Customer Reviews

Fluenz Mandarin 1+2 Learning Suite + Mobile [Discontinued]

5 star:		(2)
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I learned a lot of Chinese with Fluenz. The program's not cheap, but it's comparable to Rosetta Stone which seemed to have very mediocre reviews. Also only slightly more expensive than the Pimsleur cds, which are audio only. I especially enjoyed the visuals and workouts, which worked great on my Mac.

Just finished using the Fluenz suite for mac--I loved it. Didn't waste any of my time teaching me useless vocab like the names of animals and flowers. Got to leaern some chinese that I might actually use, things like hotel, taxi, beer, and money. The virtual teacher Sonia has an attitude towards language learning that I think makes a lot of sense. Basically, since we are not babies anymore, we don't learn like them. Kinda obvious really. Instead the program is designed to help the user turn the knowledge of language that they already have into a way to quickly learn another. The sessions feature Sonia explaining Mandarin words and phrases, but also explaining why they are constructed the way they are--very useful. Sonia herself is not a native speaker of Chinese, but this doesn't bother me--its actually a positive. It is impossible to become proficient as a native speaker with a computer program, but Sonia's experience provides an excellent base from which I hope to build on in real-life settings. I bought the suite because I wanted to be able to take the sessions everywhere with me. Based on my experience, I strongly recommend the suite to anyone with a smartphone. All in all, an excellent product--great interface and very useful.