Chinese Course is a primary choice for beginning Chinese course. Altogether there are three volumes, each of which is divided into two volumes. The first two are used in the first semester; the third is used in the second semester. The course is divided into three stages; the phonetic stage to develop the pronunciation skills and learn common characters; the grammar stage enables the students to develop simple communication skills through conversations; and the lexical stage expands the students’ vocabulary through essays, and develops their ability to express themselves. Grammar, words and sentences are put into the real life situations to practice.

The textbook consists of six parts: text, new words, explanatory notes, grammar, pronunciation and exercises. This book contains 100 texts and 3000 new words in all. Since the first publication in 1999, Chinese Course has been receiving warm welcome from learners and teachers worldwide. Up to now the sales volume has reached nearly 700’000 volumes. To meet increasing needs for the book, it was revised and published again with the joint efforts of the author and the Beijing Language and Culture University Press.

Based on the original fame, the revised edition reduced the amount of lessons from 100 to 76, and the degree of difficulty is lowered to enable the school to finish within one year. Texts out of date are deleted, and the contents are revised to make the book up to date. The explanations of language points are also updated, and the order is rearranged to make it more convenient for teaching.