The general approach in writing this text is the same as that in Beginning Chinese Reader.  It is discussed in some detail in the introduction to that work.  Salient features include: 1) Selection of characters on the basis of frequency; 2) Provision of a large number of compounds and a large amount of reading matter relative to the number of characters; 3) Inclusion of dialogue material in order to provide students with audiolingual support of what they read; 4) Close correlation with Beginning Chinese, Advanced Chinese, and the character versions of these two texts. The present volume contains 400 characters, some 2,500 compounds, and about 200,000 characters of running text.