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Review of Michel Thomas Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6358 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 10 15 March 2011 at 8:03am | IP Logged | |||||
I really liked the MT Mandarin Beginner course a lot. I plan on doing an Amazon review whenever I get to repeating the course, since it's been a while. I would give it 4 or 5 stars (out of 5), even though there was a lot I didn't like about it.
I think the grammar that *was* covered was well-taught. I just figured that after taking the Advanced course (which I haven't yet), that I'd know most of the basic grammar, but I guess you're saying not.
I agree. That is taught literally in the first few lessons of Assimil Chinese (I had only done a few lessons of Assimil before MT), and was surprised that it was never mentioned. Again I figured it would get covered in the MT Advanced course, are you saying that it's not? That's a major omission. And since they would parse a syllable at a time, they would pronounce 2 consecutive 3's as two 3's instead of as a 2-3 combo. I posted the following review on the LSLC Forum about a year and a half ago (editing just a bit for this post): ----------------------------- I've been "playing" with learning Mandarin on-and-off for a while. (On-and-off is not the best way to learn languages, but that's all I find time for, unfortunately.) Starting a new language is always a little frustrating getting the new vocabulary, sounds, and grammar to "stick" in your brain. Chinese is even more so for English speakers, which is extremely frustrating, but I am now very comfortable with the syllables and tones. 1) The free online FSI Mandarin "modular" course is very good, but a little intimidating. I've done some of the beginning modules. The module on tones is very good. Actually, they're all good, but the native speakers *really* are hard to understand, until after a lot of lesson repeating, of course, when they become clear as a bell. For FSI, my advice is don't expect to plow thru them, but after lots of repeating you do assimilate them. 2) I think the best starting point by far is the 8-CD Michel Thomas Mandarin course. (for "Beginners" and "Foundation Course" I think for UK) [Amazon link to course] This is a relatively new course, by Dr. Harold Goodman (and not by the late M. Thomas). It very nicely spoon-feeds you the sounds and grammar concepts better than anything else I've seen out there. There are a lot of negatives, but it is really a great start: - He uses a color and hand gesture memory-aid system for learning the tones, which did not do a thing for me, and I stopped using them after a few lessons. There are 4 tones (and a neutral tone), and as a very visual learner, I found it easiest to just look at the tone symbols on the written words in the booklet they give you (Romanized "pinyin" words, not the Chinese characters, which are understandably not used in this course at all, since it's a very time-consuming thing to learn in itself) - He uses a lot of mneumonic memory aids to remember how to say words, intentionally to be funny, but I found them so far-fetched, convoluted, and/or silly, I didn't use those either. I do give him credit for being creative, though. - Throughout the entire 8 disks, the speaking phraases are - pro - nounced - one - syl - la - ble - at - a - time - like - this, which is the exact opposite of the FSI audio. Even the native speaker (who is great) does it when she gives the "answer," although she does pick it up just a little bit in the last couple disks. - Yes, you have the male and female students that people seem to find annoying in reviews of all M.T. courses. The guy literally sounds like he is doped up or ready to fall asleep any second, with an enthusiasm level of about minus 10. The woman student is fine, except she always pronounces the word for "I" ("Wo," pronounced "waw") wrong (like "whoa" or "woe") and has to be corrected. But the course is excellent for getting the tones down and some grammar structures well into your head, I really liked it. Chinese has no verb conjugation, so I guess a Mandarin version of Verbarrator would be pointless, but for those of you who hate conjugating, there's a plus for Chinese. I got the new version of the "Behind the Wheel Mandarin" course, and was disappointed (not sure if it's any different from the old, but it looks like a different company is now producing the B-T-W franchise): [ Amazon Behind the Wheel Mandarin link ] This would be awful for a complete beginner, and I'm sure they must quit on the first lesson, because I did, even after studying other courses first. It's basically a brute-force "here is an English phrase followed by the Mandarin." This build-up method may work for B-T-W Spanish, Italian, French, etc., but is horrible for Mandarin as presented in this course. There is just no explanation of anything, and you are supposed to pick up the grammar from the building up of phrases, but there is just too much rote memorization required to even get to the tracks where phrases are built up. One lousy example is given at the beginning for each of 3 of the tones, and not even for the 4th. Inexcusable. And word order, which is very important, is not really discussed, you're supposed to just pick it up from the Mandarin-English translations, which a beginner just cannot do easily, because you don't know which words correspond to the English translation. Would be much better if there were literal translations of the phrase. There is a nice sized booklet included with exercises, but it doesn't seemed to be aligned to the audio lessons, and still doesn't seem to adequately explain concepts. I think after one learns a fair amount of Mandarin that this course would be good for drilling, since there is a *lot* of basic material and phrases in it, although none are very long or complex. Assimil "Chinese With Ease," is very good, as are most Assimil courses. I haven't gotten that far through it, but Assimil uses a very interesting book/audio approach, and teaches grammar in context with graded lessons. Check the prices on buy.com for Assimil courses, they seem to randomly get in some of them at better prices than Amazon. Wherever you get Assimil, make sure it includes the CDs, there are book-only versions. [ Amazon link to Assimil Chinese ] Finally, the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Mandarin Chinese" is pretty good for beginners, but I'd still recommend doing the very first FSI or the Michel Thomas first. The review of it in this Amazon page pretty well explains it. It is mostly traveller phrases, but has very good sentence build-up techniques, and a ton of material that will make you much more fluent over time. [ Amazon link to Complete Idiot's Guide Mandarin ] You can probably just get "Program 1" (4 CDs) available separately, since it will probably take a while to plow through it all, but the 12-CD version I linked to above includes Program 2 (another 4 CDs) and 4 CDs of vocabulary (tedious, but probably helpful at some point), for a very reasonable price. (Good pdf version of the transcripts plus discussion included. In fact, it includes the written parts for all of their other language courses, so it's really a bonus) I see there's also a 1-CD version, maybe the first CD of Program 1 only? Okay, sorry for such a long post, especially about Chnese courses in a topic about Portuguese, but oh well. ;-) --------------------------------------- 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 10 15 March 2011 at 8:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Nope, it's never mentioned in the Advanced course or the Vocabulary course (which is really part 3 of the series and doesn't focus overly on vocabulary). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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