I can't comment on whether you could actually teach yourself Chinese with this book, but it's an excellent supplement to a classroom course! Scurfield's grammar explanations are valuable, and her exercises tough, even for someone who's already done a semester of Chinese, and have patched quite a few holes in my grammar knowledge. ( )

I bought the book and CD pack a few years back, hoping to review my Mandarin. I think this book is not suited for people who have zero knowledge in Chinese Mandarin. I also have to say that this course aims to teach its students Mandarin from Mainland China. This means that the Chinese Mandarin uses expressions, slangs and pronounciations of Chinese Mainlanders (probably those from Beijing). The characters are simplified (those who want to learn classical traditional characters will be disappointed). Although the book offers a few lessons on traditional characters.

The main focus of the book is on conversation and dialogues. Although I think the book is trying to cover a lot of topic in a few chapters. I suggest that other students find other ways of learning the language, using this book as a supplement/support to the lessons they learn.

The book and CD was helpful to me since it helped me review my Chinese and prepared me for learning Mainland Mandarin, which is different from the kind of Mandarin I learned from school (Taiwanese Mandarin).

Chinese Grammar