The major struggle facing all beginning Chinese language students is to learn to recognise, read and write hundreds of Chinese characters. These two books adopt a structural approach that helps students overcome this initial difficulty and quickly master the basic Chinese characters fundamental to this language. Intended for beginning students, each book contains carefully selected and sequenced characters for rapid and effective learning. Each Chinese character is shown separately on a single page, along with its English definitions, hanyu pinyin omanization, alternate form, a stroke-order guide and ample writing space. Two indexes-alphabetical by the English meanings and by pinyin romanization-are provided at the back of each book for quick and easy reference, along with extra sheets of blank boxes for writing practice.