Ultimate Chinese (Mandarin) Beginner-Intermediate (CD/Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) [Unabridged] [Paperback]

Living Language (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1400021030 | ISBN-13: 978-1400021031 | Publication Date: August 24, 2004

Ultimate Mandarin Chinese has everything you need to learn Chinese from scratch or to revive the Chinese that you learned years ago. This course combines conversation and culture in an easy-to-follow, enjoyable, and effective format. It's the perfect way to learn Chinese for school, travel, work, or personal enrichment.

Ultimate Chinese Beginner-Intermediate includes:

•40 lessons in a comprehensive 416-page textbook:

Each lesson contains a lively and authentic dialogue, vocabulary, grammar and usage, step-by-step character writing, cultural highlights, and plenty of practice. The first ten lessons also include special pronunciation sections that will have you speaking right from the beginning. The book also contains review sections, readings, supplemental vocabulary sections, appendixes on essential Chinese grammar, and a Chinese-English/English-Chinese glossary.

•8 hours of recordings with an ingenious two-step approach:

Learn at home: Listen to the first set of recordings as you follow along in your textbook. Immerse yourself in Chinese while you listen and repeat with the all-Chinese recordings, and learn conversation, grammar, vocabulary, and more

Learn on the go: Then practice, review, and expand upon what you’ve learned with the second set of recordings. An instructor will guide you through each lesson, and since no reading is required, you can listen in the car, on the train, at the gym…anywhere!

Product Details

• Paperback: 393 pages
• Publisher: Living Language (August 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400021030
• ISBN-13: 978-1400021031
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 2.4 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #551,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best in class, August 8, 2005

By 

Christopher J. Deasy (Depends on the time of year) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ultimate Chinese (Mandarin) Beginner-Intermediate (CD/Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)

The only portion this series misses is the written, but that's not what they were aiming for. I have lived in Shanghai and traveled to various parts of China. The voices on CD are very realistic and relaxed, helping the student to understand ordinary speakers - rather than the "standard" Beijing pronunciation. I urge students to use the CD's alot along with the instructions. I found the grammar explanations far superior to any other text I have seen out there- and through 2 years of formal training and 2 practical (in the street) I have not seen a more balanced approach to subject and grammar (Much better than Pimsleur). My wife is Chinese and agrees with the points I have made here. She said there was a definite improvement after I studied these CD's (as opposed to my classroom instruction - not the teacher's fault though, in case she reads this).
Hope this helps!

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great program with some minor drawbacks, August 3, 2007

By 

M. Wang (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ultimate Chinese (Mandarin) Beginner-Intermediate (CD/Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)

I've been using Ultimate Mandarin Chinese for about three months now, and have gotten through about two-thirds of the course. The recordings are very clear, the book is very simple (no graphics or fancy stuff), but with comprehensive grammar explanations, some homework, and lots of useful dialogs and vocabulary.

If you complete the book and learn every lesson well, you can expect to be at the mid-intermediate level of speaking/understanding. You will know about 1500-2000 words, and you will be able to discuss pretty much any subject, although nothing in much depth. You'll also have a slight Beijing accent, and you'll have some brief exposure to Chinese daily life customs, and mainland Chinese culture. The book does not cover the southern accent or Taiwanese/Singaporean/etc. culture.

Although the book is marketed as beginner-intermediate, it moves very quickly. By lesson 15, the dialogs are spoken at a very fast, conversational pace, and the vocabulary starts to become specialized far beyond the standard tourist fare. The dialogs are excellent for listening comprehension because of the speed, while the vocabulary is pretty extensive. The book is also very grammar heavy, which serves as an excellent complement to Pimsleur Comprehensive Mandarin, which is heavy on speaking skills, but not grammar.

Where the course suffers, however, is in the voice actors, the editing, and the lack of writing. One of the male voice actors has a terrible, nearly incomprehensible accent that sounds awkward and foreign (he is the male speaker in Lesson 15), and each of the lessons that he's featured on is rather painful to the ear. I suspect that is not a native speaker of Mandarin and that, moreover, he is not a trained voice actor. Secondly, the editing of the text is rather poor--there are a number of typos, mostly with tone marks. Thirdly, the course is written almost entirely in pinyin, with only about 200-300 characters in the whole book. I have gotten around this problem by transcribing the pinyin into MSWord IME with the appropriate Simplified Characters, but this is a bit of a hassle, especially given the number of Chinese homonyms.

Overall, I think this is a great course, especially when used in conjunction with other materials (i.e., Pimsleur, Chinese in a Flash cards). With the inclusion of Hanzi and some edits, I think it could be even better. I don't think that it's the ultimate one-stop-shop for Mandarin language learning, but it is certainly worth the price and more.

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good start., May 15, 2005

By 

lingvistika (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ultimate Chinese (Mandarin) Beginner-Intermediate (CD/Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)

This is a good, thorough introduction to spoken Mandarin Chinese. The dialogues contain pertinent, everyday vocabulary, there is enough grammar to make it possible to comprehend how the sentences are constructed. There are two sets of CD tracks for each lesson. One set helps you practice the dialogues and vocabulary, and the other explains grammar, although I would recommend reading the full grammar explanations in the chapters as well as listening to the recorded ones. I find this book and CD set pleasant to use and easy to follow.