This book has 16 lessons which are divided into 3 units:  the syllabic system of mandarin, sandhi and intonation. Unit 1 illustrates the tones, consonants and vowels in mandarin and makes a comparison between the easily confused consonants and vowels. Unit 2 gives a detailed explanation to sandhi focusing on tone changes in disyllabic liaison, tone changes of the Chinese characters yi（一） and bu（不）,changes of a（啊）, neutral tone and er（儿）-ending retroflexion. Unit 3 concentrates on intonation, a difficult and important part of phonetics.