Customer Reviews

Chinese (Mandarin) I

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've gone through all 3 full sets of Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese. If you'd have asked me immediately after I'd finished them what I thought of the series, I'd have given it 5 stars without hesitation. However, after spending the past year trying to advance past what I've learned via the Pimsleur series, I've come across some reservations which prevent me from giving it a 5 star review anymore. While I do feel the Pimsleur method is incredibly useful and (despite its seeming simplicity) very innovative, I think their Mandarin Chinese series also suffers from simply being "plugged in" to the standard Pimsleur format, rather than receiving the customization that would help users truly understand the Chinese language, which has many quirks unique to it.

My reservations:
1) Pimsleur Chinese teaches the Beijing version of Mandarin, which is understandable considering it is the "official" Mandarin dialect according to the Chinese government, but the fact is that the vast majority of overseas Mandarin speakers do not speak Beijing Chinese and may give you puzzled looks when you use the phrases taught in this series. For example, in Beijing the word 'where' is said 'nar', while just about everywhere else (Taiwan, Singapore, and other parts of China) they say 'na-li'. Sure, 90% is probably the same, but that 10% that is different can be very confusing. Occasionally they give alternate ways of saying words, but more often they do not. Native Mandarin speakers may understand your Beijing usage and pronunciation, but you will definitely need to re-learn several key words in order to understand when they speak to you.
2) Classical Chinese, I believe, was basically mono-syballic, but Modern Chinese is heavily composed of compound words which can be broken down to their individual components as a mnemonic and as a way of better understanding the language. However, Pimsleur rarely does this. For example, I noticed they gave several words that began with dian (which, via other means of study, I learned means 'electronic'), such as dian nao (electronic + brain = computer) and dian hoa (electronic + speech = telephone), but I had to look elsewhere to understand the individual components. Pimsleur breaks down a compound word maybe a quarter of the time, but it should have been done EVERY time.
3) Although I still believe Pimsleur is a great introduction to the language, you ultimately only learn a VERY limited vocabulary from the entire 3 sets -- maybe a few hundred words -- not nearly enough to understand a TV show or movie (again, especially when you consider you are only learning how to say things in Beijing Mandarin).

Don't get me wrong, Pimsleur does an excellent job of getting the listener to memorize key words and phrases using good pronunciation (my Mandarin speaking friends were quite surprised by my "clear, classical accent"), but it is only a first step. To continue learning Mandarin, you definitely should learn Pinyin (i.e. the method used to translate Chinese characters into English/Romanized spellings -- it takes some time to learn as it is not very intuitive) in order to use a dictionary and other instruction books, and as a stepping stone to learning how to read & write Chinese characters (a massive undertaking in itself).

I have not found a better way to learn to hear and speak a foreign language than the Pimsleur series. I've used both Mandarin I and II, and they have been a big help in enabling me to conduct everyday conversations in China.

The hard part about Chinese is that you don't run into any words that look even vaguely familiar. But the Pimsleur method is gradual. Each lesson begins with a brief conversation between two native speakers. The first time you hear it, you have no idea what's being said, but by the end of the lesson you'll be able to understand it and participate in the same conversation. But I found there's a lot of value in going through each lesson several times.

The emphasis is all on listening to native speakers and responding to them in short conversations. The method forces you to learn how the language really sounds, and you get lots of chances to practice getting the pronunciation right. It also has the advantage that you can do the course while driving or exercising. There is a very small reading book, but it's not essential.

If your goal is to read Chinese characters, you want a different course or a text designed for the purpose. The best introductory text I've found is "A Key to Chinese Speech and Writing" by Joel Bellassen and Zhang Pengpeng. It's very user-friendly, and puts a lot of emphasis on the history of each character, which helps a lot in learning them. Trouble is, it's hard to find. Hint: Amazon should sell it.

If it weren't for this program, I would've quit the idea of learning Chinese - but this program made it so easy and effortless that even after this first level I was able to exchange few words with a waitress in a Chinese restaurant in Chinese and be understood. That was a tremendous confidence booster that motivated me to keep going and the whole process of going through this program was so easy and enjoyable that it seemed entirely effortless. It has transformed learning Chinese from impossibility into something easy to accomplish.

There are many other cheaper programs for learning Chinese, but unless you are familiar with pronouncing Chinese words, you'll only find yourself frustrated. I tried some other programs before Pimsleur and was getting nowhere. The prospect of learning Chinese still seemed impossible.

In this program each word is broken into syllables which are easy to pronounce and then they are linked into words and sentences and another wonderful thing about this program is that it begins by teaching you some very useful things to say, so that no matter how many words you have learned, what you've learned you'll be able to use because it deals with fulfilling your basic needs and finding your way around.

I have a Ph.D. in linguistics and taught the subject for many years. Pimsleur is absolutely the best system out there for learning foreign languages short of being dropped in another country. (In fact, I'd still take Pimsleur with me if I were going to be set down in a foreign land.) In 30 days you will have basic functionality in the language along with excellent pronunciation-- a real Pimsleur plus. Work through the entire three levels (90 lessons) and you will reach a solid intermediate speaking level-- something that might take 4 years or more of traditional study! I started the Mandarin program from scratch and could not be more pleased. The tones, which will seem impossible at first even if you understand the theory behind them, are much easier after only 7 days and almost natural in two weeks. At the end of the 30 day first course you will barely be thinking about them any more-- so automatic will they have become. Obviously, you will need to further your studies to become as fluent in your second language as you are in English-- but there is absolutely no other course that teaches you so much, so fast, and with so little pain as Pimsleur. (By the way, I have no vested interest in this company-- I just love the system.)

With Pimsleur, it is so simple to learn a foreign language that anyone can do it. I'm terrible at foreign languages yet even I can learn Mandarin. I'm really impressed with how much I've learned. And the best part is I've learned while using time that would normally be wasted. What I mean is I learn while walking to the train station and while taking the train to work. Or while waiting at an appointment, etc. That's what I love about this program, since there is no reading or writing, you can do it while walking, driving, riding, etc.

Repetition is the mother of all skill, and this is the basis of Pimsleur. But they are masters at making you think and formulate sentences. You don't repeat what they say, you say and then listen to the native speaker and then you repeat again and then listen again. It's just how a child would learn. It's like having a tutor sitting next to you, correcting you. The vocabularly is well planned to allow you to say a maximum of sentences. And the number of sentences you say grows exponentially with every new word or phrase you learn.

I could go on and on but I think the other reviews have it covered so I will say a few things I haven't seen in the other reviews. I listen to most lessons twice, and I try to make it on two separate days so that it sinks in over night. Some of the lessons were more difficult than others, a few I listened to five times.

One thing I will point out is that I think Mandarin is difficult enough that learning only from a CD is not enough. The reason is that each of us have a set of sounds we've learned over the years. When we hear new sounds, such as those of a foreign language, we fit them into our existing sounds (it's very hard to learn new sounds as adults). It's possible to listen to the native speaker and then repeat using our own English sounds and not know that the sounds aren't correct. For this reason, I think it's necessary to have a tutor to work on pronunciation. As proof of my theory, I will use me and my wife. I am American, fluent in French (with a strong American accent). My wife is French, fluent in English (with a French accent). We are both listening to the Pimsleur CDs yet when we say the same phrases in Chinese we say them differently! We even pronounce "wo" differently. Living in Paris, there are a lot of Mandarin speaking people here so I decided to test out a few phrases. In the beginning, after only a few Pimsleur lessons, no one understood me. I had to stay the words in english, then in mandarin before they'd understand me! I think now that I'm on lesson 18 my pronunciation should be better. My tutor says she understands me better but that I have an American accent. Sometimes we spend 5 minutes on one word and I just don't get it. But like I said, I am not good at foreing languages. So if you're really good at foreign languages, maybe the Pimsleur CD will suffice. If you're like me, I think you'll need access to a native speaker to help you with the pronunciation.

Finally, one other thing important is to learn pinyin and that's not tought in Pimsleur. I find writing down the vocabularly in pinyin really helps. It helps me to learn pinyin but also to pronounce correctly the words. Somtimes it's not clear if it's a "d" or "t" etc. When I see the word in pinyin it's more clear. I strongly recommend doing this.

Overall pimsleur is excellent. I recommend the tutor for pronunciation and the pinyin exercise but I do not count that against Pimsleur because that is not Pimsleur's goal. Pimsleur's goal is to get you speaking Mandarin with only an audio program. And that it does exceptionally. If you think it's too expensive, I think if you listen to each lesson twice then there are 30 hours of instruction. The benefit of being able to do the lessons whenever you want, during time usually not very productive in my opinion justifies the purchase. I learn more with one hour of Pimsleur than one hour with my tutor.

When I first started Pimsleur Mandarin I, about six months ago, I gave up after the fourth lesson thinking it was too difficult. I just couldn't get my head around the tones and the difficult pronunciation. It seemed as though every sentence that I tried to make was too slow or had a wrong tone. Then about a week later, I tried it again and it wasn't quite so hard. I made it to lesson eleven, but then took another week-long break out of frustration. When I picked it up for the third time, it was much easier. I had finally figured out how to position my tongue to create most of the non-english phenomes (pinyin: q, x, j, r, ü, z, c), and the tones were starting to get easier, although I still had trouble when combining two falling-rising tones. After two months, I managed to finish Mandarin I, and then, with a bit more effort and patience, I finished Mandarin II and III. I can now repeat or say any sentence at full speed, and the tones have become almost entirely subconscious, making the language much more reasonable. This is the main strength of the Pimsleur program, it gets your ears accustomed to the sounds, and it forces you to make correct sentences quickly, with good pronunciation. This is especially important for a tonal language such as Mandarin.

Of the three levels, Mandarin I is by far the most difficult and frustrating. This is because the four tones and many of the difficult phenomes are all introduced at once, and it seems almost impossible to master them. I had to listen to the first four lessons about four or five times each. After that, I listened to the remaining twenty-six lessons three times each. When I got to Mandarin III, I only had to listen to each lesson twice, as I had already mastered the tones and phenomes by that point and I only needed to deal with the vocabulary and relatively easy syntax. It gets much, much easier as you progress - trust me. It is also tremendously rewarding. I can carry out basic conversations with Chinese people, which suprises everyone (myself included). However, it doesn't take long before I encounter a word or sentence structure that I'm not familiar with. Oh well, I can't expect to become fluent in six months. As for pronunciation, I've been told that I don't have an accent, which is almost entirely because of Pimsleur.

I highly recommend getting this course if you are serious about Mandarin. It is much more efficient than a tutor, and you'll see results. As for the cost, I'm only reviewing the qualilty of the product and not the cost/quality ratio. However, you should realize that there are other ways of obtaining this course. It is possible to buy it used, or rent it, and some libraries even carry Pimsleur programs. Keep this in mind...

I finished the Rosetta Stone Mandarin program a year ago, and I wanted to study more. So I ordered Pimsleur. I wondered whether I should skip Pimsleur #1, but I bought it, and I'm glad I did, because the approach is so different. Pimsleur starts very fast, and I don't know if I could have stuck with it if I didn't have the Rosetta experience beforehand. Now I've finished Pimsleur #1 and I'm ordering #2 (used Pimsleurs sell like hotcakes on eBay).

Using the Pimsleur, I realize that Rosetta is less instructive in the field of sentence construction. Rosetta is, basically, multiple choice, whereas in Pimsleur, you need to jump in and talk first. It's silly, but I would say that at the end of a lesson, it's not the same muscle in the brain that is sore from Pimsleur or from Rosetta. Rosetta involves your eyes a lot. You can do Pimsleur blindfolded.

Rosetta is better for vocabulary acquisition. Whole chapters are dedicated to food, office supplies, clothes... Some of the chapters are not that interesting, and there is an awful cartoon section, which is short. Also, the visuals start well, with good Chinese photos, but pretty soon, you are in Virginia, with a pretty dull bunch of people in ugly houses and offices. (The audio is authentic Chinese of course).

Pimsleur is funny in the way the American narrator involves the Chinese man and woman speakers in ever more involved situations. It's like a Wong-Kar-Wai movie. He wants to drink beer at 6:00, but she wants to drink tea at 5:00. Most shockingly, her husband is with his wife.

I've organized myself a 30 minute commute by taking a country road. It's just me and my iPod, and I do each 30-minute lesson twice. Heaven. I can't wait to go back to China to try it all out (I did pretty well after finishing Rosetta).

And in 40 years, if I have not developed dementia, I will know what two programs to thank.

I've just finished reading through all the reviews here and I wanted to address a few points...

1. There isn't enough text material!

They advertise this course as being designed to teach you your 2nd language the same way you learned your 1st language. If you've done your research you know that before you throw down your hard earned cash. Therefore I find it really difficult to knock the course for omitting things that don't jive with the theory/technique they are selling.

2. It's crazy expensive!

Amen brother. But I've looked into tutors, group lessons and various other materials and find the bang for you buck to be head and tails above the other available options. You might find a tutor for 20 bucks an hour (times 15 hours = $300) and think you could call it even. Not even close. You'd be lucky to find a native speaker who comes cheap and is capable of teaching you their language let alone being able to teach it in a way that allows you to cover and absorb the same amount of material in a similar amount of time.

3. I have to repeat the lessons!

A lot of the reviewers mention that they repeat the lessons numerous times before moving on. The only thing I'll say here is that the course is designed to be done a certain way. If possible, try to tackle it that way before changing the schedule around. Give it 10 lessons. Review is built into the lessons and the rate at which words and structures are revisited is already programmed to be optimal for memory storage and recall. It might not work for everyone but who knows, give it a shot first. I've done a few of these courses now and in my experience it's normal to feel completely and totally lost for the first 3 to 5 lessons or so. Then things start to click...

Anyway, just some thoughts. I've completed the Basic Thai (the 10 lesson course), Comp Japanese I & II and I'm now working on the Mandarin I course. I plan to do all 3 Mandarin courses, the 3rd Japanese course and the newly released Comprehensive Thai course so I guess you could call me a satisfied customer. This is good stuff.

PS: The 1st lesson (of any course) is available free from the publisher's web site.

Pimsleur's Chinese is as of yet by far the best money I have spent on language learning materials. The method of repetition, questioning, and recall combined with a broad variety of phrase combinations and sentence structures (these are really the key to "unlock" your language knowledge) provide a solid foundation of spoken chinese. In my opinion, the most priceless facet of the Pimsleur method is the impeccable pronunciation that develops from learning by listening alone- there is no pinyin here to pollute one's chinese phonetics with crude approximations of chinese sounds. In this manner one picks up difficult chinese initals (j, zh, c, q, etc.) as well as the tones much more naturally. The serious flaw of the Pimsleur method as applied to chinese, though, is the issue of reading and writing- the ideographic language cannot be taught through CD's alone. If you are at all serious about learning the language, a tutor, class, or at the very least a character workbook of some sort is a must-have. By learning the written language, you will also catch on to some of the grammatical and idiomatic subtleties that that course fails to address (although to Pimsleur's credit they do a great job of fitting a solid base of useful, conversational chinese into only 15 hours of instruction).

My personal experience with the course was a lot of fun- I had enrolled in a course at school and wanted to get a bit ahead of the class, so I bought the course. I started off, with my small previous knowledge base, and took off at a break-neck pace, doing two or three lessons a day- while driving in the car (this is a HUGE plus to the Pimsleur system; it is totally hands-off), waiting for class to start, or just sitting at home in the evening. I know this is not the pace suggested by the course materials, but I found that the more aggressively I tackled the lessons, the more I wanted to learn, and that the faster pace was not harming my retention in the least. On the rare occasion that I did struggle, it was simple to just repeat the lesson until I felt comfortable with it. After just two or three lessons, I found myself mumbling chinese to myself to practice the tones and pronunciations and at one point even attracted a compliment from a chinese passerby who wanted to know who my tutor was! After about eight or ten lessons
(well under a week for me), I could order, settle checks, and make a bit of small-talk in a chinese restaurant, much to the amazement of the waitress!

Having a comfortable grasp of the Pimsleur material helped me immensely in class, too- I found it much easier to associate the written characters with the words I was already familiar with from Pimsleur than to try to learn both the characters and the words all at the same time. The speaking and conversation practice you get from the Pimsleur courses is invaluable and will make you sound like a pro compared to those attempting to learn from a book or in a large class setting.

Overall, this course is a great investment if you are planning a trip to China (the first lessons are useful skills in introductions, restaurants, and short conversation) or are just interested in learning the language (the lessons topics and vocabulary grow more diverse as you progress through the course). I personally cannot wait for levels II and III.

I must admit that having lived in the PRC for six months, without benefit of speaking Mandarin ("a stranger in a strange land"), I am motivated to learn Mandarin. While I am not particulary strong in languages, Pimsleur has met all my expectations. I am using the CD's as one part of my efforts to learn Mandarin. The good Dr Pimsleur states that his intention is to teach Mandarin solely through audio means. It works.
However, I am augmenting the CD's by writing the lessons out in Pinying and by being coached by a native Mandarin speaker. To date, I have covered the first set, part of the second set and have ordered the third set of CD's. I am not a speed daemon, presently I am doing roughly two lessons per week. I listen to each lesson twice. The third time I use Pinyin to write down all new words and phrases. The the forth time, I again just listen to the CD's. The fifth time through, I transcribe the entire lesson in Pinyin in MSWord (complete with tone marks...these documents make great review notes). The sixth time through, it's just the CD's again. With roughly six hours spent listening and transcribing the CD lesson, I'm ready for a two hour session with a live Mandarin speaker. The coaching session discusses any unusual or regional expressions that might have been used on the CD's, augments vocabulary with related words and discusses differences in Chinese and North American culture as related to the lesson contents.
Results so far are encouraging, the CD's prepare me by getting most of the "heavy lifting" of pronounciation and phrasing out of the way. I am not wasting the coach's time with extensive pronunciation practice.
The Pimsleur Mandarin CD's, along with a Pinyin dictionary (Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary) and a native Mandarin speaker have worked well for me! Highly recommended.