An Introduction to VPC

I got the idea for Very Practical Chinese while making up ad-lib conversations to have in stores or restaurants the first year I lived in Taiwan. I’d often go to big department stores to practice my fledgling abilities. First would look up vocabulary words (colors, sizes, clothing styles) and then do my best to piece together conversations (“If she says this, then I’ll say that, then she’ll say this and I’ll say that!”). Of the books that existed for learning Chinese, very few had a primary focus on conversation, and I found the little conversation provided to not be very useful. I felt and still feel very strongly that if you are in a Chinese speaking environment, you should adopt a “the world is my oyster” approach to studying, using every outing, shopping trip, restaurant visit and chance encounter as a way to improve your Chinese.

While the vast majority of Mandarin speakers (in my experience over a decade in Taiwan) are unfailingly polite and helpful, eager to help you learn, it was my experience also that a student could help conversations along – after all, there are only so many ways a conversation in a market buying fruit, in a hair salon, or in a clothing store are likely to go, realistically. I felt that if, before going out, you learn (or even better, commit to memory) conversations you’ll be likely to have, your chances of having useful encounters with native speakers on a daily basis that quantifiably improve your Chinese would be much likelier to occur.

Many of the unique VPC dialogues focus on starting conversations using compliments: “Your hair looks great!” (Chapter 14), “You look great today!” (Chapter 29), “I love your bag!” (Chapter 33), and “What a pretty baby you have!” (Chapter 43) are just a few of the chapters designed to start a conversation by saying something nice. If you commit enough of these dialogues to memory (by listening and repeating the audio with/without the book) and practice them until you can say them in your sleep, you’ll find that sooner or later, real, spontaneous conversation starts to develop. What first begins as a conscious effort to make piecemeal conversations, grabbing a sentence from one dialogue and pairing it with another, soon evolves into a very natural conversation where your 45 conversations (and 3000 plus words and phrases from the VPC Book and Study Guide) give you a strong, supported base, from which you can jump to specific topics.

If you’d like to learn more about the VPC Books, check out our website at: www.verypracticalchinese.com. Here you’ll find sample chapters of the first three chapters of the VPC Book and Study Guide, including the audio tracks, as well as the table of contents and a selection of other material from the books. In addition, our website has a good selection of high quality, supplementary materials, such as flashcards and writing templates. Designed to be used in conjunction with the VPC Book and Study Guide, they are FREE for you to download and use, to speed your fluency in Mandarin!

We welcome you to follow this blog for excerpts from the VPC Book and Study Guide, as well as postings on a wide variety of topics, including how to achieve success with tone, tips for a language exchange, study tips and much more!