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English for mandarin speakers? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 1 of 2 30 October 2008 at 6:55am | IP Logged |
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Could someone PLEASE tell me why there don't seem to be any serious self-study, ESL for Mandarin Speaker course? Only grammar books and ridiculously priced classes?
I have some friends in China that want to learn, and all I need to find is an FSI style course for them...are there any? If not, why? I have searched in Chinese too, but my Mandarin isn't so good now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7169 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 2 of 2 31 October 2008 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
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There's a free course verging on FSI style here:
www.freeenglishnow.com Unfortunately, instead of using dialogs at the beginning of each chapter, the authors used the bible. Issues of religious belief aside, this probably isn't an ideal language sample for a spoken language course. The closest non-free thing I know of that might approach FSI-style is about $110 from http://www.spokenlanguage.com/ (ie from the "Spoken..." series that Prof Arguelles reviews on his site/youtube). Leaving aside the dearth of freely available audio-lingual materials, there are some good free video materials that lend themselves to a comprehensible input approach. Some of a comedy for learners called "Extra English" has been uploaded to youku (a Chinese youtube clone). And "an English French in Action" called "Connect with English" is watchable for free at learner.org. The dialog in Living English (available, including scripts, from http://australianetwork.com/livingenglish/) includes "language textbook situations", woven around a story - simple language at near-normal speed. Watched repeatedly these could bridge the gap between your Chinese friends' current level & authentic materials. yappr.com, yolango.com & similar provide more of the same, graded & with transcripts &/ user-contributed translations. I've seen positive effects from this material first hand: after watching about Extra for about 50 hours - fortunately it's funny enough to stand repeated watching - a friend of mine was able learn to pronounce sounds she'd been completely unable to distiguish between or pronounce properly when I tried to correct her a few weeks earlier. Her listening comprehension & ability to form sentences have improved too. A couple of months ago she was entirely non-functional in English; now she's able to have simple conversations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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