Customer Reviews

Learn in Your Car Mandarin Chinese: The Complete Lanugage Course [With GuidebookWith Carrying Case] (Chinese Edition)

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After owning these items for a few months, here is my brief review of each one for comparative purposes for those who are considering learning the language but are contemplating on which course to purchase. It should be noted that there is no one perfect method. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, hence no five-star ratings from me. I also recommend using a dictionary as a supplement.

PIMSLEUR MANDARIN. This course is completely audio. Each CD contains two half-hour units, no individual tracks on each lesson. I consider this method to be the easiest way for a beginner to start speaking. It is very non-intimidating, introduces the vocabulary slowly and gives an explanation of the words used in the dialogues. However, there is no written transcript so one is unable to verify the pronunciation visually although the speakers' voices are quite clear. Also, if the listener wants to review a certain section, he/she would have to remember which lesson it was played on. The overall vocabulary is limited but this method relies a lot on memory retention. Pimsleur is pricey and may not be the best value for the money when you consider the drawbacks. If this is a concern, then perhaps Conversational Mandarin at a much lower cost along with another course(s) reviewed below may better fit the bill for broadening the horizon. Still, the lessons are pleasant and less monotonous than other audio methods. Good for those who wish to spend the drives in the automobile more productively.

SPEAK IN A WEEK. This course contains four spiral-bound books with a CD to accompany each one. The books are visually appealing, brightly colored and the fonts used are very clear. The eight lessons in each book are spoken in complete sentences with an extensive vocabulary at the end of the book. The first eight tracks of the accompanying CD's cover each lesson, with the second half of the CD using some of the vocabulary at the end of the book to expand on the words learned in the lessons. Unfortunately, I have also discovered a few minor printing/recording errors on the books and CD's. Although the sounds of Pinyin are covered in writing, there is no audio to verify the pronunciation. The knowledge of Pinyin is a necessity and this may be a drawback for some users because there is no audio pronunciation for the majority of the vocabulary words. Since this is an audio/visual set, I consider it an overall good value at a modest price.

LEARN IN YOUR CAR. This course is made by Penton Overseas, the same makers of Speak in a Week. Like Speak in a Week, this is also an audio/visual course containing CD's and written transcripts, although the booklets in Learn in Your Car are not as visually appealing. This set focuses more on traveling rather than general conversation, sometimes using individual words/phrases instead of complete sentences to communicate. The audio is monotonous compared to Pimsleur and may be better used along with the booklets at home rather than in a car, but the advantage is the words on the CD's are color coded and covered in the written transcripts. This makes it an ideal supplement to Speak in a Week since you can also hear the pronunciation of simple words such as the numbers used in counting. The combination of the two Penton Overseas courses along with a dictionary can provide a solid foundation of the language at a total cost less than Pimsleur alone.

BEHIND THE WHEEL. This is my least favorite of all the methods. As others have stated, this is definitely not recommended for beginners. Like Pimsleur, this course is completely audio with no written transcripts but has the advantage of individual tracks, making it easier for short reviews. In my opinion, the presentation is not as pleasant to listen to as Pimsleur and although the vocabulary is more extensive, there are no individual word explanations which can be very confusing for beginners. There are also no explanation of formal vs. casual forms of introduction or when different words that have the same meaning are used for certain circumstances. This course may be a handy supplement for a lower intermediate user who has a basic understanding of the grammar and is better able to distinguish the individual words.

My background: I had taken a year of Chinese some years ago. I already knew the dreaded "four tones" of Mandarin, and I was already familiar with the pinyin spelling system. If you don't know what those are, you'll have great difficulty learning Chinese on audio only-- you'll have to start out reading the accompanying booklets for the important background. Because I already knew the basics, I listened to this course on audio only, twice, and rarely looked into the booklets; and found that satisfactory.

But if you need to get the basic background from the accompanying booklets, they should do the job. They provide all vocabulary written in pinyin, with new words in red when they're introduced. Handy. After the first few lessons you may not need the books as much.

As for the audio, it gets good marks for convenience. All 9 CD's come in a handy CD carrying case-- you can pull the case out of the box and immediately take it to the car, start listening right away. As a terrific bonus, there's an extra CD with all audio in MP3 format, so I could throw all the audio onto my MP3 player immediately, instead of having to do a time-consuming CD rip.

Most Mandarin audio courses start out with pronouncing component sounds and the four tones of Mandarin. This does not. Again, if you don't know what the four tones are, you'll be lost at sea; start with the book. Luckily, the Chinese speakers on this course pronounce their tones VERY CLEARLY-- especially the female speaker on the first 3 CD's, who has the easiest-to-interpret tones I've ever heard. After the first 3 CD's, other speakers have less clear tones, but still OK.

The course starts right away with words, then simple phrases, and gradually builds up more complex sentences. The course is very well-structured in that it generally teaches you a new word by itself before putting it in a sentence. In a few cases they don't define the word separately first, but it's almost always clear from the context. Not all language courses stick to this rule, but this one does almost always, so they get points for structure.

There are NO DIALOGUES. This means the course won't build up your listening comprehension as much as a course with dialogues where people talk at their normal (that is, fast) speed. But anyway, this course is called "Learn in Your Car", and in my experience, I can't drive at the same time while trying to parse a fast dialogue in a foreign language. I think that's dangerous. When you're driving, I think you should stick to parsing one slow sentence at a time, and leave the dialogues at home.

The phrases and sentences gradually get more complex, but never that complex. They give you quite extensive vocabulary in words that travelers need: dealing with hotel rooms, banks, buying a train ticket, getting directions, etc. Unlike most out-of-date courses, this one gives you vocabulary for computers and the internet, so you can ask, "Where's the nearest internet cafe?" and "How do I print this?" Bonus points for that.

My main complaint is that they keep the grammar pretty simple. I learned almost no new grammar (with one exception, see below). In particular, they don't teach:
A. Complicated questions. They breeze through the basic question words (corresponding to "who", "why" etc.) too quickly. I doubt most listeners will be able to ask "who? why?" questions after listening to this course once. They do cover "where" pretty well and "when" once or twice.
B. For yes-or-no questions, they almost always use the question form with "ma" at the end. Very rarely do they use the common verb-"bu"-verb construction, and on the rare occasions they do, it's only the simplest form; e.g. there are no questions of the form "Ni shi-bu-shi-huan ka fei?"
C. No clauses corresponding to "if", "then", "because", "therefore". Forget about expressing complex philosophical ideas.
D. Conjunctions. There are two Chinese words for "or", an "or" for questions and an "or" for statements. I believe I heard these words ONCE in the whole course, and the important grammatical distinction was not explained. Likewise "and" goes by very fast.

On the plus side, Level 3 (CD's 7 and up) starts out with many different grammatical forms for expressing the past tense.

PROS:
Convenient, love the disk of MP3's;
You can (mostly) listen to it audio only, rarely looking into the books;
Speakers pronounce clearly;
Well-structured, with a gradual increase in vocabulary and complexity;
Vocabulary is truly useful for travelers, with lots of hotel, bank, and transportation terms, plus handy computer and internet vocabulary.

CONS:
No audio-only introduction on the four tones of Mandarin;
Simple grammar (see above);
Simple questions only;
They teach you how to order in a restaurant, but don't teach you words for most foods (no "chicken", "egg", "beef", etc.);
No dialogues (this may be a positive, if you want to drive safely while listening).

I am giving this course four stars because the pros outweigh the cons. Plus... other Mandarin courses I've heard have worse defects than this, and it's all relative.

To sum up: this is a good course if you're traveling to China and just want to rent a hotel room, change money, cash a check, buy a train ticket, direct a taxi driver, etc. Forget about expressing personal feelings or complex ideas or concepts.

I bought Learn In Your Car Mandarin partly on the basis of good reviews here, but also because I had used the Spanish version of the program to learn that language a few years ago and am now fairly fluent.

As is well known, Learn In Your Car consists of CDs and booklets. The format is very simple. An expression is stated in English, then there is a space for you to say the Chinese, then the expression is repeated in Chinese, another space for you, the same expression in Chinese a second time, then another space. That is basically it. There are 9 CDs and about 10 lessons or groups of phrases on a CD. The booklets provide a hard copy of the text in both languages.

Right now I have been working with CD1 for about 6 weeks and have mastered most of it. I probably need about one more week before I move on to CD 2, though I have listened to CD2 a bit when I was getting bored with CD1. Now if you need someone to ask a Mandarin speaking hotel receptionist for a room without a bathroom, I am your man. And I can count from 1 to 100. And I can tell a taxi driver to take me to the airport or train station. So that is a start.

Beginning in Chinese is incredibly different, because even the Latin alphabet version of Chinese called Pinyin is incredibly difficult and the letters often bear no resemblance to the sounds represented in European languages. I had such a hard time getting started that I did try some other programs which I am continuing to use for a bit of variety.

Pimsleur has a reasonably priced introductory set and is quite good for learning basic conversation. I had previously used the Haitian Creole set and enjoyed that. The problems with Pimsleur are 1) there is no written text, which is a huge problem with Chinese, not so much with Haitian, and 2) it is very slow going, 3) it costs an arm and a leg.

Instant Immersion Mandarin by Topix is a budget priced set of discs that has speech recognition, but I haven't found it very useful. There is no book. The publicity material for the course claims it is similar to Rosetta Stone, but much cheaper. However I have not used Rosetta Stone, so I don't know. Rosetta Stone is outside my budget.

Rocket Languages Mandarin is an online course that is rather more expensive. I bought it for almost a hundred dollars because I felt I needed some instruction and explanations beyond what Learn In Your Car offers. There are audio lessons you can download to an mp3 player or computer, games for your computer, exercises, lessons on Chinese culture and manners, grammar, and overall it is pretty useful. The English male presenter, Dave Lewis, is a little overenthusiastic for my taste, but overall the course is pretty good and would be an excellent resource to use in a classroom or group learning situation.

Downside is that there is no book and if you want a set of CDs, they are very expensive, more than double the online course.

A very nice course I got free from my online library, but you can also download it for a few dollars is the Collins Easy Language Learning Mandarin Chinese course, which I would also recommend as good value. I don't have the book, but apparently there is one available. The lessons have explanations in English, plus exercises that invite you to repeat phrases. Each brief chapter focuses on one key phrase and other associated words.

I would mention that another useful resource is the Google translator program, available free online, which translates from English into Mandarin, and gives you a playable audio version, Chinese characters either simplified or traditional, and Pinyin. You could also use this Web site to construct your own flash cards, laminated cheat sheets, or whatever you need.

I like to use all of these courses for a bit of variety and entertainment, and to hear some English or American voices talking about learning Chinese, but I also find that for the real work of learning Chinese, I keep coming back to Learn In Your Car, because I can drive for hours repeating phrases over and over and over again until they are burned into my head, and then when I stop I can still hear those phrases in my head, and I start building variations on them to ask for different things. In this situation one thing I like about the program is that it is ALL practice. There is no listening to chatter and explanations in English. Rocket Languages has a bit too much padding and classroom chitchat, but Learn In Your Car is all business.

That is the real key to an effective language learning course. You have to find something that you can spend many hours working with, because without the input of time and repetition, you won' t really get there. This course seems to be working for me, but whether you will like it depends on you. All I can say is that it is extremely difficult to get started in Chinese, because it is so different from any European language. The Pimsleur is helpful to get some momentum, but I find Learn In Your Car is the most effective course overall for learning the language. (But then, I am in the car a lot, where there are no distractions.)

Incidentally the woman Mandarin speaker on the Learn In Your Car Mandarin is the clearest and easiest to mimic of all the courses I have mentioned, and the recording quality is crystal clear.

One possible criticism of Learn In Your Car Mandarin is that the early discs are rather tourist oriented and don't teach you how to seduce Chinese maidens by asking them for a meal at your place--as per Pimsleur--or discuss politics. I don't find this too much of a problem, because it seems to me that when I eventually arrive in China, whether for vacation or work, I would most likely initially be dealing with airports, trains, changing money, hotel rooms, getting something to eat or drink, greeting people etc. and that these basics would be useful. I would also want to know the word for toilet and recognize the Chinese signs for Ladies and Gents so as to avoid any possible faux pas. No good arriving at a hotel and being able to discuss the weather with the receptionist, but not able to request a room without a bathroom (or with a bathroom).

I do not have any kind of commercial connection with the manufacturers of this course. I shall try to update this review in a few months to say what progress, if any, I am making, because, although one may comment in all kinds of ways about the structure of the program, the only metric of any value is whether you succeed in learning to speak, understand, read, and write the language in question.

Qing ba zhe shencha hao chengi. Wan shang hao!

A great set of learning discs for Chinese. This is the language of the future. Everyone concerned about the world of economics should learn Mandarin.