McSensei Newbie United States Joined 5254 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 33 05 September 2010 at 7:36am | IP Logged |
I want to start collecting materials on Mandarin while I have a bit of extra cash. What are some good materials to get?
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koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French
| Message 2 of 33 08 September 2010 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
I'd recommend you "The New Practical Chinese Reader". There are 5 volumes, which if you go through all of them, I believe you must be already speaking and reading it fairly fluent.
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ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6314 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French
| Message 3 of 33 10 September 2010 at 1:42pm | IP Logged |
Just about anything by John DeFrancis.
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Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7119 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian
| Message 4 of 33 14 September 2010 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
China Panorama
Also check out www.cheng-tsui.com They carry plenty of courses, and I think they have a new one out now too.
I like Living Language Ultimate Chinese, but it's mostly pinyin.
Communicate In Chinese (VCD and books) - lively course, but too many non-natives in it for some reason!
Have a look at Yong Ho's stuff (Beginner's Chinese and Intermediate Chinese). It gets some very good reviews and it's inexpensive.
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sugizo Newbie United States Joined 5269 days ago 1 posts - 3 votes
| Message 5 of 33 15 September 2010 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
Chinesepod.com is by far the best resource for learning Mandarin. Don't waste your time on the other stuff.
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irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 6 of 33 16 September 2010 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
sugizo wrote:
Chinesepod.com is by far the best resource for learning Mandarin. Don't waste your time on the other stuff. |
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A big claim. Yet thus far I haven't heard of a single person here (or anywhere) that has rose to fluency through any ..pod.com. Please prove me wrong.
Edited by irrationale on 16 September 2010 at 1:22am
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 7 of 33 16 September 2010 at 3:25am | IP Logged |
irrationale wrote:
Yet thus far I haven't heard of a single person here (or anywhere) that has rose to fluency through any ..pod.com. Please prove me wrong. |
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Chalk me up as one. I used a bunch of resources and never got anywhere (and I really mean nowhere). Then I used ChinesePod up until I was comfortable with native materials. At that point I used movies to get my practice. My sifu later said "I've never before met anyone who could already speak Chinese when stepping off the airplane". I attribute the entirety of my success to ChinesePod. Well, that and hard work.
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yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5540 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Studies: Spanish
| Message 8 of 33 16 September 2010 at 3:56am | IP Logged |
I'm a native speaker. But I want to recommend one TV series, 快乐汉语 from CCTV. The old one, not the new one performed by a Chinese guy and a Ukranian lady. Most Chinese language study materials are boring. This TV series is a rare exception.
http://search.cctv.com/news.php?q=%E5%BF%AB%E4%B9%90%E6%B1%8 9%E8%AF%AD&page=22&sort=date&q_type=title&powersearch=&power search_jq=&day_1=&day_2=
Take this one as an example:
http://space.tv.cctv.com/video/VIDE1262100144018887
There's caption in English and Chinese at the bottom. And if you really want, there's a way to download it to your hard drive.
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