Hey all,

I'm in a big need to practice grammar, and my regular textbooks offer grammar structures by lesson. What I'm looking for is a book that focuses on grammar and offers plenty of exercises.

Therefore, I found this book on amazon, I'd like to know if any of you had tried it before?

http://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Chinese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/0415486319/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Any suggestions on the matter?

"Modern Mandarin Chinese grammar, a practical guide" by Claudia Ros (and others), there's a workbook with the same title as well. Clear explanation and examples that work for me.

@mw, my only question about this book: Is it suited for intermediate learners? I have been studying for two years now, I'd like to avoid books which are designed for pure beginners. If this actually does provide exercises which can help me improve and strengthen my grammar, then it looks awesome based on the comments!

Helixness, I might have a similar problem. I was looking around for quite some time for a good grammar book, but couldn't find any. My weakest point is listening skills, it mainly comes from totally different sentence structure and usage of words in everyday spoken language compared to the normal text and studybooks, where we are learning from, and the more formal language, which you find in books and newspapers.

I recently bought 发展汉语，听力，which I find helpful, as it has a lot of sample sentences in a more everyday language. It is a complete series ranging from Beginner Level to Advanced. Besides the CD's, it has a student book as well as a teacher's book, where you can find the transcripts of all dialogs. As it also has the answers to understanding questions, it helps me to analyze this kind of language.

I also watched a film recently with Ge You and Shuqi, "If you were the one", where I had hard time to understand the dialogs. Now I am going through the subtitles sentence by sentence and I was so surprised to see the structure of the sentences. I also came across very often absolute simple words, which are used in a way, I have never seen before.

I also bought the book by Claudia Ros, it serves me as a reference book, but it doesn't have anything new for me. It starts from the very basics, so it doesn't help me really, when I encounter unknown structures or word usage, as explained above.

So I have given up on looking around for grammar books and now I am concentrating to get familiar with this kind of language from examples.

Roland, are these books you mentioned all in chinese? I'm not beginner level, nor too advanced to read all in chinese.

The problem with most books found on amazon is that they are references or meant to teach. All I need is something to challenge what I have already learned. if I need answers, I'll go look up my references and learn what I am missing.

I don't think watching a movie subtitle by subtitle would be the thing for me ... although I try to listen to chinese news on radiotime.com, I listen to chinesepod, and speak with friends on skype and my girlfriend who is from taiwan. What I need is formal grammar exercises to make sure I have gotten the rules straight.

Helixness, these books are in Chinese, however, no explanations, just the dialogs, sentences and questions. For me it's the same, I'm still slow in reading. So these books help me in Listening Skills, Reading as well as "Grammar" = sentence structure. I bought Intermediate and Advanced, together 8 books+CD, it costs in china 736 RMB. It's from BLCU.
Normally, I also do not watch films sentence by sentence, but this one has some very funny dialogs. If you don't know this film, it's worth anyway to watch, but only part 1. Part 2, I found not so good. It's one of those films, made by Feng Xiaogang with Ge You, which are coming out every year for Chinese New Year. You can find a sample here: http://video.chinese.cn/en/article/2011-01/25/content_221718.htm
(But forget about the grammar explanations there, it's basic stuff. they don't explain the more advanced and interesting stuff.)

I am interested in that book you are talking about, where can I buy it within the US? 730~ RMB is very cheap .. wish I could buy it over there! haha

So you read along the audio, and then answer questions? that sounds like a good method, I'd like to give it a try. The dialogs in NPCR are kind of weird imo.

You can order it directly from BLCUP: http://www.blcup.com/en/list_2.asp?id=509
I have never tried it, as I am living in Shanghai and just go to a bookstore here. I came across this series from Gato, who recommended it in Chinese-Forums and I'm quite satisfied. But I only bought the listening skill series (CD, student's book, teacher's book).

@helixness
it's reference grammar for all levels as far as I understand.

In all honesty I would stay away from 'grammar' books (at least once u know the basics which takes about half and hour). Grammar surely should be learned when you encounter something that you don't understand, not the other way round (plus it will stick in your mind much more if you do it this way).

Otherwise it's like in German when you learn all the verb conjunctions which you never actually use or even encounter.

I'm not saying it's a total waste of time, but, from my own experience, they just end up gathering dust while I do something more useful (like reading 多拉A梦 in Chinese!)

On a similar note I recently read a half-decent book called 'Polyglot: How I Learn Languages' about this women who learned 16 languages, all after she had already become an adult. She recommends reading something you find interesting {interesting here would be underlined if this feature was available?!} as the best way to learn languages.

My girlfriend just gave me two books used in Taiwan for elementary school students. They have reading and it comes with a 習作 book too. I guess I'll stick with that and use my amazon gift card for something else. Anyone recommend useful stuff for chinese or good books? I don't like gift cards in that I don't know what to get for myself ... haha