Customer Reviews

Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day®

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While I agree with the other reviews of the book that this is a very accessible text for learning to speak Chinese, I feel I must mention that it doesn't provide most of the Chinese characters for the words, instead only writing them in pinyin. This is adequate for those who are learning to speak Chinese and want to gain fluency in everyday speaking and grammar use, but I did find it frustrating that I had to look elsewhere for the characters. Additionally, I do feel that it would be easier to learn some vocabulary with the Chinese characters - for example the word for flowers, huar, is given, and the word for garden, huaryuan. Are they related? Is it the same root word? Without the character, there is no way to know.

That criticism aside, I do feel that Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day has been very helpful in learning to speak Chinese. It provides a great deal of everyday vocabulary from around the town and house, and presents it in a fun format. It comes complete with stickers to label everyday objects in your house, for example, which act as a constant reminder as to the Chinese words.

I definately recommend this book, with the addition of a good dictionary for the student interested in learning Chinese characters.

I found a few translation mistakes, but most are corrected later on by giving the other correct definition (though you may want a dictionary to be sure which is which). There weren't too many though, and I'm sure most any foreign language book is bound to have a few. What I really loved about this book was that in addition to the pinyin, they also gave the pronunciation piece by piece the way it would really be written in English-it's the only book I've seen that's done that, and for that added help on the pronuciation (which you could very easily mess up using only the pinyin) I would recommend this book.

But it's not only that: it offers most of the vocab you would NEED while in China, and though it doesn't have much to offer in the way of grammar, you can get by with only a little bit of confusion with the words and limited gramatical structure you pick up in the book.

And just in case it doesn't mention it in the description: this is Mandarin Chinese: which is spoken in Beijing, and not the Cantonese which is spoken in Hong Kong.

I have to start this review saying that i thought more than 4 times before buy this book.
For me the title was not to atractive (not too serious for a formal chinese student). But i have to say that since i received this book (with other three books to learn chinese), it got my atention.

This book has colorfull pages, beautiful illustrations, lot of useful vocabulary, and an interested way to introduce new chinese word in every text, even in english text.

Teachs you from you own language, make reference between english grammar and chinese grammar.

This book it's not ambitious, doesnt include chinese caracthers, it's focus on speak, and not to read.

With this book you will learn (at least) to say in chinese:
Where is the table? (nar you ....)
This is the chicken (zhe shi yi ge ji).
I want tea, (wo yao cha).
1,2,3,4,5... 1359...(yi, er, san, si, etc)
Red, blue, gray (hongse, lanse, etc)...
This is, that is (zhe shi, na shi).
Today is monday, see you tomorrow (jintian shi xingqi yi, mingtian jian).

Also include stickers with objects in chinese to stick to your table, clock, window, sofa, cat, etc,
At the end you will have a small vocabulary, but believe me, the way will be really funny.

The only lack of this book it's that doesn't include a CD, it's really important to listen the pronunciation, especially if it's purpose of the book.

It's a good tool for beginners, and if you want to start by yourself (and that's a lot if we talk about chinese).

Sincerely,
from the South of the World (Chile)

Carolina

PD: Sorry for my english... i just speak spanish and a little bit of chinese

Before buying (or reviewing) a language instruction book, you should consider the purpose of the book. This book intends to give you some basic speaking ability in Chinese in a relatively short amount of time, to help you express yourself while traveling, shopping, eating, and doing other typical tourist activities. It does an excellent job of that. If you're looking for more than that, choose a book that better meets your needs.

The book is divided into 24 lessons, with the suggestion you study each one for 10 minutes. That's just 4 hours of study, plus however much time you want to spend practicing. This won't make you fluent, won't teach you to read/write characters, and it won't really help you understand someone speaking Chinese to you, but it will give you the basic speaking skills it aims to provide.

There are flash cards to cut out and practice with, and sticky labels to put on things around your house. The words are written in Pinyin, which is a romanization of Mandarin words based on their pronunciation. Pinyin pronunciation isn't obvious to English readers, so the book includes additional phonetic spelling. For example, it tells you the PinYin word 'jie' is pronounced 'jee-eh'.

There are a number of exercises so you can practice what you've learned, which helps you remember.

If you'd like to build a good foundation of common Chinese words and phrases with a minimal amount of study time, then I think you'll be happy with this book.

This book is basically a glorified list of vocabulary words. There are no conversations and very few sentences in the book. It doesn't teach much grammar, and seems to encourage using Chinese words with English sentence structures. If this were my only text, it would be very bad, but I'm finding it useful as a suplemetal text. The labels, pictures, and flash cards are all useful, but only when used in conjunction with a course or other book that actually teaches the language, not just the words.

not enough said about this book, it takes you from basics to conversation.

I teach from this book. It is awesome in all languages. Replete with pictures, fun stuff and good words, it is the ULTIMATE BEGGINNER BOOK.

I love using it to teach and it can be worked with without teacher...

This was a good book to start a basic vocab and concept of what would later be studied in the Chinese language. I use this book very frequently to start learning a new language and, the only thing that would be missing would be an audio guide to the book. Pronunciation in Chinese is very essential to the word and understanding of the language.

My boyfriend and I are going to be moving to China next year, and since he knows absolutely no Chinese I thought this book would be helpful. Now our whole house is labeled with stickers, and it is working. Its a pretty quick and easy way to learn, I just wish it had the charecters as well.

The system is a pretty good one. There are lots of pictures, pages to help you practice saying and writing the words, etc. The idea of doing just a little bit each day is a good one. Unfortunately, there is no audio tape. Audio is always so important for pronounciation, but this is even more true with Chinese where tones are critical to the word's meaning. I would not recommend this book for that reason.