This is Textbook 1 in the series, targeted at adults who have some preliminary Chinese knowledge. It teaches more than 400 words frequently used in verbal communication, over 300 Chinese characters and over 40 common sentence patterns as well as the topics foreigners are most likely to encounter in their study, life and work, such as "Professions", "Hobbies", "Food" and "Means of Transport". Upon finishing the first volume, students can achieve a Chinese proficiency of New HSK Level 2.

Repeated practice: There are altogether 20 units, each including a main lesson and a review one. The latter is a review of the key sentence patterns and words in the former, which will reappear and be reinforced repeatedly in later units too.

Mr. Cui Yonghua is a researcher in Beijing Language and Culture University. He has been engaged in the field of Chinese teaching and research since 1981. His research focuses on Chinese grammar, Chinese language teaching and Chinese information processing, and his publications include Classroom Techniques for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, Teaching and Research of Chinese as a Foreign Language (a collection of academic papers) and some textbooks coauthored with others, such as Standard Chinese Course, Learning Chinese and Learn Chinese through Listening, Speaking and Watching. Mr. Cui has chaired and participate in many research projects, such as Radical Standards of GB13000.1Character Set for the Purpose of Information Processing, and has written a number of academic papers, the representative ones being “Syntactic and Semantic Issues Related to Commendatory and Derogatory Adjectives”, “An Attempt in Analyzing the Sentence Pattern ‘连……也……’” and “About the Methodology of TCFL as a Discipline”, etc.