INTRODUCTION.
Reading edition
The purpose of this little book is sufficiently indicated in the sub-title. The plan of the book is to furnish a connected dialogue or story based on the vocabulary of each lesson in Dr. Pott’s book, together with review lessons based on the vocabularies of several lessons. While it has been the aim to use only those words in each exercise which have already been met in the lessons, and to make use of as many as possible of them, the difficulties of that form of composition are obviously so great that no doubt we shall be forgiven for not entirely succeeding. Most of the exercises based on several lessons together have been prepared for the use of the foreign employees of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and most of those based on single lessons, for a class of new missionaries conducted under the auspices of the Shanghai Missionary Association.
As to the manner of using this book the authors have decided convictions. This is not a reading book for the student. The student should learn to understand and speak the exercises by ear only.
With the exception of the first lesson which is translated as an aid to the student in getting into communication with the teacher we do not recommend that the exercises be translated at all.
It will be noted that the second exercise is based on Lesson 5. This is because before Lesson 5 of Dr. Pott’s book the vocabulary is necessarily so limited as to make connected discourse impossible. But having measurably learned five lessons in Dr. Pott’s book the student should be able to understand Exercise 2 in this book on hearing it read by the teacher. If he can not do so at once it will not be strange, but by repetition it should be possible for him not only to understand it but to reproduce it. Those of the exercises which are dialogues should be used as such between student and teacher. Those which are short stories should be told over and over by the student to the teacher, after the general idea is in the students mind or written down as a note. We believe it is better not to write a full translation. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking in Chinese.
The second part of the book contains exercises on common subjects based for the most part, though not entirely, on the vocabulary of Dr. Pott’s book.
November, 1914.