As the second generation of the Practical Chinese Reader series, New Practical Chinese Reader (NPCR) is a series of comprehensive Chinese teaching materials for adult students in countries other than China. The two generations together have exerted an influence in the international Chinese teaching circles for over 30 years. Its third edition centers on a few international students, telling interesting stories about their life and friendship with their Chinese friends and teachers in China. The revision regarding the third edition adheres to the aim of making it “easier to learn” for students and “more convenient to use” for teachers and maintains the pedagogy of “the integration of structure, function and culture”, striving to develop students’ comprehensive use of the Chinese language, especially the ability of cross-cultural communication, through the learning of language structures, functions and relevant cultural knowledge as well as the training in listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

New Practical Chinese Reader (3rd Edition): Companion Reader 2 includes the texts and practical reading materials corresponding to the topic, language points and cultural knowledge in each lesson of Textbook 2.

1)    Enhancing repetition and complementation

The Companion Reader matches, centers around and complements the Textbook, constantly repeating the language points and new words learned in the Textbook to achieve better effects.

2)    Enhancing diversity and practicality

The Companion Reader includes plenty of reading materials of diverse genres and themes. They come in different forms such as dialogues, short passages, pictures and material objects to provide learners with a good variety of abundant, high-quality L2 Chinese input and effectively promote their Chinese acquisition.

3)    Enhancing communicativeness and task-orientation

The Companion Reader provides learners with a lot of communicative, task-oriented reading comprehension exercises and investigative, research-based tasks to develop learners’ multiple intelligences.

4)    Enhancing authenticity and fun

The Companion Reader includes a wide range of language materials about the topics in the Textbook and offers close-to-life, task-oriented reading practice to improve learners’ reading skills, increase fun, and display the characteristics of Chinese culture. 

5)    Enhancing progressiveness and gradualness

In terms of the selection of materials, the difficulty of words and language points used in the materials, and the design of reading comprehension exercises, the Companion Reader shows a gradient that increases in difficulty, flexibility and scope.