Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The Michel Thomas method is a pleasant and effective way to learn languages. The different Thomas language series are popular in Europe, but less well known so far in the U.S. Dr. Goodman produced a series for Mandarin Chinese which makes this method accessible for modern Chinese. The approach is geared toward the speaker producing functional language in a organic way. To aid the student in learning tones, Dr. Goodman uses gesture and tone in an original way.

Other helpful aspects of the Thomas approach, including the gradual, encouraging, organized steps are included. As a learner, I feel refreshed instead of worn down. This is a very helpful and creative guide to an often daunting language for English speakers. I learned and remembered much more Chinese material than with other audio programs, with joy instead of boredom!

Highly recommended for beginners, or as a beginning/low intermediate refresher, or for language learning explorers.

This is a review for the combined foundation and advanced programs; I put it here because this course has the most reviews of the two. I gave two stars because it's a friendly, simple, quick program for learning some of the basics of this challenging language. There aren't a lot of good complete beginner programs out there, and this one can definitely be helpful, depending on one's language learning plan. Having said the positive, what follows is a detailed explanation of several things that I didn't like about it. ''

Although my level in Mandarin was intermediate when I did this program, I was about to drive across the US, and wanted a nice, not too challenging program to put in my CD changer. My only previous experience with MT was French. Unlike this course, French was an MT original. What I most liked about the French course was that it taught the majority of common French grammar in a short amount of time. And reading the ads for Mandarin, the same thing was promised. So I was greatly disappointed when I found out Mandarin teaches a much smaller percentage of grammar. I'm no expert, but I would guess where French teaches 90%, Mandarin only teaches 25%. So you might wonder, what do they do with all that extra time? The answer is, they teach tones. ''

Was choosing to teach tones instead of grammar the right decision? I can't say it's the wrong thing to do; you have to learn tones in the very beginning of your studies, so if this is the first thing you do it might make sense for you. And I can't say their method for teaching tones is bad, with their color and hand signal association, and constant correction throughout the course. But I had already learned tones and pinyin before taking the course, so I was hoping to find a course that was more grammar focused like the French course. As I mentioned, I can't say their method is bad, because I didn't use it. But it is without a doubt inadequate for someone attempting to use it as their sole source of tones. One will need to do further studies on tones - there is just not enough information offered here to make someone good at tones. For example, very little was mentioned about sandi. For example, it was not even explained what happens when two 3rd tones come together. Also, I actually can't remember if they explained about length and pitch of tones because these things weren't policed. It was somewhat painful listening to the male student say ni (you). Especially when he said nihao. He was told to use a third tone for ni, but listening to a native speaker use a 2nd tone, due to sandhi, so no wonder he was confused, and no wonder his voice was unsteady. ''

Another way in which the program is inadequate is general pronunciation. I don't remember any attempt to explain the difference between q and ch, or x and sh, for example. If there was an attempt, it certainly wasn't enforced. Of course, this concept is easier to grasp if the student has had an introduction to pinyin. But the distinction should have been made, and it should have been enforced. ''

Now you are getting an idea of my philosophy of how one should start Mandarin. I believe a firm grasp on pronunciation and pinyin are the most logical choice. This should include tones and tone sandhi. At that point, programs such as this one are much more useful. That doesn't make this program useless, but it does require one to know it's limitations, and it's proper place in one's entire language learning plan. ''

Regarding mnemonics, or memory aids. I use them often, especially when studying languages that have scripts which are quite different from English. So I have nothing against them. But I only use them for words that I have trouble remembering. The fact that this course provides mnemonics for every new word was somewhat annoying to me, but I can understand that words that are easy to remember for one person might be hard for another. What I don't understand is the low quality of the mnemonics. Most of the mnemonics were word-link type. For example, the mnemonic for shuo1 (speak): George Bernard Shaw was a great speaker. This is what I consider a good, fully closed mnemonic. I think of speak, which leads to the great speaker, George Bernard Shaw. Shaw sounds like shou1, so it is a fully closed loop. But there were many poorly thought out, wide open mnemonics. For example, the mnemonic for zhou1zi (table): You walk into a room in New York, and there's a jaw lying on the table. Although jaw, with the New York accent, comes close enough to zhou1zi to be an effective aid for me, there is no association between table and jaw, so the mnemonic is open. I'm not saying a mnemonic of this type won't work, I'm just saying that closed word-link mnemonics are much more effective than open, and ideally all of them should have been this type.

Now let's talk a little more about grammar. This was a huge disappointment to me. I expect Pimsleur to give me pronunciation, Learn in Your Car to give me vocabulary and sentence reinforcement, and Michel Thomas to give me grammar. When a program forgets it's purpose, as perceived by it's loyal following, people are going to be upset. So shame on you, any creator of Michel Thomas courses who doesn't try to cover the majority of grammar in the Basic + Advanced courses. You are using the good name of Michel Thomas to sell a very different product. Obviously Mandarin and French aren't the same, and require many study methods that are quite different. But that is no excuse for changing the main goal of the course - grammar.

The grammar that was covered here was covered quite well. But one thing in particular that really annoyed me was all the bragging about the way they teach particle "le". I agree that le is one of the most, if not the most, difficult piece of the common grammar puzzle for foreigners to learn. And I agree that what they teach works well. But they don't teach you all the major usages. In fact they only teach 2 of the 7 major usages. And of course, the worst thing about it is that we had to endure something like 5 minutes of victory dancing by the English speaking teacher. To bad they didn't use that time towards teaching more usages.

Measure words are also a shortcoming. Why they felt it was appropriate not to explain that different nouns may require different measure words is a mystery. And although it may be alright on some grammatical level to use ge4 for book, I have never heard a native speaker say this. In fact, if I don't say ben3, they tell me I'm wrong. In addition to ge4, they actually used bei4 for tea, etc. So they had more than one measure word, but failed to explain the relatively simple grammar point.

Another very annoying schpeel was about the word for hotel. Hotel is an interesting word in Mandarin, as several words have been used over the years, and it's not obvious to the western learner that the meanings of the characters add up to "hotel". So I wouldn't mind them using a long schpeel to explain this interesting phenomenon. However, I do mind that he declares the wrong word to be "hotel". He says it's fan4dian4, which literally means food store. In the past, this word was sometimes used for hotel, but is now used almost exclusively for restaurant. He says it's used for Hotel in Beijing. I checked with several close friends from Beijing, one of them my girlfriend, and they confirm that it is used for restaurant. What my friends, teachers, and personal experience tell me is

Hotel = jiu3dian4 or bin1guan3
Restaurant = fan4dian4 or can1ting1

These are the most common usages. You can use fan4dian4 for hotel, and often be understood by context, but it's not the most common usage, and they should not have spent 5 minutes claiming something false.

I also failed to understand/enjoy the occasional reference to Yiddish and Hebrew. I would guess that very few native speakers of English learners understand either of these two languages, so I fail to see the logic of including these references. If you're trying to lighten things up a bit by comparing with other languages, why not use some that are understood by a higher percentage of English speakers? Like Spanish, French or German for example.

In summary, I gave the course 2 stars because I did find some use for it, and I can imagine many language plans in which it could fit into nicely. However, I couldn't give it a higher score because it covered a relatively low percentage of common grammar. I also found the explanation of tones and pronunciation incomplete and the mnemonics poorly created. I was really annoyed regarding the bragging about the teaching of le, over usage of ge4, lack of explanations regarding measure words and the incorrect pronunciation of the word for hotel. Finally, I didn't appreciate the usage of languages that aren't understood by a high percentage of English speakers as a tool.

This product is exactly what it advertises. It's an entry level do-it-yourself Mandarin course that is very low stress. I listen to it while I'm jogging or in my car. Slowly but surely I'm building a Mandarin vocabulary.

I bought this set based almost entirely on the Derek Silvers review (above), after looking at Pimsleur as well. I am very happy with the purchase. It will be beneficial for any prospective purchaser to read the other reviews on this page (both positive and negative). Not only are they amusing, they are also enlightening.

There are four voices present on the recordings: Dr. Goodman directs the lessons; two students (one American male and one English female) speak in Mandarin the sentences requested by Dr. Goodman in English; and finally a (female) native Mandarin speaker correctly says the sentence, after correcting the tone and pronunciation of the students. Then the process repeats with a new word, or sentence, to speak in Mandarin. No reading or writing is involved.

First, the positives:

After the first 10 minutes of the first lesson, you will not be intimidated by Mandarin: there are not as many sounds as in English; there are four tones in Mandarin; the meaning of a sound depends on the particular tone used. Even without the all of the vocabulary and practice with tones provided by the 8 CDs, the removal of Mandarin's intimidation factor certainly justifies the purchase of this set.

You will learn to communicate simple sentences if you complete the eight discs: "Hello", "I am an American", "Where is the toilet?", "This one, not that one", "I will meet him tomorrow", and so forth. I think this is an incredible achievement!

Dr. Goodman is a good teacher. He is patient and provides reminders that are easy to recall in later lessons. I was sufficiently impressed that I just purchased the Advanced Mandarin series, which is also by Dr. Goodman.

The native speaker is wonderful. Frequently I wished that I could just hear her say the sentences requested by Dr. Goodman. The audio recording of the native Mandarin speaker's voice is superb.

The two students are also good teachers, though this is achieved indirectly. You will quickly learn how not to say a word, or how to properly utilize the tones, by recognizing the the mistakes of the students on the CDs. I certainly learned that I will never mispronounce the Mandarin word for "I" (thanks to the British speaker's repeated errors), and I will clearly use the tones (unlike the American's voice). The students also prompt you to focus on improving. After all, if they can do it, can't you?

The price is right. For $40 or $50 you will obtain an introduction to speaking Mandarin which is both effective and portable. It comes in a nice zippered case which is good for the car or in a suitcase or backpack.

You may proceed at your own pace. I repeated each disc two or three times before moving to the next one, without becoming bored with the repetition. I listened to the discs while in the car on the way to and from work (30 minutes each way), five days a week, and completed the entire 8 CDs in five or six weeks.

The negatives:

The range of the audio is extreme, both in pitch and volume. Dr. Goodman has an occasionally booming bass (low pitch) which may blast you from your chair, while the native Mandarin speaker has a much more subdued soprano (high pitch). Look out if you increase the volume to hear her and forget to decrease it before Dr. Goodman's next sentence! I sympathize with the producers of these CDs, but I think the loudness could have been equalized a bit better. I did note that the CDs sounded best when my equalizer was flat (turn bass and treble to '0'). With the bass and mid-range boosted, as mine were for listening to music in the car, Dr. Goodman is WAY too loud.

The American student is frequently morose and atonal. The British student's voice is much more pleasant to hear, though her persistent questions are a nuisance. Still, had I been recorded, how would I sound as I worked my way through the CDs? Perhaps better, perhaps not!

Neither or these negatives prevent me from giving the product 5 stars. The loudness can be adjusted by the listener, as indicated above. The students will help you learn to converse in Mandarin, even if they occasionally annoy you.

In conclusion, this is a very good product which is also very effective. Highly recommended.

I've just finished this new Michel Thomas Method Mandarin course, which was written and presented by Dr. Harold Goodman. Apparently, Dr. Goodman was the only person ever to be taught personally by Michel Thomas to understand his approach to learning. It really shows that he has mastered Michel's technique. The style of the course is what many of us have come to expect from Michel Thomas but with some truly unique and individual twists. I also learned to speak French, German, Spanish and Italian with this method (I'm a bit of a language junkie) but I have to say this one stands out for me for several reasons.

Firstly, as a native English speaker we are culturally programmed to believe that Mandarin is almost impossible for us to learn because it is a language which employs tones. The author totally dispels this myth in the first few minutes of the course. He takes English words and then lays a tone over the top to illustrate what they are and how they work. I thought this was very clever because I immediately felt more relaxed with the whole idea of learning Chinese after he did this. When he teaches you a new word he then employs an utterly brilliant method to help you remember both the pronunciation of the word and it's tone. Each word is given a mnemonic and each tone is assigned a hand-movement and a colour as a way of aiding your recall. The hand-movements seem to work on a subconscious level as I found myself making the correct movement automatically when saying the word.

The second reason I love the course is the pace. I never felt rushed or that either of the presenters were becoming irritated with the students. On the old courses Michel himself would often get a bit tetchy when one of the students was slow on the uptake. It must be said that both of the students on this course are excellent and get very few things wrong, usually a mispronunciation, which was corrected in a very gentle way. There is plenty of opportunity to practice each new word (and it's associated tone) before the course moves on. The students ask more questions than on the other courses I've listened to. This is beneficial because they were often questions about things I was thinking of myself. I never felt at any point I was being left behind by the instructor. So often in the past, with other language courses, I've found that they would tend to go from being very easy to impossibly difficult all of a sudden and I was left with a sense of hopelessness and then I would give up on the language. Here the progression is gentle but steadily increasing. It's also worth pointing out that a correct model for pronunciation is given by a native speaker. Often the old courses were criticised because Michel didn't speak with a native accent (except, arguably, for German).

The third reason I love this course is the humour of the presenter, I had a few laugh out loud moments with some of the mnemonics he used. Put it this way, I'll never forget the Mandarin words for `and' or `really' which standout to me as hilarious. There are a few other jokes which are esoteric and may be picked up by some sections of the listening public.

I'm a teacher of Finance and I recently had a Mandarin speaking student on one of the courses I was presenting. I thought to myself `I wonder if she will understand me if I use some of the Chinese I know'. So I gave it a try. She immediately played back to me what I had said to her in English to show that she understood and commented that my use of the tones was perfect. When she asked how long I'd been learning she refused to believe that it was only a few hours. This was a real boost to my confidence that in such a short period I was communicating relatively complex ideas and being understood by native speakers.

Finally, having finished this course I feel a tremendous sense of achievement. I have done something that most English speakers consider to be virtually impossible. I now have a good understanding of the sentence patterns and tones of Mandarin so that when I wish to take my studies further I will be able to do so. However, I've decided that I'm going to wait for the Advanced course that is promised by the publisher for 2008; I just can't imagine any other method being as good. I hope many people who read this review will also experience this truly unique learning method for themselves, I highly commend it to you.

There will be a Vocabulary couse published in Summer 2009 (UK Amazon Site)

I've read a lot of the comments here and I think this program is built for someone who isn't planning on studying Mandarin formally but needs to speak it on a fairly regular basis (like an ex-pat who moved to China because their spouse got a job here).

Pros: The visual keys to help you learn the tones. The "similar sounding" English words used to help in pronunciation. Word association to help remember vocab. It actually teaches you sentence structure so that if you learn other vocab (outside the program) you can easily swap out words to create new sentences. This feature is my biggest selling point as basic grammar is the building block to really being able to speak another language. This program gives you the "why" as in "why you have to say it this way and not that way".

One of my hardest times I have with language programs is that I'm a visual learner. So just hearing something doesn't stick in my brain. But this program's word association ("put the 'jaw on the table' = zhuozi shang or 'on the table' and zhuo sounds similar to jaw) and visual clues (like "blue finger pointing up" means use the second tone) makes remembering a lot easier.

They encourage you to only do a little bit a day and to repeat a lot. I found this method to be actually effective as I only did this when I was in the car (it helped to not get uptight with the bumper-to-bumper traffic here). In a couple of weeks I found myself advancing quite quickly. I'm working my way through the advanced set now and I've found that a lot of what is being taught in this program are things you may need in a normal conversation (which for other series, like Pimseleur, I found they only taught you things you may need while on vacation which doesn't help if you actually need to use this language regularly).

There are a lot of good programs out there and learning Mandarin is certainly a challenge. So I encourage to try several to see which type works best for you. This program should be considered as one of the top programs, but it's only good if the style works for you.

My one complaint is there isn't a level beyond "Advanced", as I certainly would like to see more of this program.

I love MT. Even his replacement is cool. The only problem w MT stuff is that they just don't give you some of the basics. Like numbers, asking for help...He just goes on and on and some of the stuff is really not pertinent to beginner lessons. I am in Hong Kong right now and don't hear any of the tonal stuff going on here. They speak Mandarin and Cantonese here. Couldn't find a Cantonese lesson in Ohio to save my life. These are difficult languages. I'm advanced in Spanish (love MT Spanish, French, and Italian) ok at French and Italian, all taught on my own by using MT and Pimsleur and [...]. I just can't give this a 5. Sorry MT!