There are a total of 15 lessons in this book, each composed of a text, a word list, a list of idiomatic expressions with explanations, and a set of exercises. The texts are presented in the form of drama, with frequently used Chinese idiomatic expressions integrated into them. General new words and idiomatic expressions are listed separately after each text. Each idiomatic expression is provided with not only explanation, but also analysis of its grammatical structure, characteristics of its usage, and example sentences.
The exercises fall into various types, such as writing idiomatic expressions based on the meanings given, choosing words to fill in gaps, completing dialogues with idiomatic expressions, and choosing idiomatic expressions to form a paragraph, etc. Then there comes a section for extended learning, which introduces some grammatical knowledge about idiomatic expressions, compares similar expressions, or gives more examples of usages of the expressions in the current lesson.
Answers to the exercises are provided at the end of the book for the users’ reference.
There is also a summary vocabulary list and a summary list of idiomatic expressions at the end of the book, in which all the new words and idiomatic expressions in the book are arranged in alphabetic order to facilitate retrieval.

The author Liu Lanmin is an associate professor in the College of Chinese Language & Culture, Beijing Normal University, teaching courses such as Chinese reading and writing, modern Chinese, and modern linguistics. Over the past few years, Mr. Liu has published a number of papers on Chinese word formation and types of word formation.