Chinese Flash Cards Kit Volume 1: HSK Levels 1 & 2 Elementary Level: Characters 1-349 (Online Audio for each word Included) Cards – August 10, 2012

These are really wonderful aids and do all that a flashcard can be asked to do. Also, they DO provide a very detailed stroke order- I am puzzled why so many reviews comment that there is no stroke order. Perhaps there was an earlier edition? I will take and upload a photo, so other customers can see for themselves.I find them superior to "Chinese Character Flashcards 888" and wish I would have saved my money as I purchased both sets. There is another review comparing them that is incorrect. These flashcards are more sturdy, have a more detailed stroke order (they break down every single stroke while the 888 set often groups them), provide a sample sentence as well as additional words using the character (888 only has a few sample words), and provide the traditional character along with the simplified when applicable (888 does too, but it's very small). They are superior in every way to the 888 set- I haven't even looked at the other set since the Tuttle set arrived. In fact, this is the first Amazon review I've written, and I do so to correct the misinformation I based my purchasing decision upon.Another useful feature is that the first 500 flashcards in the set coincide exactly with the two Tuttle Language Library volumes "250 Essential Chinese Characters". So, if you're working your way through these books, these flashcards are the ideal study aid. (The labeling numbers coincide exactly...if learning character number 115 in the book, you can refer to flashcard 115.)I am very happy with the cards and encourage their use as part of a well-rounded study program. It has been commented that individual characters have no real "meaning", so these cards have limited use. I disagree. Individual characters do have meaning and are used to represent a particular sound and tone. You must learn what sound goes with which character since characters are written individually with equal spacing- when reading Chinese, you need to pronounce each sound as you go along since characters are not grouped together to signal they are being used to build a particular word. Thus, each character needs to be learned individually since it can be used with many different characters to build different words. For example, "pengyou", meaning "friend", is written with two characters: one representing the sound "peng" (which means friend) and one representing "you" (which also means friend). But the character for "you" can also be combined with the character for "yi" which result in "youyi", meaning "friendship".As far as the samples sentences go, they may potentially be confusing since they do not provide an exact word-for-word translation, but for someone with moderate experience (I've been studying Mandarin for 3 months now) they are very easy to understand. An exact translation wouldn't be very comprehensible anyway. I rarely find myself confused over which word represents which meaning, and if uncertain, it's easy enough to look up a troublesome word in the dictionary. It's all part of the learning process.

I've been using a book to learn these which is quite helpful. The flash cards are just the thing to help with memorization. Some of the Chinese characters are, for some reason, very easy to remember after the first introduction. I'm not sure why that is, but I've had no trouble with recalling about half of them that I've been introduced to. The other half...well, that's a different story. I have to keep studying them and trying to give myself a tool to recall their meaning. What the cards do is allow me to separate out those words that I have trouble with from those I don't, so that I'm not repeating the stuff I already have down cold and do not need to review. It saves a lot of time and effort and unnecessary repetition to have these. I tried making my own flash cards, but these come with some great disks that help you to get the pronunciations right the first time. Chinese is a tonal language and sounds sing-song-y for a good reason: It is! The Pinyin (Romanized spellings) have accent marks over many of the vowels -- they are there to tell you how to pronounce the sound and there are at least five different ways to do that. My comprehensive dictionary has several pages for the spelling (without accents) "xie"--so, if you do not use the correct tonal pattern, you could be saying just the opposite of what you mean to say. Xie(4) xie means "thanks"....can you imagine how easy it would be to mess that up? The flash cards are numbered and there is a printed cross-reference so that you can find one easily enough if you want to change the order (also an easy means to make notation of such actions), and there are recorded pronunciations which are worth the cost of the box alone. The cards also give examples of the word in usage--very helpful, indeed. I would call these a "must have" if you are just starting out learning Mandarin. The first set are the more commonly used words and I would guess that they comprise about 50% of the Chinese you will need to know.

I'm leaning toward 5 stars but there are drawbacks and ways this could improve. The cards are bit thin and flimsy, but given the number that are provided at the relatively low cost, this is understandable. Also the ring and hole is a good idea, but it would be better in my opinion, if there were a second hole on the other end of the card to allow 2 rings for easier flipping or a smaller ring that's' easier to turn, but the 4 stars is mainly for physical card quality. A stronger and slightly larger card would be better, but overall, this set is very good and shows great information, including samples and pinyin.