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Comparison of books for Mandarin Chinese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Olen Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4740 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Latin | Message 1 of 12 24 December 2011 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Among the several languages that I am interested in taking up, Mandarin has been a recurring theme with me, since I first saw Guilin in the BBC's excellent 'Wild China' series. Although I take it that I would eventually need to work on the Guilin dialect of Mandarin Chinese, the best starting place has to be the standard version.
Would any of you who have experience with the popular courses be able to comment on their relative worth, in comparison to one another? In particular, I am interested in learning more about the following: Chinese with Ease (V1 & V2) Writing Chinese Characters Colloquial Chinese Teach Yourself Mandarin FSI Chinese New Practical Chinese Reader Feel free to rank them, or to give your reviews of any not mentioned here. As a sidenote, people often mention a particular course's failure to deliver on written hanzí script. Which of these do include work on the script, and are there any other books which could supplement the courses mentioned above? Thank you for your time, and have a nice Christmas. Edited by Olen on 25 December 2011 at 5:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 12 24 December 2011 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese with ease" vol 1+2 all have characters, so does my edition of Teach Yourself Chinese (it's "Chinese" not "Mandarin). If you by "Writing Chinese characters" mean Assimil's "Writing Chinese with ease", then that one also has characters (and teaches each one stroke by stroke).
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| Olen Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4740 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Latin | Message 3 of 12 24 December 2011 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for correcting me. It would be interesting to know whether "Writing Chinese with Ease" is worth the cost to work with alongside the regular Assimil. As it stands, "Chinese with Ease" is already in two volumes, and adding a third would only make the set triple the price of a regular Assimil (not to mention that there are very few used copies). Thank you for taking the time to respond. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 12 24 December 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know what the price is today, but I got vol 1+2 for about €35 each (including the 4 CDs per volume), and after seeing that "Writing Chinese with ease" cost ~€9 (it's only a book) I got that one as well. The regular Assimil course doesn't teach characters per se, that's only an added feature to the pinyin and the translation.
Now, you won't become an expert calligrapher after copying the characters stroke by stroke. I got it because I wanted to practice handwriting just for the fun of it (and surprisingly, the characters tend to stick a bit better if I produce them myself rather than just see them on paper). Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 21 January 2012 at 10:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4826 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 12 26 December 2011 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe you can find these (with cds) at your library (check the university/colleges libraries too) or have them
order it (and then put the mp3s on your computer of course). I haven't used the Assimil character work book but I've looked at it and it seemed very well done, very simple. As for the actual learning book, the beginning felt weird because the speaking is in-cr-e-di...bl--y slow going and emphasized, but I'm sure that's the beginning only. So I was kind of put off the Assimil book and recording by the first lessons and the starting tone exercises which are very boring. It didn't feel concrete enough for me so I took the Pimsleur Mandarin at the library and started with that and felt like I was moving forward. I wanted to come back to Assimil after a Pimsleur introduction of a few lessons but I haven't gotten that far yet or I just want to go on with Pimsleur for now. As for FSI, I started it too but after a few lessons strictly concerned with tones, I got very bored and couldn't assimilate the material. So my personal tip would be to start with Pimsleur or something similar (maybe Book2 can be a kind of alternative) just to get the language and its music in your mouth and in your brain, and then move on to tone exercises and the following lessons of Assimil or FSI. Book2 mandarin : http://www.goethe- verlag.com/book2/EN/index.htm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Opensecret Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4694 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 6 of 12 21 January 2012 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to speak and understand spoken Chinese, start with an audio course. I like the Pimsleur course, though it's not cheap. (I agree with Homogenik that starting with Pimsleur and then going to a text works well.)
For learning to read Chinese, my two favorite books for beginners are the Assimil series (I did them in the French version), and Conversational Chinese 301 (Kang and Lai, Beijing Language and Culture Press). Both include the pinyin along with the characters, which not all texts do; that saves a lot of time trying to track down characters you're not sure how to pronounce. Before I found the books above, I also used A Key to Chinese Speech and Writing (Bellassen and Penpeng, Sinolingua), which also worked well for me. It provides helpful introductory material on basics of the language and the beginning lessons are easy to follow if you already have some basic spoken vocabulary. I've bought more than one text for learning to write Chinese characters, but I haven't stuck with them. I've pretty much decided that reading characters, and typing them via the pinyin input method, is enough for my purposes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 12 21 January 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, What program did you choose then and how are you getting on?
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 12 21 January 2012 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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None of the regular textbooks are good at teaching you the characters systematically
(New Practical Chinese Reader tries to), because that would require introducing them in a different order than they are needed in the dialogs. Therefore, I recommend getting a second book that is only about characters to go with your main textbook. Check out my reviews of various great Chinese character books at http://www.learnlangs.com/blog/?p=228 You might want to add "Boya Chinese" to your list of potential textbooks; it's one of the most popular textbooks used in China and it comes in many volumes leading up to a very high level. Initially I chose "New Practical Chinese Reader" for this reason (it has 5 volumes), but then my Chinese tutor showed me Boya Chinese and I was impressed with their selection of texts. At the intermediate level, one of their texts moved me to tears. The texts in "New Practical Chinese Reader" are all typical textbook dialogs, even at the later levels. Edited by Sprachprofi on 21 January 2012 at 6:38pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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