Haven’t used at his Chinese readers, but being a big supporter of “scheduled repetition” or recycling vocabulary in lesson planning and textbooks, I’m thinking I should take a look at it — thanks to Dan Maas for specifying that feature!

I learned to read thanks to DeFrancis’ “Chinese Reader” series. My favorite part is the scheduled repetition of new characters. There is no need to re-read each chapter many times like an ordinary textbook, because the new material will always show up again at intervals in following chapters. Just reading each volume once cover-to-cover is enough to learn and retain the characters. I used to read them while riding my exercise bike.

I don’t know if DeFrancis was the first to come up with this scheduled repetition idea, but I am grateful for his and his team’s effort in compiling the readers.

I like the fact DeFrancis distinguished Chinese characters as “logograms” versus the popular “ideograms”. The concept that most floored me was Chinese looking at a newspaper page and getting the information much faster than a Western paper, even with the number of characters, seeing images/pictures in their mind as they read the characters. Another way of thinking, another of way of seeing things. Most of the time for the better.

p.s. making a comment, saw a huge Chinesepod ad. What does a hottie Asian female with bright red, succulent lips have anything to do with learning Chinese I think I just answered my own question!

• Wilson