This book grows the total number of essential Chinese characters you know to more than 400 with lessons that build your vocabulary one character at a time and include hundreds of 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.

This book adds supplemental vocabulary sections that provide a just-in-time review of characters and combinations introduced in book 1, as well as new combinations of those characters, that are used in the practice sentences.

When you finish this book you will know a little more than 61 percent of the characters you will encounter in any given text on average.

Look inside to see the some of the characters and vocabulary covered in this book.