Threshold, the first volume of Road to Success, is a textbook for foreigners who have never learned Chinese before. This book helps the students lay a solid foundation to study Chinese pronunciation and Chinese characters. It also helps the students master some words and expressions for daily communication.
 
Altogether there are 8 lessons, each of which is composed of five parts, "Follow Me", "Learn Chinese Phonetics", "Notes on Chinese Phonetics", "Exercises" and "Interesting Chinese Characters". All the exercises strengthen the students’ overall command of the learned phonetics at class from four aspects. But special efforts are made to improve the students’ listening, speaking and reading skills. They will master 50 commonly-used Chinese characters, which are very easy to form other characters. The command of these 50 Chinese characters can help students to establish a sound foundation for further study of Chinese characters.