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Mandarin Mission | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aldrin Newbie United States Joined 4326 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 18 22 January 2013 at 4:53am | IP Logged |
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I am a middle-aged manager whose employer has a signicant presence overseas. This summer, we are
making a big push to expand in several international locales. The choice of jobs will require learning Mandarin, Arabic, Farsi, or Russian. If I knew all four, my career would be golden. But rather than learn the basics of four languages, I will learn one language well. I've chosen Mandarin Chinese and am slowly structuring my life to include my new mission. Reading this forum has given me so many ideas about how to begin. The only thing is...the sooner I start, the sooner I can learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4688 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 2 of 18 22 January 2013 at 4:59am | IP Logged |
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Welcome aldrin! What is your plan? What kind of materials/courses will you be using?
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| aldrin Newbie United States Joined 4326 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 18 22 January 2013 at 5:21am | IP Logged |
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I need to take a "fast but steady" approach.
As much as I am tempted to write about this entire experience, in the beginning I'll focus on what I can do, rather than what I plan to do or how I am feeling. The good thing about Mandarin is that there are so many materials that I can choose from. I need to work on my listening skills first, so for the first part of my mission, I will concentrate on Pimsleur Mandarin. I have a beginner's textbook to supplement the lessons, and then I'll do FSI Mandarin. To drill character recognition I'll try a program that everyone here seems to use: Anki Finally, I've invested in an electronic dictionary called Pleco. I hope this will be enough to start. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 18 22 January 2013 at 5:37am | IP Logged |
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If you want to focus on listening, then Pimsleur is a poor choice. I also think Pimsleur, in general, is not a good place to start Mandarin, regardless of the skill you are focusing on. I would suggest instead starting with Assimil, which contains a large amount of Chinese only audio. Edited by newyorkeric on 22 January 2013 at 5:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aldrin Newbie United States Joined 4326 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 18 22 January 2013 at 5:55am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Eric. Why do you think Pimsleur is not good? I'll look into Assimil.
Any opinions about FSI Mandarin? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 18 22 January 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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Pimsleur focuses on speaking. Each lesson consists of a very short dialog and then speaking drills. So it's just not efficient if your focus is listening. I think Pimsleur is good. It's just not what you should be doing now.
I don't know much about FSI except that it also has a lot of audio drills. Again it's good for what it does but it probably isn't a good fit for what you initially want to accomplish. People who have used FSI tend to say it is boring. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4481 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 18 22 January 2013 at 7:10am | IP Logged |
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I haven't used Assimil but I'm doing a similar approach with LingQ and agree with Eric. Listening to Chinese only audio is key. I've tried Pimsleur and there's a lot of English and silence in the audio. If you're listening to a lesson multiple times it adds up to a lot of time you could have been hearing Chinese instead.
Best of luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Toffeeliz Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5679 days ago 116 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 18 22 January 2013 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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Pimsluer mandarin isn't dire but it could be better. I would avise to stay away from FSI mandarin though if the recordings were anything like FSI Cantonese. Your best bet is New Practical Chinese Reader. The Beijing Language Institute has invested a lot into this course and it moves at a comfortable pace. If you can get printed copies of the books (easy enough trhough amazon) then they are wonderful for the character presentation. The recordings aren't bad either from what I remember.
加油！ 1 person has voted this message useful |
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