Communicating in Chinese is for the beginning learner. The series now includes three student books and two teacher activity books and provides the framework for a proficiencybased approach to learning standard Chinese. Focusing on all four skills listening speaking reading writing the program consists of a series of graded tasks that approximate the reallife tasks that a student might face. The approach requires students to learn and manipulate vocabulary and structures to achieve specific reallife ends. The content of each lesson provides the student with the necessary resources and the practice to develop the necessary skills to use Chinese to achieve these ends. The Communicating in Chinese curriculum consists of taskbased interactive classroom exercises. The focus is on the learner and students are encouraged to develop their own strategies to determine and express meaning. The material covers a variety of daily life needs including becoming acquainted making appointments shopping engaging in leisure activities obtaining food and drink and using transportation. All of these activities are presented in context at home in school or in common public places. Through exposure to practical reading texts such as street signs menus advertisements schedules forms and handwritten notesin simplified and traditional charactersstudents gain familiarity with a wide range of Chinese written styles and learn to convey simple messages by writing Chinese characters as well. The Communicating in Chinese series has been adopted by many schools and colleges throughout the United States and abroad.