Review: There are three main points I'd like to make about this book, but first here's what I think about it. The book takes the reader at a decent pace, explaining pronunciation, grammar concepts, and whatnot in great detail. There are exercises to practice that one can do with a partner or by himself. Vocabulary is relatively slow at the beginning, but so it is with all language books. It's great if you want to learn Chinese and have had a little bit of exposure to a language with a different writing system. Finally -- the reader must decide if this is okay with them -- in every chapter, the beginning text is written in both Chinese characters and pinyin (english letters), so you can't really be sure that you are reading it on your own or using the pinyin as a crutch. However, there are practice texts throughout later chapters that give you the chance to read characters alone. The second volume of this book takes away the pinyin, so you can't use it like in the first book. Here are my points:
(1) THE BINDING ON THIS BOOK IS OLD, AND THUS IT FELL APART AFTER TWO DAYS OF READING IT. I'm not too sure if this is a problem with this particular shipment, or if all these books will do that, but I didn't buy the book to look pretty, I'll just tape it up.
(2) THE BOOK IS BEST FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN LEARNING ANOTHER LANGUAGE AND THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO LINGUISTICS TERMS AND IDEAS, OTHERWISE YOU NEED A TEACHER. Thankfully, I am both, so this book is incredibly helpful. They have diagrams to show the position of the tongue, and use words such as "fricative, affricative, hard palette, aveolar" to describe how to pronounce the words. If you don't know these words, you'll be confused on pronunciation; you should get help from someone else. However, if you know linguistics, this is what you're looking for.
(3) THE BOOK IS OLD, SO THERE ARE SOME PHILOSOPHIES AND TERMS THAT ARE NOT USED TODAY. Based on another review, I've learned that some of these words are incorrect. As well, the book usually mentions something about the Chinese attempting to create an alphabet, and thus they use simplified characters as a bridge to get to that point (...). As far as I know, the Chinese have no intention of doing such, because to be honest, learning Chinese characters is not that hard for Chinese. Enjoy the book if you get it, because it's a good one, but make sure you have some tape handy to bind it back together.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good, but try the New Practical Chinese Reader instead
Review: This is the old Practical Chinese Reader, and while it is very good, the New Practical Chinese Reader (Volume 1: 7561910401) is much better; try that instead.
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