Top 3 Recommended Textbooks for AP Chinese

Since worldwide language teachers’ target is to help students build proficiency and fluency, which can be accomplished in different methods with or without a universal textbook, the host community of AP Chinese Language and Culture exam does not provide a list of textbooks that meet the curricular requirements of this exam. But we do find few books that are recommended by lots of test takers as well as teachers.

1. Barron’s AP Chinese Language and Culture 2nd Edition

By Yan Shen, M.A. Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA, Los Angeles

Many students have been using this book almost as an official guide to this exam, and its popularity is worldwide and is recommended by a lot of AP Chinese Language and Culture teachers for the test preparation. Considering the usage of both traditional and simplified Chinese characters by test takers, this book is presented in both versions. Two complete mock exams are presented with answer keys, which enables students to have an overall understanding of the AP exam’s format and make self-evaluation of the score. The book includes all parts of the exam with three CDs presenting spoken material covering the exam’s Listening, Writing, and Speaking.

2. The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course, 2nd Edition

By Kunshan Carolyn Lee, Hsin-hsin Liang, Liwei Jiao, Julian K. Wheatley

This book enables learners to accumulate their knowledge through a wide range of innovative activities aiming to cultivate language skills and cultural background about contemporary China. Main topics presented in this book are popular culture, social change, cultural traditions, politics, and history, among which, students can smoothly transit from an intermediate level to an advanced one.

3. Integrated Chinese: Level 2, Part 1 (Chinese Edition) 3rd Edition

By Yuehua Liu, Tao-chung Yao, Yaohua Sh, Nyan-Ping Bi, Liangyan Ge

For beginners to prepare AP Chinese exam, this edition of Integrated Chinese is recommended. It is updated to meet the needs of today’s students with new exercises, vocabulary, cultural topic, a line to characters, and a line to link all the dialogues and readings. This book is already globally chosen to be the introductory textbook of Chinese language by colleges and universities. With 10 lessons in each part, the book provides a clear, concise and coherent guide to building the 4 skills -- reading, writing, speaking and cultural education. All the characters are well designed to introduce in subject-related lessons, such as travel, food, finding an apartment, seeing tourist sites, etc.

Pro Tips: In addtion to Ap Chinese books, here are some advices for AP Chinese preparation will help you a lot. If you want to pass AP test with high scores, get help with our professional Chinese teachers!