|
 |
Study Material for Mandarin Chinese | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Kadphises Diglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 6151 days ago 15 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 4 25 August 2008 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Although already living in Taiwan for two years, I still consider myself on the beginner level of learning Chinese. I am now in the position to recommend Chinese study and reference material for a small library for our international student dormitory. I already have bought a couple of books for myself, but I am not sure whether there might be better choices available. So, I would be happy to get some opinions of more experienced Mandarin learners on which books/audio courses/software you found useful and efficient, especially for learning Mandarin Chinese as spoken/written in Taiwan. Maybe you can give me one or two recommendations for each of the following categories:
- a grammar book (I mean a reference grammar suitable for beginners and intermediate learners, not a text book) - a book (and/or software) for learning how to read & write traditional Chinese characters - a good dictionary or a combination of two dictionaries (E-C, C-E) suitable for beginners and intermediate learners: with PinYin and/or BePeMeFe transcription and alphabetic order and information about proper word usage (disambiguation, proper measure words for nouns etc.) or useful example sentences - an audio course, including transcripts of the dialogues and a vocabulary list, for learning the correct pronunciation and building a good basis of vocabulary, common phrases and sentence structures (shouldn't containt too much "Erhua" or Mainland specific terms; I know the Pimsleur course, but I don't consider it suitable for more visually-oriented people, as it doesn't contain transcripts, and the language sounds too "Beijingish" to me and thus confusing for the beginner who wanna get along in Taiwan without receiving strange looks for using "Putonghua" instead of "Zhongwen" or "nar", "yidianr" instead of "nali", "yidian" etc.). I already compiled a list (see below) from material I possess myself, I have borrowed from friends or I have read favorable reviews about, but I would like to get more opinions from more experienced learners. So, please give me your comments, whether you can recommend any of the material listed or you know better material available for each category. Thanks a lot in advance! Grammar: Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar (Modern Grammars) by Claudia Ross Chinese Characters: Reading & Writing Chinese Traditional Character Edition by William McNaughton, Li Ying Dictionaries: English Chinese Pinyin Dictionary by Qian Suwen and Tuttle Learner's Chinese English Dictionary by Li Dong or Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary by Boping Yuan, Sally Kathryn Church ? Textbook & Audio Course: Anything you can recommend which you consider better than the course & mp3s downloadable from the FSI website? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 4 25 August 2008 at 9:23am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Why can't an audio course be for the auditoraly oriented? Isn't language primarily spoken anyway?
Sadly most Chinese material is Beijing-oriented, just like most French material aims towards Paris, Russian to Moscow and Italian to Rome. If any Taiwanese-specific material exists, it probably won't be found outside of Taiwan, so you might want to speak to a local bookseller. Actually, maybe you should ask an English school -- they're probably recommending them all the time to their visiting native teachers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7086 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 4 31 August 2008 at 8:26am | IP Logged | |||||
|
This probably does not suit your needs, but our Chinese class is using a book with software called "Active Chinese." You can do a demo of lesson 1 and lesson 17, I think, at activechinese.com.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kadphises Diglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 6151 days ago 15 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 4 of 4 22 September 2008 at 9:32am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks to both of you for your advice. I will have a look at a local bookstore, whether I can find something interesting with audio material. I think there are a few people on this forum who live in Taiwan and have managed to learn Mandarin Chinese well. If anyone of them has a specific recommendation, that would be great, too.
Personally, I prefer to have transcripts or other written material, which makes it easier to double-check whether I got it right. And I have the impression this is also true for many other adult language learners.
It's good, in my opinion, to set a standard to aim for, and I don't see a problem with that for French or Italian (maybe I'm too Euro-centric in the case of French). But for some languages there are obviously at least two standards, so I would rather compare it to English, Spanish or Portuguese. It's like I was living in the U.S. but my audio material for learning English was solely for British English (with received pronunciation and BE vocabulary only). 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
