It's a Good Class Overall but DO NOT TAKE IT WITH ALICE DONG. The class itself is a great course to start learning Chinese and its an easy course if you participate and do most of the course work but what really helps is *having a good prof*

The textbook is very helpful, the workbook and character book isn't necessary.

I've had a lot of language teachers in the past and I can firmly say that Alice is not qualified to be teaching university Chinese. She isn't too profficient in English which makes it challenging to communicate a question to her and her lessons seem like they're barely planned and they're very bland lessons as well. Also, she WILL WAIT 10 minutes for someone to answer a question. Overall her class was not engaging at all, she never gave any learning tips as my other Chinese professor did (which really really did help me) and I'm just confused on how she's been a Chinese teacher for this long ;-;

I wish I knew about Alice Dong.