Customer Reviews

Chung Ta Noi: Conversational Vietnamese--An Intermediate Text

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

 

 

I have been learning Vietnamese for over five years have not followed any structured course or school, and this is the discipline approach I need. I have only been through Chapter 1, and it has a lot of new vocabulary with an emphasis on verbs. The vocabulary used is from North Vietnam and the Southern equivelents are not given. I like the info on Vietnamese culture in the exercises, and each chapter has some ca dao (Vietnamese proverbs) to learn. The CDs sound like a few college students gathered around a tape recorder, and the sound quality could be better. The listening exercises are challenging, with both North and South speakers represented. The CD does not give the English eqivalents to the dialog or vocabulary. Pure and fast Vietnamese only. Amazon says the book is only 19 pages but it is actually 400. Very comprehensive. I look forward to improving my Vietnamese with this book. Another good book at this level is Intermediate Spoken Vietnamese.

This is a strong, comprehensive book, but really intended for classroom use. It lacks answers for all the activities and the reading sections. I think the idea is that you'll learn through the context, but if you are studying alone, this isn't easy.

I had already lived in Vietnam for two years, and I'd done an additional year of self-study before tackling this book. Still, right from the beginning there was a lot of new material. I'm about halfway through the book and feeling bogged down with the vocabulary at this point, and now looking for more options/books to try and supplement. Unfortunately, this is one of the only texts for intermediate speakers available in the USA, so there are very few choices of supplemental or alternative material available.

I found this book helpful to make progress with my Vietnamese. This book is your typical classroom book. It's great if you have a partner to do the exercises (I had a tutor, since I couldn't take the class). I especially enjoy listening to the dialogues on the audio CDs and try to understand the language as it is spoken in real life.

The book is divided into about 20 chapters plus a couple review chapters (personally I don't think the review chapters are necessary and the same vocabulary is repeated on the summary pages, which makes the book much longer, thicker and heavier); each chapter contains relevant vocabulary, dialogues, and exercises. The downside of the book for me is that it's somewhat Americanized Vietnamese (for Vietnamese people living in the US) except for the Vietnamese proverbs at the end of each chapter (which are a bit hard to understand without someone explaining it to you); having spent half a year in Vietnam, there is some vocabulary that is completely useless in Vietnam (like fast-food, vacuum cleaner, etc.). Many dialogues are also setup more for a typical American life style, not the current Vietnamese life style. Also, there is one guy on the CD whose pronounciation is pretty sloppy and simply not very good. All in all, the CDs are a strong point, though, and the book has been quite useful.

I have worked with a number of texts, and this particular one fills a niche that I had not been able to locate before; Vietnamese culture explained in Vietnamese. The conversations are light and amusing, but the voice recordings are of poor quality, and some of the pronunciation isn't very clear (though, as with all languages, you have to learn to understand 'those people' too). I find especially useful that it is very possible to jump around to subjects that interest you most. I don't think it is necessary to do these lessons in any particular sequence, even though there is some building on previous knowlege. You need to find a native speaker to help you.

This was a great buy. Product came in on time and in perfect condition. On top of that, I had a great deal!