This book grows the total number of essential Chinese characters you know to more than 300 with lessons that build your vocabulary one character at a time and include more than 1,700 bilingual practice sentences and phrases.

The characters in this book were selected to expose you to a variety of grammar patterns and common words. In order to help you learn to decompose and recognize characters, the stroke order, traditional (long) form if any, meaning, and components of each new character are introduced first. The lessons also contain activities to help you remember characters and vocabulary through periodic repetition, as well as reading comprehension exercises.

When you finish this book you will know a little more than 55 percent of the characters you will encounter in any given text on average.