Customer Reviews

Easy Chinese Tutor I (Mandarin) (CD-ROM)

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

 

 

I have made three unguided trips to China, so I have been forced to use Mandarin, with varying degrees of success. I have made some progress in conversational Mandarin, but, not unexpectedly, have struggled with reading and writing Chinese characters--I have been on a plateau for several years. With the aid of Easy Chinese Tutor, I have made significant progress in *reading* both simplified and traditional characters. The author, Prof. Chang, uses modern instructional methodology. It has made a difference.

I've tried and flunked out of Chinese school. Mainly because I was too busy or couldn't motivate myself. Being 8 years older than the median age of 12 in those classes didn't help either.

Now I need to learn Chinese to place out of extremely time intensive language requirements at college. I obtained a copy from a friend and I'm on lesson 4 already in 2 weeks. Pretty good in my busy schedule. I'm buying both his CD's now!

The amount of depth in understanding of both the Chinese language and its English translation in the software is remarkable. There are many different exercises too keep you interested. It also provides insight into how each word originated from ancient hieroglyphs, and offer witty explanations to help you memorize.

I've often found it hard to concentrate long on academic studies, but I've stuck to this one and intend to finish it. Kudos for Mr. Edward C. Chang for creating such an effective learning tool for the most difficult language in the world.

The tutorial does have grammar explanations and many examples. I can't tell you how effective that is because I already know how to speak the language, but not write. I highly recommend this software to those in my situation.

I found Easy Chinese Tutor to be very helpful in learning Chinese characters and gaining self-confidence. As I progressed through each lesson, I learned more and more useful compound words that consisted of previously learned characters. I was able to accurately gauge my progress by taking the different types of quizzes available on the CD. After completing the CD, I was surprised at the number of words that I had learned to recognize. I think that learning to read Chinese from this CD is easier and more interesting than reading from any book. The interactive presentation and immediate feedback that this product offers makes learning a more efficient process. You won't become an instant expert, but Easy Chinese Tutor will provide a solid foundation for your Chinese abilities and it will prepare you well for more advanced study.

This program feels like it was written in 1995 without the participation of a user interface designer. The UI is cumbersome and inconsistent. Cumbersome: if you want to re-watch a stroke order animation, you will have to click Close to close the animation window, click Strokes to re-open the animation window, and click Continuous to choose the animation style, waiting for screen transition special effects between some of those clicks. Inconsistent: to go to the next two pages of characters, you click the tiny icon with an arrow pointing left to right, but the pages of the virtual book whose pages you're turning go from right to left. The native-speaker pronunciation recordings are full of background noise and recorded at inconsistent volume levels. There are transition effects between screens, which are cute the first 10 times and just a source of annoyance after that. The program doesn't work on Windows XP unless you manually change your computer's virtual memory settings. The "tests" don't even keep score -- click on the test button and it'll tell you to write the answers down on paper and tally your score yourself! Given all that, it'd be easy to dismiss this program out of hand. And yet... the actual content is pretty good. The software presents a well-organized, well-thought-out series of words, most of which are radicals (parts of complex characters) and combinations of which form compound words. You'll learn both the traditional and simplified forms of many characters without much extra effort. The history of each character is interesting and helpful for memorization. There are printable worksheets to practice writing. So all in all, I give it a very qualified recommendation. It is the best software I've found for learning to write Chinese characters, but it's also some of the most frustrating.

One can easily spend hundreds of dollars on foreign language instruction. For the money, this Chinese tutor offers the beginner an good introduction to spoken and written Mandarin. The only downside is that the software production is amateurish and a little user-unfriendly.

This tutor is great for someone who travels with a laptop as they can learn while traveling.

Obviously, if you are really serious about learning Mandarin, I would take a college course or find a good tutor. Good luck!

I have found this program most useful for learning to write Chinese characters. The program includes practice sheets which you can print out, take some colorful pens and have hours of fun.

Another wonderful thing about this program is that it provides some background and associations for different characters making it easier to remember them.

You can also hear different words, phrases and sentences.

The program contains some grammatical explanations as well as many quizzes, so you can measure your progress.

I have found this program most useful for learning to write Chinese characters. The program includes practice sheets which you can print out, take some colorful pens and have hours of fun.

Another wonderful thing about this program is that it provides some background and associations for different characters making it easier to remember them.

This program guides you through writing both the simplified form and the long form of characters. And you learn now only individual characters, but also character combinations and go through sample phrases and sentences.

You can also hear different words, phrases and sentences.

The program contains some grammatical explanations as well as many quizzes, so you can measure your progress.