Speak Mandarin Chinese For Beginners The Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program) (Michel Thomas Series) [Audio CD]

Dr. Harold Goodman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0071547363 | ISBN-13: 978-0071547369 | Edition: 1

More than 1 million Michel Thomas programs sold worldwide!
Learn Mandarin Chinese--no passport required!

No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize--ever! You will go from the basics to proficiency in no time with this complete course. Includes eight 60-minute audio CDs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Harold Goodman studied with Michel Thomas for nearly ten years learning two new languages as well as the Michel Thomas Method™ of language instruction, which he then used to teach others, with great success.

Michel Thomas was head of the Michel Thomas Language Centers and taught languages for over fifty years, primarily in New York, Beverly Hills, and London. Over a period of twenty-five years he developed a unique and revolutionary learning system that made him the world's leading language teacher. He has taught celebrities, diplomats, dignitaries, academics, and business executives.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (March 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071547363
• ISBN-13: 978-0071547369
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #594,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born: New York City.

I have been blessed with some incredible teachers.

Michel Thomas - I met him in 1995 and was trained by him shortly up until his death in 2005, to teach, learn how to learn and to design courses. Truly a master teacher in so many ways. He was incredibly generous in taking me under his wing and sharing all that he did.

Robert Fulford, DO. A master physician and healer. Described in detail in the second chapter of 'Spontaneous Healing' by Andrew Weil. He was my teacher and friend for close to ten years.

John Sarno, MD. Dr. Sarno has been one of my heroes for many years. I have spent time with him and his patients in NYC. He has been extremely generous in sharing his knowledge with me. Using his approach I have been able to help a lot more people than before I met him.

There are many more. I hope to share what I have learned from these and other incredible teachers in future writings, teachings, seminars, classes and CD/DVDs.

I have graduate degrees from the University of Chicago ( Psychology and Comparative Religion, Library Science) and the Kirksville ( Missouri) College of Osteopathic Medicine. My undergraduate degree was in Hebraic Studies.

Overseas studies include Taiwan ( Chinese), Israel ( Hebrew) and the UK (Oxford Institute of Yiddish Studies) among others.

I have taught physicians and medical students in various venues over the last 20 years.

I have worked full-time as an osteopathic physician in general private practice since 1991. I originally came to the Washington,DC area to complete post-graduate residency training at the National Rehabilitation Hospital. Previous to this I had done a general internship (medicine, surgery, etc.) at a hospital in South Bend, Indiana.

I live with my partner, John, and our dog, Daisy, in rural Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST place to start! Mandarin needs more explanation than "listen and repeat"., April 13, 2008

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Derek Sivers "cdbaby" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speak Mandarin Chinese For Beginners The Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program) (Michel Thomas Series) (Audio CD)

If you've never learned any Mandarin and looking to start, this Michel Thomas method is BY FAR the best option. Even 5 minutes into it, you're going to be excited. I'm absolutely amazed.

I've tried the Rosetta Stone method, but it's discouraging because after many hours of clicking on things, you only know disjointed words like blue, yellow, jump, eyes, woman, shirt. Proud you know them, but after 8 hours, when a friend asks, "Hello, how are you?" - you're stumped.

I usually love the Pimsleur's method, where for Spanish and Japanese it was great. Starts with the most useful conversational phrases, "repeat after me", and breaks them down syllable-by-syllable.

But when I tried Pimsleur's Mandarin, I wanted to quit just 5 minutes into it. The "repeat after me" style doesn't work when the very basics of the language need more up-front explanation. In fact the very FIRST MINUTE of Pimsleur's Mandarin had me stumped. I kept rewinding it and trying to imitate it, but couldn't. My mouth didn't know how to make that sound! I gave up.

So when Tim Ferris (Four Hour Work Week), a language-learning addict, highly recommended the Michel Thomas method as the best way to start a language, I was excited for this Mandarin program.

It's even better than I expected.

It's really like taking private lessons with a friend who patiently teaches you the basic building blocks of the Chinese (Mandarin) syllables, first. They really explain why it's that way, and how to understand it, so that you don't feel you have to memorize - because you really get it! Every time a new sound or new grammar structure is introduced, they stop to explain it in a way that will stick with you forever.

AFTER finishing this course (8 audio CDs, about 10 hours total), I'm excited to go back to the Pimsleur method, to memorize conversational phrases, now that I really undertstand the basics of the language.

Point being : START HERE. Then if after this program you are still excited, go with Pimsleur's Mandarin next, but definitely do not start with Pimsleur's.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good foundation, presentation a matter of taste, April 24, 2008

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Schriftsteller - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Speak Mandarin Chinese For Beginners The Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program) (Michel Thomas Series) (Audio CD)

I've now purchased three of the "Michel Thomas" CD sets based largely on the merits of a single set: "Michel Thomas Teaches French." Though I had six years of French in high school and college (where I was president of the French Club), I was rusty and needed a quick refresher. The Michel Thomas French set was exactly what I needed. In fact, the CDs taught me a few things about the French language that I had never known before.

Based on my experience with the French set, I purchased "Michel Thomas Teaches Spanish," and found that it wasn't nearly as good. It was okay, and it was still light-years better than Berlitz, but it lacked the insight and fluency of the French set. It wasn't hard to guess why: Michel Thomas was an outstanding teacher of French because he *was* French. He was a merely adequate teacher of Spanish because (a) he was a good teacher in general and (b) he was reasonably competent in Spanish.

My third Michel Thomas set is Mandarin Chinese, a CD set from which the now-deceased Michel Thomas is absent. In his place, we get Harold Goodman, whose only qualification of which we're informed is that he studied language teaching with Michel Thomas. Goodman serves less as a teacher than as a moderator of the sessions, which also include two students and one native Mandarin speaker who demonstrates the pronunciation.

Having had a semester of Mandarin at university, and having more recently worked through the first Pimsleur Mandarin course and the Oxford CDs by Kan Xian, I was eager to find out if the "Michel Thomas" course would be great like the French or so-so like the Spanish. On balance, I would say it's more like the Spanish.

The set does have some excellent features. Most important, the Mandarin speaker enunciates the Chinese words very clearly, carefully, and slowly. Pimsleur, which I regard as the gold standard for commercially-published courses in spoken language, has speakers who say the Chinese words much too rapidly, at least for my ears. The speaker on the Thomas CDs, on the other hand, takes great care to make sure that you "get" each syllable and associated tone. Another good idea, apparently part of "the Michel Thomas method," is to teach kinesthetic memory aids such as finger patterns to represent different tones. The fingering can seem a little hokey at times, but it's a sensible teaching technique.

The Thomas CDs do make some simplifications in order to teach more effectively. For example, Chinese words have associated tones, meaning that variations in pitch determine the meaning of each word. The word "ni" (you) is normally pronounced with a falling-rising tone, as is the word "hao" (good). However, if two falling-rising words occur in sequence (as in "ni hao" for "hello"), the first word changes from a falling-rising tone into a rising tone, while the second word stays a falling-rising tone. At least in the early lessons, the Thomas CDs don't mention that the tones of words can change based on the context. I'm sure that the authors made a deliberate decision to simplify the issue, because despite Mr. Goodman's offhand dismissal of the idea that Chinese is hard, Chinese is indeed very hard for Westerners. Its grammar of nouns and verbs is completely different from European languages - there are no verb tenses, for example - and the written language is not phonetic. The tones are probably the hardest part. Michel Thomas said in his own CD programs that his goal was not to make students fluent but to help them "get the ball over the net." With that goal in mind, such simplifications are a good idea.

On the other hand, much of the charm of the original Thomas courses came from Thomas himself: crusty, irascible, occasionally frustrated, and most of all, Gallic as hell. Whether one likes Mr. Goodman's version really depends on how much one warms to Goodman himself and his thick New Jersey accent. I found his anecdotes and humor a little annoying, which diminished my enjoyment of the course: of course, such judgments are subjective. I also wondered if Mr. Goodman had any background in Chinese, even though the native speaker handled most of the Mandarin.

Overall, it's a decent course for what it attempts. It provides much more hand-holding when it teaches fundamentals than does Pimsleur, but teaches (necessarily, at 8 CDs) a much smaller subset of Mandarin. If one doesn't mind Mr. Goodman, it's an excellent course to work through before graduating to Pimsleur or some other more advanced course.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for starting Mandarin... but not for finishing, October 21, 2008

By 

G. BARTO (Los Gatos, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speak Mandarin Chinese For Beginners The Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program) (Michel Thomas Series) (Audio CD)

I'm a fan of the Michel Thomas courses in general, and there are some very fine things about this course, taught by Harold Goodman. The best thing about the course is its work with tones. Many courses simply give you a short explanation of tones, then turn you loose with Mandarin and hope for the best. Even Pimsleur, while asking if you matched the tone of the speaker, doesn't give you a good way of knowing if you did. The Michel Thomas Mandarin course is taught to two students - you're the third student, sitting in and hitting the pause button to take your turn to speak. Between the guidance given for tones and the corrections given to the two students on the soundtrack, this is one course where you'll have a good idea if you're getting your tones right.

The other nice thing about Michel Thomas Mandarin is it follows the old pattern of using a few words to introduce a new structure, then adding words and building on structures to increase the range of things you can say. However, because Mandarin is so different from English, it can be pretty slow-going. For me, one of the fools who started learning while believing tones weren't that important, this course has been fantastic for pronunciation. I work in a language school and while I say very little in Mandarin, when I do offer a word or two, the teachers always compliment me on my tones. However, for content, this course teaches less even than most Michel Thomas courses (which are better for structure than vocabulary). So while this course is a great place to start, when you're done you'll have a foundation for learning to speak Mandarin well, not a solid command of the language.

If you're just starting Mandarin, this is the place to start. If you already speak Mandarin but the tones have always eluded you, the two-CD Getting Started kit would be worth your time. But once you're done with this course, you'll want to invest in Pimsleur for spoken Mandarin (expensive but excellent, except that it doesn't cover Mandarin pronunciation well) or Living Language's Ultimate Chinese (for written and spoken but less hand-holding) according to your plans for the language.