ReviewDisclaimer]
Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip Po-ching and Don Rimmington is one of the first serious grammar books I bought for learning Chinese. I have been rereading through it since a few people have asked me about suggested grammar books for learning Mandarin and I wanted to see if it was like I remembered. Overall, for an intermediate-beginner or higher, this book is a solid home run. There a few caveats to using this book, but it is pretty much indispensable to a serious learner.
One thing to note is that this book is one in a series which is composed of Basic Chinese and Intermediate Chinese. I will go over the second part, Intermediate Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip Po-ching and Don Rimmington in a later entry. With this being a series, the obvious first caveat is that if you are buying this to complement a class or textbook, you may end up needing both works to follow along with said class or textbook. That said, the Basic Chinese entry can be a great addition to your learning even without the second one.
One complaint I have is that this book doesn’t really follow the grammar order of any modern course I have experienced or read about. This isn’t at all to say that the grammar is out of order just to sell copies since there is definitely an arguably logical layout to the grammar points. Basic Chinese covers many grammatical points and spends a good bit of time on the simplest points including: nouns, pronouns, numbers, etc., and then proceeds into some verbs and sentence types, and finally ends with complements and more advanced grammar points. The book works to grow from objects, to action, then from basic phrasal adornments, to advanced structures in a very organic way.
One thing to note is that even though the book starts with very simple grammar points, it grows on these as the chapter they are covered in proceeds, so some parts in a given chapter may be too hard at the level they’re introduced in a class or a textbook. There are translations and Pinyin for all characters which helps make each section remain accessible. Each chapter ends with exercises which feel like they build in difficulty. This presents another potential caveat in that, at a lower level, the exercises may be a bit too hard and may need to be skipped on the first read through.
The exercises are varied and build near independently of each chapter. Any given vocabulary word or structure used in an exercise almost certainly will have been covered in the chapter itself. I have the first edition, so I assume the few outliers I noticed were corrected as I really didn’t notice any notable difference with the second edition aside from some minor cleanup and clarification. There are a mix of translation (both to and from Mandarin), fill in the blank, multiple choice, and find and correct the mistake type exercises. The exercises tend to follow the general order of points introduced making them easier to follow if you get stuck.
The explanations are thorough, though at times a bit terse. The book manages to say a lot with very little, and some points will need rereading and context from the examples and exercises to really make sense of if you have not been exposed to the grammatical point prior. This definitely works best as a reference grammar, but it still thorough enough to function as a separate workbook to learn more grammar in a concise and efficient manner as long as you are willing to put in some extra work at a lower level. Basically nothing introduced is wasted.
The work proceeds organically and the content is extremely thorough, but one thing to beware of is the tedium and boredom of reading through this type of material for long stretches. Even the earlier chapters will feel tedious to their target audience due to the fact they are thorough, almost to the point of fault. The benefit of this is that no grammar point used in the book is ever actually left unexplained or unclear. You can typically skip certain sections if they’re not of use at the moment as the content is ordered very predictably. The content builds in a way which prevents anything too out of the ordinary from not having a reference as to where to read for more information. The one caveat is the book assumes you’ve read up to the point within reason.
The vocabulary used is also kept to a minimum in each chapter, but makes sure to use enough random extra words to prevent too much boredom. These obviously aren’t the cream of the crop, juiciest dialogues since any example exists purely to push the specific grammar point it is covering in the simplest, clearest way so that it can be easily understood and analyzed. Even at my level, I didn’t feel completely bored by the examples rereading this book. There was enough variance and were enough topics in each chapter that the work didn’t just stagnate like some grammar books do which drone on and on with the same tired variants of the same permutation of sentences. It really is the little things which matter sometimes.
This book will probably help a bit with vocabulary at an upper-beginner to (maybe) higher-intermediate level depending on what the individual student has worked with previously. Vocabulary isn’t the focus so every word is translated and explained, but one potential caveat is that the examples in each chapter depend on the vocabulary used in the chapter. This is basically the only reason I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone too far below an intermediate level unless they are completely committed and serious about learning Chinese. Too much that this book offers would be obscured and wasted at a lower level without serious commitment and a lot of hard work that may be better spent elsewhere in the interim.
The book provides answers to all exercises. I know some similar grammar books and textbooks do not do that, or sell the answer keys as a separate book, so this definitely is a huge strength for this book. Aside from arguably the translations, each exercise presents itself in such a way it can really only have one good answer following the exercises without creative rephrasing or thinking a good bit outside the box. This limitation prevents a lot of the “gotcha” style exercises I have seen in HSK works. The translation exercises feel a little more cumbersome at a higher level since they use English sentences which are reordered to make more sense for native speakers of English (which can in turn affect some translations).
Aside from a few complaints, this book is pretty much indispensable for your library if you are serious about learning Mandarin. I will cover the second entry, Intermediate Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook, at a later date as I get time to read back through it after my next several projects. Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook gets you a lot of bang for your buck and remains relevant even at much higher levels in ways other grammar books completely fail. This book will serve you well for many years if you get it when first relevant, and the explanations and exercises keep you engaged while cementing the material.
I recommend the print version, ideally the paperback. Get it here.