Customer Reviews

Billy and Benboo: The Monsters and the Magic Wand, Learn Mandarin Chinese Beginner Level 2

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I suppose the reviewers here know nothing about Chinese, and therefore are unaware of the many glaring and inexcusable errors in the accompanying booklet. The errors are in the TONES of the words. Just a few examples: XI HUAN (LIKE) is written as two FORTH TONES, where it should be one THIRD and one FORTH tone. SHAN (HILL) is written with a SECOND tone, where it should be a FIRST tone. And so on, with many errors. The result is that you simply cannot trust what you are reading to be correct. If you learn a word with the wrong TONE, you are learning a completely different word.

An analogy would be trying to learn to solve math problems with a book where some of the answers are wrong. You would have to check all the answers with an outside source.

Secondly, while the children in the video speak at a decent speed, the adults rattle away much too fast. This is supposed to be a LEARNING experience. Is it too much to ask for the characters to speak slower than normal speed? Sometimes you can't even make out all the words the adults speak. SLOW DOWN! I'M TRYING TO LEARN! Jeeze.

Overall though, I find these children's programs to be useful for learning Chinese even though I'm an adult. But it burns me up that they could be MUCH MUCH better if the maker had better attention to detail and common sense.

I've been looking for home tools to help my son learn Mandarin. While we have many videos, books and audio tapes, we were pleasantly surprised by Language Tree's Beginner Level 2 video. Most tools are worthwhile, but this one really stands apart in that the learning aspect is much more enjoyable. The pace is excellent, the characters are bright and adorable and by embedding the lessons within a story it is much more interesting to watch. My son also found the booklet to be very useful. At times he would be too caught up in the story and skip the review section. The nice thing is later on he tends to refer back to the booklet frequently or simply tune into the review portions of the video.

I watched both the level 1 and level 2 videos with my American-born elementry school nephew and pre-school niece.
The video was appealing to them because it's like a cartoon video. The scenes in the video are very visual and focused, it's directly related to the dialog, so it's very easy for children to understand what the video is teaching.

The music and songs in the video are also great! I love the tunes, they are very catchy. The children learned it really fast, and soon they are singing along.
I also like the fact that the song lyrics are made up of phrases from the teaching material, and repeat itself over and over. This helps the children to learn through repeatition.

My nephew and niece are both attending private after school program to learn Chinese. I saw far more progress after watching the videos for few weeks, than they going to 1-1/2 years of language school. Plus if I watch the video with the kids, I know exactly what was taught in the video, it's much easier for me to start practcing with them. As oppose to going to the language school, which I have no idea what they are teaching, therefore it's hard for me to start a conversation in Chinese with them.
Also the materials from the video are related to things we would normally encounter in real life, so there are many occasions to take the opportunity to practice the vocabularies.

Lastly, the story of all the videos are centered around Billy and BenBoo, the two main characters, and their family, so you'll be familiar with the characters after the first video, and easy to move on to the next. I especially love the adorable dog Ben Boo, he's so playful and brings so much energy!

Thanks Language Tree for making learning so much fun!!! I can't wait to see the next video!

I gave the video to my neice and nephew who are 6 and 7 respectively. They really liked the story and the cute characters in it(especially the monsters). They were able to follow the phrases and vocabulary pretty well. I and their mother liked the booklet that went along with the video so that we could both use it to review the common, every day language that the children could relate to. The pinyin even helped me learn a few words and phrases and my sister-in-law who is Chinese was happy to have traditional Chinese in the script as well. We look forward to the next level video!

Our 7-year old daughter is currently learning Mandarin Chinese in her elementary school. Since Chinese is not spoken in our household, we wanted to make sure she is exposed to the language through books, audio, and videos. We have not been impressed by other videos which appear to be for very young children. They did not engage her attention for very long. Billy and Benboo, on the other hand, did hold her attention with the beautiful colors and the fun "music videos" throughout. It's definitely more educational and unique than any other Chinese language learning product out there.

I watched both the level 1 and level 2 videos with my American-born elementry school nephew and pre-school niece.
The video was appealing to them because it's like a cartoon video. The scenes in the video are very visual and focused, it's directly related to the dialog, so it's very easy for children to understand what the video is teaching.

The music and songs in the video are also great! I love the tunes, they are very catchy. The children learned it really fast, and soon they are singing along.
I also like the fact that the song lyrics are made up of phrases from the teaching material, and repeat itself over and over. This helps the children to learn through repeatition.

My nephew and niece are both attending private after school program to learn Chinese. I saw far more progress after watching the videos for few weeks, than they going to 1-1/2 years of language school. Plus if I watch the video with the kids, I know exactly what was taught in the video, it's much easier for me to start practcing with them. As oppose to going to the language school, which I have no idea what they are teaching, therefore it's hard for me to start a conversation in Chinese with them.
Also the materials from the video are related to things we would normally encounter in real life, so there are many occasions to take the opportunity to practice the vocabularies.

Lastly, the story of all the videos are centered around Billy and BenBoo, the two main characters, and their family, so you'll be familiar with the characters after the first video, and easy to move on to the next. I especially love the adorable dog Ben Boo, he's so playful and brings so much energy!

Thanks Language Tree for making learning so much fun!!! I can't wait to see the next video!

The video tape is very helpful and interesting. The repetition and clustering method of learning language really helps, and more importantly, children like the story.

I bought this tape for my 5 & 7 year old nieces, and they both enjoyed it! After playing this tape several times, my nieces not only were fascinated by the story and adventure, they also started to pick up more Chinese vocabularies and became more receptive to using the language at home. In addition, what my cousin and I both really like about this language learning tool is that it does an excellent job in portraying the Chinese American culture in a realistic and sensitive manner. I find this language tool extremely appropriate and effective for Chinese Americans and would highly recommend it.

I've reviewed the video tape Billy and BenBoo and really like the Multi-Cognition Approach on which it is based. I also like the organization of the story. I believe that both children and adults who deal with children will find it entertaining while learning Chinese.

This video is a parent's dream. I saw immediate results from my children and they really loved the songs. Billy and Benboo had my daughter mezmerized and interested throughout, as she followed their trials and tribulations with awe.

Any parent who is serious about immersing their children in second language should buy this today!! We can't wait for the next video.