Teach Me Chinese (Paperback and Audio CD): A Musical Journey Through the Day [Paperback]

Judy Mahoney (Author, Creator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Series: Teach Me Tapes

This title is suitable for children of ages 2 to 12 years. It contains a book & a CD. It offers a 45-minute CD and 20-page colouring book that includes all lyrics and translations.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 4. These two packages attempt to help English speaking Americans acquire the rudiments of the Chinese language in slightly different ways. Neither offers any information on the Chinese language with its many vast differences from English. Neither mentions whether the language on the tape is Mandarin or another dialect. Nor does either offer a phonetic equivalent to help when trying to reproduce sounds from the pinyin transliterations. Teach Me Chinese includes both spoken and sung Chinese. Certain basic vocabulary is introduced, then used in a song, which is sung in both English and Chinese. The text is about the activities of Marie, "A Musical Journey Through the Day," narrated clearly by a female voice. She introduces us to her house, family, and pets in Chinese. She gets dressed, then discusses parts of the body, days of the week, letters, numbers, and activities. Interspersed with these sentences, which are written in both Chinese characters and romanized pinyin and translated in the back of the booklet, are many songs familiar to American children, from "The Wheels on the Car" to "On the Bridge of Avignon," all sung in both English and Chinese. Listeners have the opportunity to acquire the proper pitch, an important factor in spoken Chinese, while listening to the narrative. The pace of narration is rapid and not easy to follow in the booklet's pinyin translation. But since children pick up languages aurally with ease, they should be able to learn a basic vocabulary with this package. Sing 'n Learn Chinese includes 22 songs on one side, sung only in Chinese with the music only on the other side. A female voice sings fairly clearly, with simple accompaniment. Many of the songs are familiar in English. By singing "Ten Little Friends," listeners learn how to count to ten in Chinese; with "This Is the Way," they learn the Chinese for washing the face, brushing teeth, combing hair. And so it goes, with many other subjects such as colors, family members, etc. Each song is written in the accompanying booklet in simplified Chinese characters, traditional Chinese characters, and romanized pinyin. There is also an English translation of and notes in an "Instructional Guide" on each selection. This kit can introduce the language and vocabulary as sung, but not as spoken. A comparison of the same song used on both cassettes shows different translations. Both packages offer parents and teachers a chance to open a window, if only a crack, into a very different language.?Sylvia Marantz, Norwich School, Hilliard, OH
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The most innovative preliminary foreign language introductory course for children that we have ever seen."

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Paperback: 20 pages
• Publisher: Teach Me Tapes; Com/Pap edition (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934633827
• ISBN-13: 978-0934633826
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars the good and the bad, August 18, 2004

By 

bilingual mom (Honolulu, HI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teach Me Chinese (Paperback and Audio CD): A Musical Journey Through the Day (Paperback)

I will attempt to give an objective review.
The good:
* Good concept: the book follows a little Chinese girl, Marie, throughout her day. On the way, you learn the Chinese words for family members, colors, clothing, body parts, days of the week, etc.
* Good Chinese pronunciation: Considering how many local dialects and accents there are in China, I am always concerned about pronunciation. I was pleased to find that the Chinese narrator speaks Mandarin with very good standard (Mainland Chinese) pronunciation. Note: standard Mandarin pronunciation in China and in Taiwan, though similar, have slight differences.
* Good English vocalists.

The bad:
* Poor Chinese vocalist: The narrator, who also does the singing, needs singing lessons! To be fair, she is not a terrible singer, she sings about as well as your average mom or grandma. But then again, your average mom or grandma would not be featured on a music CD, right? In several songs, she is off beat and off pitch.
* Hand-written book: Another thing I did not like is that the book is completely handwritten, so it is not very professional looking.
* Mistakes in the lyrics: I have found that the written Chinese lyrics do not always correspond to what is actually sung and some of the pinyin is incorrect.

Other neutral information:
* The songs are mostly standard western songs with make-shift translations. What bothers me is that many of the songs, such as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," have had standard Chinese lyrics for decades, yet the version in this CD sounds as if someone just decided to make up new lyrics. The translation tends to be more or less a direct translation of the English, which is probably what was intended. However, this also means that some of the songs sound very strange in Chinese.
* The Chinese lyrics are written only in pinyin without any Chinese characters, so I had to write them out myself.

Do I recommend this product? Well, that depends on who you are. I believe that this product is useful in introducing VERY YOUNG children to the sound of the Mandarin language. Since young children are a very forgiving audience, they probably won't object to the high-pitched, occasionally out-of-tune vocal performance. My bilingual 3-year-old son loves the CD. So if you have children under 5 and if you believe you can tolerate the singing, I would recommend this product. The product states that it is for kids ages 2 to 12, but I seriously doubt that any child above five years of age will enjoy the music.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Big Dissapointment!!!, October 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Teach Me Chinese (Paperback and Audio Cassette): A Musical Journey Through the Day (Audio Cassette)

As Chinese-Americans, we want our daugther to learn the Chinese language from the very tender age. After listening to the "Teach Me French" tape from the same serie, (What a wonderful job they have done on that one!) we couldn't wait to get our hands on the Chinese version. However, it only turned out to be a major disappointment! We loved the ideas of teaching the phonics in Pin Yin and the format of printing both Pin Yin and the real characters in the book. However, rhyming is very unfortunaly lost in the translation. It is so plain and dull! In quite a lot of places, the words are not even "singable" at all. Besides, the singing is unberably out of pitch and the rhythm is majorly wrong in some songs. I hope they will get it redone. It is such a huge difference between the French version and this one! Go figure!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ouch, My Ears!, October 24, 2004

By 

Laura De Giorgio "hypnotherapist" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Teach Me Chinese (Paperback and Audio CD): A Musical Journey Through the Day (Paperback)

English part on this CD is awesome - both the background music and the voices sound professionally done. The problem with Chinese is not that the vocalists are bad - for the most part they sound decent - but no matter how good voice you may have if you keep on trying to squish 5 - 10 syllables into a beat of music that can accommodate harmoniously only one or two - it's not going to work.

The music on this CD was created to accommodate English verses. When these English verses got translated to Chinese, the number of Chinese syllables that has to fit into the same music constantly comes out as being either not enough or too much.

it makes me wonder if musicians who were involved in creating these songs didn't have ears to hear how bad the combination sounds, or they didn't care, or thought that kids for whom it was made, would either not notice or care.

This recording could've been done beautifully if instead of using popular western music to accompany Chinese verses, they picked perhaps some Chinese music.

(...)