JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4635 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 22 15 January 2012 at 11:02am | IP Logged |
I have got a few programs to help me learn Mandarin like Pimsleur, Michel Thomas and chinesePod. I have also got things like Anki, Fsi and Byki.
My question Is though, Would It be good to use a few or should I just choose one and stick with that?
Or If I were to mix them so I am learning from all angles, (listening, Reading, writing,speaking) which would you suggest?
I am happy to hear your suggestions and advice as I am new to learning a language.
Thanks In advance
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6844 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 22 15 January 2012 at 11:21am | IP Logged |
It's hard to say which is best for you, but personally, I've always liked to approach a language from many sources (as long as I have access to them).
Try the first lesson(s) from each course and see which fits you. Pimsleur has three volumes (each with 30 half-hour long lessons), Michel Thomas has ~8 hours of lessons (right?), FSI is much longer, and ChinesePod is endless. Maybe you could finish Michel Thomas in a weekend and then go on to another method - or do several in tandem.
Anki has good support for Mandarin characters. I don't know about Byki.
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JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4635 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 3 of 22 15 January 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged |
Hello Jeff, Thanks for your reply.
Yes I have been trying to come up with a plan with using them all and thinking about doing each lesson each day. Now I dont know If It will work or confuse me and some programs will finish sooner than others but I feel the more Infomation available the better.
Only time and trial will tell.
What other programs would you recommend?
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 4 of 22 15 January 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
I wouldn't work through all of them simultaneously. At most, use two simultaneously, and switch to a new one if you're bored or stuck with one.
Then problem with doing lots of things at once is that each course will be introducing different words, so you're going to get overloaded early on with vocabulary, which will only end up frustrating you.
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JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4635 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 5 of 22 15 January 2012 at 1:11pm | IP Logged |
Yes good point and thanks for your message.
Do you recommend any programs? I am leaning towards Pimsleur as my main program but that is just audio.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6555 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 6 of 22 15 January 2012 at 2:12pm | IP Logged |
I often like to use two programs at the same time (or start one after a few lessons in the other, so I'm always a little behind in the second one) because they will have slightly different explanations which helps me to understand things better and also it sort of functions as a review since they to some extent teach things in a different order. However, I wouldn't use more than two as it would make my progress too slow and would be too boring. I can't tell you which programs are best. Just pick the ones you like best. If you find out you don't like one of them after all, just switch it with something else.
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JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4635 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 7 of 22 15 January 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged |
Hello and thank you for your post.
Yes I am going to start with one and introduce another down the line once I am more familiar with the basic's. I am going to try and find other sources of Info from websites but don't yet know which ones.
You are right though and It is all about trying them to see what suits me. I just don't want to waste too much time on one that is not right.
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atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4636 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese
| Message 8 of 22 15 January 2012 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
Working through Pimsleur, then Michel Thomas is a good start. You can then do ChinesePod forever after them.
ANKI and BYKI are not mutually exclusive. I use BYKI for single words and ANKI for sentences.
No idea how to best approach Hanzi. Japanese is a little different from what to do in which order, and I'm still working on my techniques after 14 months.
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