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HSK and Pimsleur | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 5676 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 5 01 June 2009 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
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This is my first post, and I thought it was a good idea to put it here because it's a "specific question about mandarin" (if this isn't the place to post this, please let me know and this won't happen again). OK, the thing is, I'm studying mandarin with pimsleur (I forgot to add it to my language list, jeje), and I downloaded some kind of "guides" for HSK (it's basically a list of traditional and simplified characters with the English meaning), and I was wondering...is it a good idea to learn the pronuntiation in pimsleur, and then look out in my HSK list so I can learn both the pronuntiation and writing at the same time? I think that if I listen the phrase in my pinsleur tapes (well, CD's) and then write it down until I learn it, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to learn both at the same time, right? Is this a good/bad idea? Any suggestions? I hope I was clear enough, thanks in advance (by the way, is it OK to write "thanks in advance" as the English equivalent of the Spanish phrase "gracias de antemano"?)
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 5 01 June 2009 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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As Pimsleur is audio-only it will be necessary to use some other materials as well, to get started with reading and writing hanzi, or pinyin too for that matter.
And even if you are not interested in learning hanzi, or if you decide to postpone them till later, it is still a good idea to use other materials to cross-check what you hear in Pimsleur. I have read about people who worked through a large part of Pimsleur and never realised that x, j and q were different sounds. That was a lot of wasted effort that could have been avoided by reading up on a few pronunciation basics in the beginning. I'm not sure your HSK vocabulary lists are the best supplementary material, but if it's all you have at the moment it's always better than nothing. The purpose of those lists is as preparation for the HSK exam, and even the basic level HSK is several levels beyond the point where Pimsleur will take you. Edited by Hencke on 01 June 2009 at 6:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 5 02 June 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
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This is more or less what I did with Pimsleur. I bought "Reading and Writing Chinese characters (simplified)", and every new word I learned from Pimsleur I learned how to read and write as well. A transcript of Pimsleur is really helpful too, and they can be found on the internet.
For me, it worked out great, but I had to add on more difficult material about 1 month into Pimsleur because Pimsleur WILL NOT TAKE YOU FAR! It only has about 500 words. I wouldn't even bother with the HSK list for now, it's way beyond Pimsleur and there isn't enough data on the list to help you. Just cross check the words you hear in Pimsleur with a good online dictionary like yellowbridge (actually if you pay for their service I believe they have a stroke order dictionary as well). gracias de antemano...hmm I've never heard that one actually, thanks! Edited by irrationale on 02 June 2009 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 5676 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 5 03 June 2009 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your replies.
Then I think I should finish with pimsleur before I start with HSK, right? What level should I expect after finnishing pimsleur (I mean, will it be enough to start with HSK then)? And about HSK, what's the "correct" form of using that lists? Is there a method, any complementary material, or you just have to memorize it? irrationale: when you talk about 500 words, are you talking about the three levels? Thanks again, see you later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cisa Super Polyglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6419 days ago 312 posts - 309 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Hungarian*, Slovak, FrenchC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin, SpanishB2, RussianB2, GermanB2, Korean, Czech, Latin Studies: Italian, Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Hindi, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 5 03 June 2009 at 9:26am | IP Logged |
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I think this way you create a lot of extra mess for yourself. I don´t really believe in Pimsleur for serious study, to be honest.
If you want to learn words, pronunciation and writing as well, the best would be to buy a textbook with workbook and audio. Textbooks also contain prounuciation drills and they can be found recorded on the CD, so you can do some parrotting easily. Workbooks nearly always contain writing exercises, if not, just get a squared notebook and copy texts, characters, as you feel. Another plus of textbooks is that they have grammar explanations, exercises and usually dialougues AND short texts as well. From dialougues you can learn far more conversational phrases than Pimsleur. I think for such study New Practical Chinese Reader is really great, it´s systematic and enjoyable. To see whether you´ve done the exercises correctly I suggest you also buy the teacher´s reference. Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook is also a great way to learn essential phrases, though there´s no audio to it. Still, if you have already learnt how to pronounce pinyin, you can drill those phrases aloud as well. Another material you may enjoy is the "Chinese 900 phrases" by Foreign Language Teaching and Reasearch Press. There are several different editions, if I remember it right, a Spanish version is also available. One edition comes with mp3 CDs, 1 DVD and an audio pen, with which you point on a phrase number and it will pronounce it for you. With character+pinyin+translation, divided into different topics. It costs around 600 RMB. Good luck with your Mandarin studies and have a nice day. :) Cisa 1 person has voted this message useful |
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