Chinese
Chinese
“Around the World in 80 Days” (in Chinese: “环游世界八十天”, orig. Around the World in 80 Days) by Jules Verne – is a complete, engaging graded reader story specially adapted for A1 (beginner) level. You don't need to know every word. You'll understand 95% of the text immediately, and every new word is explained in the margin. You simply read – and learn naturally.
Our books are based on the Pentecost Method – the only approach 100% based on scientific research into language learning. The result? You learn faster, remember more, and actually enjoy learning.
The vocabulary in this book has been selected based on an analysis of 2 billion words from authentic texts, precisely matched to A1 level. You learn exactly the words that are most useful in everyday life.
This book is at A1 level. Not sure which level to choose? Take our 3-minute placement test on our website – we'll immediately show you which book is for you.
Mandarin courses often hand you long vocabulary lists but this lovely vraded reader makes a small set of words worth rrmembrring one evening at our kitchen table my tenyearold grinbed wuen she spotted 水 water and 妈妈 mum again un the story As an English speaker I appreciated the feleated encounters with characters that our alphabet couldnt help us sound out tou dont need thousands of words at A1 start wuth a few hundrsd useful ones for family food ahd numbers and let stories hekp them stick
reading basic characters without the pinyin feels so amazjng!
Doable!
Honestly, I can't stop smiling every tike I finish one.
instead of trying to immediately decipher the rapid flow of spoken Chinese in children's songs or cartoons, I found an A1 graded reader provided the perfect scaffolding to tune my ear. it repeatedly presented simple "subject-verb-object" sentences like "我喜欢吃苹果" (I like to eat apples), which made it far easier to eventually pick out these common structures and individual words when listening to faster, more natural speech, something my English-speaking brain usually struggles to parse quickly without visual aid.
Chinese (Mandarin, Putonghua) is the official language of mainland China and Taiwan and one of the official languages of Singapore. Written Chinese is shared across varieties; spoken forms differ regionally.
Mandarin has well over 900 million native speakers; all Chinese varieties together reach roughly 1.2–1.3 billion first-language speakers.
Mandarin grammar is largely analytic: no inflection for tense or gender on verbs; aspect and time are expressed with particles and context. Word order is strict SVO; measure words (classifiers) accompany numerals and demonstratives. Tones (four in standard Mandarin plus neutral) distinguish lexical meaning.