It is eight years since Standard Chinese first came out in 1998, and it has won universal praise from both teachers and learners of the Chinese language. While praising the book, they also raised valuable opinions and offered suggestions to improve it so it would rove even more satisfactory to the vast majority of learners. Work on the revision of Standard Chinese was started in 2006.
     
1) The Standard Chinese (Revised Edition J series includes 9 textbooks. 9 teacher's books and 12 workbooks (including workbook A and workbook B, in accordance with textbook 1-6), Chinese Reader (3 volumes, in accordance with textbook 7-9). Every textbook has one CD-ROM.
    
2) The Standard Chinese (Revised Edition) series changed the material so that as well as the children of the Chinese students studying abroad and of foreigners of Chinese origin, we also now cater for the needs of foreign children who are interested in learning Chinese. So we broadened the scope of our learners.
    
3) We have reduced the number of lessons from 30 to 24 in each book. We have removed some outdated texts and compiled new ones more suited to the practical needs of our learners and the development of the times and added numerous small plates such as "the Little Doctor” "the Magic Box" "Words", etc. The exercises are more varied and interesting, especially the listening and speaking exercises and the games. We pay more attention to strengthening the teaching of Chinese characters and have introduced the recognition and writing of the characters appropriately. At the same time we emphasize the function of English as an aid to learning Chinese.
    
4) At the end of this series we expect students to master Chinese Pinyin, about 1 800 commonly-used Chinese characters, about 4 000 commonly-used words and about 200 basic sentences as well as to master elementary listening, speaking, reading and writing. This includes the ability to read articles and write short passages or letters of about 300 characters. We continuously encourage self-study and the use of Chinese in daily life.
    
5) This is Book One of Standard Chinese (Revised Edition). Learners are taught a basic knowledge of Hanyu Pinyin, to learn 111 Chinese characters, 171 words and expressions, 18 basic sentences, and to recite smoothly all the texts in Mandarin, and be able to use them in everyday life.
    
6) This volume has 6 units, and each unit has 4 lessons, making in total 24 lessons. The first 3 lessons of a unit are dialogues, each consisting of a "Dialogue" "Basic Sentence" "Words" "Characters" "Magic Box" and "Exercise". The fourth lesson is a children's rhyme or a short story. The dialogues, each consisting of a "Dialogue" "Basic Sentence" "Words" "Characters" "Magic Box" and "Exercise". The fourth lesson is a children's rhyme or a short story. The dialogue follows our main character's activities in different situations, including school life, family life, social life among fellow students, and contact with nature. All the texts are transcribed in Pinyin. At the end of the book there is a new word list, a words and expressions list, supplementary words and expressions list, grammar table, a list of names for all the strokes of the Chinese characters, and a table showing the rules and sequence of the strokes.
    
7) The teaching of Pinyin is evenly spread throughout the first 3 lessons of the first 3 units. They start with the dialogues and introduce the Chinese consonants and vowels. Exercises in lessons 13 to 24 are devoted to revision and consolidation.(In addition, Hanyu Pinyin can be used as a complement to Standard Chinese.)
    
Overall, Standard Chinese (Revised Edition) is greatly improved both in form and content. It is now more practical, and interesting. We have striven to be more scientific in selecting our materials and have kept our learners in mind so that the book is very interesting and useful in all kinds of situations.