|
Chinese in a Flash, Vol. 1 (Tuttle Flash Cards) | 
| Author: Philip Yungkin Lee
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $24.45
You Save: $0.50 (2%)
Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 29767
Format: Box Set
Media: Cards
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 16
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0804833613
Dewey Decimal Number: 495
UPC: 676251833614
EAN: 9780804833615
Publication Date: November 15, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Whether on a train from Beijing to Shanghai or sitting under a tree in Berkeley, you can be practicing your Chinese with this quick and easy-to-use set of flashcards. Chinese in a Flash Volume 1 has a full range of features to help beginners and intermediate learners through character recognition, vocabulary recognition, revision, and testing. It includes indexes by radical, stroke count, and alphabetically by pinyin romanization.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Useful Tool for Memorizing Chinese Characters October 30, 2004
131 out of 143 found this review helpful
Since I have both "Chinese in a Flash" and "Chinese Character Flashcards 888" flashcard sets, I wanted to offer a comparison between the two.
Flashcards 888 are organized in the order of frequency of use of characters; Chinese in a Flash are arranged in the order of frequency and complexity. Someone learning Chinese language is more likely to encounter characters in the order presented in Chinese in a Flash cards.
Flashcards 888 are of a sturdier quality than Chinese in a Flash cards.
Both are approximately the same size.
Both have radicals mentioned. On Flashcards 888, radicals are provided in the upper right corner on the front of the card; on Chinese in a Flash cards, beside the radical is also noted the name of the character as well as character components.
On Flashcards 888, you'll also find a stroke order, helpful to know when you practice writing characters; Chinese in a Flash cards, do not provide a stroke order.
Both sets also mention several character combinations, together with their pronounciation in pinyin and the meaning in English.
Chinese in a Flash also provide a sample sentence where the particular character / word is used; Flashcards 888 don't.
Flashcards come in one set of 888 cards; Chinese in Flash come in two sets of 448 cards.
I am very happy with both sets and enjoy using them both.
As good as it gets October 11, 2005
102 out of 104 found this review helpful
These are really wonderful aids and do all that a flashcard can be asked to do. Also, they DO provide a very detailed stroke order- I am puzzled why so many reviews comment that there is no stroke order. Perhaps there was an earlier edition? I will take and upload a photo, so other customers can see for themselves.
I find them superior to "Chinese Character Flashcards 888" and wish I would have saved my money as I purchased both sets. There is another review comparing them that is incorrect. These flashcards are more sturdy, have a more detailed stroke order (they break down every single stroke while the 888 set often groups them), provide a sample sentence as well as additional words using the character (888 only has a few sample words), and provide the traditional character along with the simplified when applicable (888 does too, but it's very small). They are superior in every way to the 888 set- I haven't even looked at the other set since the Tuttle set arrived. In fact, this is the first Amazon review I've written, and I do so to correct the misinformation I based my purchasing decision upon.
Another useful feature is that the first 500 flashcards in the set coincide exactly with the two Tuttle Language Library volumes "250 Essential Chinese Characters". So, if you're working your way through these books, these flashcards are the ideal study aid. (The labeling numbers coincide exactly...if learning character number 115 in the book, you can refer to flashcard 115.)
I am very happy with the cards and encourage their use as part of a well-rounded study program. It has been commented that individual characters have no real "meaning", so these cards have limited use. I disagree. Individual characters do have meaning and are used to represent a particular sound and tone. You must learn what sound goes with which character since characters are written individually with equal spacing- when reading Chinese, you need to pronounce each sound as you go along since characters are not grouped together to signal they are being used to build a particular word. Thus, each character needs to be learned individually since it can be used with many different characters to build different words. For example, "pengyou", meaning "friend", is written with two characters: one representing the sound "peng" (which means friend) and one representing "you" (which also means friend). But the character for "you" can also be combined with the character for "yi" which result in "youyi", meaning "friendship".
As far as the samples sentences go, they may potentially be confusing since they do not provide an exact word-for-word translation, but for someone with moderate experience (I've been studying Mandarin for 3 months now) they are very easy to understand. An exact translation wouldn't be very comprehensible anyway. I rarely find myself confused over which word represents which meaning, and if uncertain, it's easy enough to look up a troublesome word in the dictionary. It's all part of the learning process.
 Good for memorizing, but serious shortcomings May 1, 2005
32 out of 40 found this review helpful
I love flash cards for chinese characters and I have used the Japanese kanji sets by the same publisher before. They are a great way for me to memorising. The cards are compact engough to carry them around and practise on the way, in trains, waiting time, etc. The good thing about these two Chinese sets is that traditional and simplified characters are displayed together. However, the problem with these cards is that single characters often have no real meaning, because they are used in combination with one or two other characters and then the meaning can be very different. (My Chinese wife often cannot tell what a separate character "means"). These flash cards make this characteristic very confusing, because one particular meaning is picked as a kind of "main meaning" which is fine (albeit not always correct), but the example sentences sometime uses a totally different meaning. It is even hard to figure out what the character means in the sentence. (For instance, one card explains "according to" as the "meaning" and the example sentence reads "How come you just walked in without ringing the doorbell?" got it?) A couple of cards further, the same character is used in an example sentences for a different character and this time it has a third meaning. Because of this flexibility of meanings, chinese characters are difficult to learn, but these cards do not make it easy but leave the reader guessing what it "means". One way to learn with these cards is to focus on the 4 example compounds for each character on the bottom of each card.
 Do not buy these cards from this publisher - they may be defective February 7, 2006
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
I bought volume one of Chinese in a Flash, and - what can I say? - I was impressed. The cards were well made (I don't have the problems with sturdiness that other customers have) and well-put together. The only problem I had with Volume One was that I needed more - more characters, more information, more flashcards.
Many basic characters are missing from this volume, but it's called Volume One for a reason. Volume one leads quickly to Volume Two and Volume Two to the soon-to-be-published Volume Three. Any review of this product has to bear in mind that Volume Two (and possibly Three) are necessary for even the most casual learner.
This is where my trouble began. The set of cards I bought for Volume Two were defective. They were printed upside down on the back of the card. A defect that meant I couldn't use volumes One and Two together (as Volume One were printed one way and Volume Two the other). Not thinking that Tuttle (the publisher) would object, I emailed and asked them about their returns policy - and they promised a speedy resolution if I would only mail my cards in.
A problem, considering that I'm an international customer, but not insurmountable. Expensive, though, as mailing them cost about half the price of the cards as new! Once the cards were mailed, I was informed that they had arrived at the destination, but I would not get any cards for a few months.
Then I cracked and asked for a refund. I have not received a reply from the publisher regarding the refund. The email address I've been using to correspond with them has stopped working. I am left out of pocket for both the cost of an international packet and a set of cards and without even the defective cards!
Before you buy any products from this publisher, ask yourself what you will do if they're defective. Would you even know? Will your Chinese hosts be subjected to senseless or offensive gibberish? Will you be eating what you ordered at your local restaurant? I'll tell you one thing - you won't be getting your money back.
A nice set of Chinese character flash cards November 30, 2003
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
This is a set of 448 flash cards for studying Chinese characters. Tuttle's set of Japanese character flash cards has been a favorite of Japanese learners, it looks like now they are trying to replicate the success for Chinese. The order of characters does not seem to follow that of any popular textbook, but the included index will help in reordering them. I am using Practical Chinese Reader and the order of the cards was only slightly off. The cards include both traditional and simplified versions and some compounds on one side, and meaning, radical and example sentences on the other. One drawback is the lack of stroke order information: Tuttle should have put the stroke order on one side of the cards, like they have with their Japanese cards. I really like these cards, but the lack of stroke order prevents me from giving 5 stars to this set.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 BetterEditor.net
| |
