NEW EDITION. WITH A CHARACTER'S INDEX AT THE END OF THE BOOK. The choice book for starting with the Chinese writing; its simple method and its near 100 drawings make sure that once a student learns a character, he can remember it forever. All Chinese characters are combinations of a set number of components, called "radicals". Standard text books teach vocabulary based on conversations, such as introducing oneself or going shopping. While this leads to quick progress for spoken Chinese, it slows student's character recognition down. This book reverses this process, by teaching characters the way they should be taught: Characters are grouped by radicals and related characters are introduced together. Combined with examples, pinyin, graphics explaining the historic roots and HSK levels clearly marked, this is the book you need to quickly improve character recognition in preparation for HSK exam levels 1, 2 or 3. Andreas Laimböck, Director LTL Mandarin School (http: //www.livethelanguage.cn/)