The novice-level textbook focuses on fundamental sentence structures of colloquial Chinese according to their semantic functions. The  "Listening-Speaking" book and the "Reading Writing" book contain 38 Lessons in 8 Units respectively, 850 words and 180 language points. These two books may be used separately or complementarily.
    
The Listening-Speaking textbook plays a major and leading role at this level. Based on the selected sentence structures, each lesson contains three to four short dialogues, followed by word lists and exercises in communicative situations. In this way, learners may practice while learning. As regards the topics in this book, they involve greeting, contacting, eating, clothing, living, traveling, sports and health, etc., with each covering a series of sub-topics. The specific teaching advice is as follows:
(1) It takes about 90 minutes to study one Lesson. Before the very first lesson, the teacher may introduce the most basic sentences and some knowledge to students (See the pages before Lesson 1).
(2) For each Lesson, it is better to begin with "warm-up" . At this stage, the teacher may help students get familiar with the key vocabulary and relevant structures through drills or exercises so that they may get interested in what is to be taught afterwards.
(3) The teacher should let students know "how" and "when" to use the given sentence structures in each lesson. This can be achieved by studying the dialogues and doing the follow-up communicative tasks.
(4) The new words related to sentence structures in each dialogue are required to be mastered (see the vocabulary list in each lesson); whereas other vocabulary is just for practice.
(5) Regarding the exercises in the last part of each lesson, the teacher may deal with them flexibly according to students' needs and the availability of class time.
(6) The Revision section at the end of each unit is a summary of the grammar, language structure, and communicative functions of the whole unit. The teacher may decide when and how to approach it with flexibility.