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Mandarin resources | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 3997 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 1 of 11 03 July 2014 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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Can anyone suggest good resources for Mandarin? I've tried Assimil (<3) for a couple of
weeks, but with Mandarin it doesn't seem to be working very efficiently. Textbooks, if possible. Or just tell me what you have used. Cheers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 2 of 11 03 July 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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Here's a very useful article discussing different textbooks on Sinosplice.
"Chinese Made Easier" and "New Practical Chinese Reader" are two highly regarded series. I've used one full volume of both series and they are both very good. You can"t go wrong. With "New Practical Chinese Reader", you can even find videos with actors playing the dialogues. IMO, using two or three different textbooks simultaneously is even better. Edited by lorinth on 03 July 2014 at 10:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 3997 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 11 03 July 2014 at 11:35am | IP Logged |
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Stick with Assimil. It is limited compared to other Assimil products but you will still come away with a useful
core. Remember, you don't have to follow the Assimil instructions if you don't want to. I've been using McNaughton's book to learn the characters presented in the Assimil text, using the clues he sometimes (but annoyingly not always) provides about the different components in a character to commit them to memory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5029 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 4 of 11 05 July 2014 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Mandarin is what I used and I think it's great. It is slower than other Assimil books but it still can not be beaten, IMO.
Besides Assimil, I recommend online novels (网上小说), xiangsheng (相声), yijianzhongguo (意见中国)interviews, baidu tieba (百度贴吧) baidu zhidao (百度知道), baidu baike (百度百科), and wiki articles. China is a very much online culture, and you can find thousands of books and there audiobooks for free online, and read them using an online dictionary. Mandarin is an amazing language to learn because it is so rich in online resources. You'll find a method of finding online resources if you try. My method was usually: 1.) Find a book I liked on pingshu8 or haokan5. 2.) search baidu for "<insert book name> 全本" (sometimes I'd find the text first with step2 and then search pingshu8 or haokan5) 3.) Read and listen to the first paragraph to make sure they line it up reasonably well. 4.) Use audacity to divided the audio into sizeable chunks (or one audio file per chapter). Note: When I first started, I would only do two or three minute chunks of the audio per day. I gradually lengthened the length of the audio until now when I do full chapters that range up to 30 minutes. Edited by BobbyE on 05 July 2014 at 8:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3674 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 11 07 July 2014 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
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Textebooks, well, "Chinese Made Easier" is great, I would also recommend "Integrated Chinese" (3rd edition - videos also available, along with huge amounts of supplementary stuff).
http://sites.la.utexas.edu/chinese/ Very comprehensive university-made web course http://chinese.rutgers.edu/content_e.htm Less up-to-date with modern technologies, but still a good web course http://www.hanyu.com.cn/ddzw/ These are good supplements for textbooks such as "New Practical Chinese Reader" (maybe you like it - I don't), "Contemporary Chinese", the rest are for kids. edu.chinese.cn/onlinelearning/ 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6441 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 07 July 2014 at 6:21pm | IP Logged |
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Colloquial Chinese, a rather boring looking book from the 80'ies full of communist vocabulary; it is, however,
according to the sinology professors in Sweden, the book to this date with the best coverage of the grammar of spoken Mandarin Chinese. The book is divided in two books: one in pinyin with grammatical explanations, and another in characters (either simplified or traditional). The book is full of example sentences for every conveyed aspect of grammar. It is also, actually, rather funny – the dialogues often end in somewhat odd or stupid situations. This book is NOT the Chinese book in the Colloquial Series, albeit having the same name and the same publisher (Routledge) (very confusing). Easiest way to make sure one gets the right book is making sure it's written by Pollard and T'ung. (It is also very funny that the writer of a Chinese book that uses pinyin uses Wade Giles for his own name...). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6926 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 7 of 11 07 July 2014 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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Never having studied Chinese, I won't venture any opinions or recommendations on materials to use. Still, I've always been impressed with the consistently favorable comments people seem to have regarding a very inexpensive book, "Colloquial Chinese" by Pollard and T'ung, as recommended by Hampie.
But I just wanted to note, for anyone who might choose to use that book, that the audio for it is available in MP3 format at the following site: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ealac/chinese/audiolab_colloquial %20chinese/colloquial%20chinese.htm ADDENDUM: I got curious and did a bit of googling on this book yesterday, and learned from various places that: 1) The book is still in print, despite the fact that a newer and completely different edition of "Colloquial Chinese", by a different author, is also sold by the same company (Routledge). Given that the book has been around for so long, used copies are also available at very low prices (i.e., on Amazon.com, one penny, plus postage.) 2) Some of the book's vocabulary, which dealt with the era of strong Communist Party control, is no longer so useful. 3) The book has been used for basic Chinese courses in a number of universities in the US and UK. 4) The audio in the link provided above is not the original produced by the publisher; it's slower, but also contains some materials not on the original cassette tapes. The original tapes are described as being faster and more "lively". The comments by people who used it, though, were still quite positive, especially in terms of the book's explanations of Chinese grammar and sentence patterns. Edited by daristani on 09 July 2014 at 2:42pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6161 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 08 July 2014 at 3:24am | IP Logged |
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I like the old Colloquial Chinese, too. It has nice audio and interesting and funny dialogs.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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