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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Great review and practice!
In my Chinese studies so far, I've used Pimsleur, New Practical Chinese Reader, Learn in Your Car Chinese, Instant Immersion Chinese, and a live tutor. The most direct comparison is Instant Immersion as it is also a low cost listen-and-repeat course.
At this point, since Penton Overseas has not yet released Level 2 and 3 of Learn in Your Car Chinese, Instant...
Published on March 8, 2006 by Fyrdrinc
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Behind the Wheel Chinese is Far Better
Learn in Your Car Chinese is a good basic course but it has several major defects.
What bothers me about the course is the obvious lack of sentence building techniques.
It is not bad with vocabulary and 'canned sentence' learning.
I must recommend you try Behind the Wheel Chinese in addition to or in lieu of Learn in Your Car Chinese.
The...
Published on June 2, 2006 by veronica
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Great review and practice!, March 8, 2006
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
In my Chinese studies so far, I've used Pimsleur, New Practical Chinese Reader, Learn in Your Car Chinese, Instant Immersion Chinese, and a live tutor. The most direct comparison is Instant Immersion as it is also a low cost listen-and-repeat course.
At this point, since Penton Overseas has not yet released Level 2 and 3 of Learn in Your Car Chinese, Instant Immersion covers more. The materials seem to be logically organized in both sets. However, Learn in Your Car is much better in my opinion. It comes with a beautiful transcript, including different colors for new words to make it easy to follow. The script includes the English, the Pinyin pronunciation, and the Chinese characters. Instant Immersion does not come with a transcript. Further, Learn in Your Car's speakers seem to have a more authentic accent and pleasant voices (I've found the female Chinese speaker's voice in Instant Immersion to be grating).
Overall, it has been very effective in reinforcing words and sentence patterns covered elsewhere and in introducing a few new words as well. Can't wait for levels 2 and 3!
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Behind the Wheel Chinese is Far Better, June 2, 2006
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
Learn in Your Car Chinese is a good basic course but it has several major defects.
What bothers me about the course is the obvious lack of sentence building techniques.
It is not bad with vocabulary and 'canned sentence' learning.
I must recommend you try Behind the Wheel Chinese in addition to or in lieu of Learn in Your Car Chinese.
The presentation is far better, you learn to speak your own sentences and you get a lot more vocabulary for the money.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Very Effective Series, June 30, 2007
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
I have used Level one for a year and Level two for six months and have found them to be excellent. The language is clear and sequential, often recycled, with ample pauses for repetition, and the compact guide book is well done, too. (I have been an ESL teacher for 28 years and speak fluent Japanese, so I know a little about language learning.) I don't know how this series would be in isolation since I study Chinese twice a week with a native speaker and focus only on conversation, as do the CDs obviously. Also, I have not tried other "In your car" Cds. One thing for sure, when I am going from point A to point B in my car, it is not time wasted; these CDs help me greatly to learn a difficult but important language. I am more than satisfied with my purchase and look forward to Level three.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Should be subtitled "for travel" ..., November 30, 2008
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
I drive a lot, so learning or listening to things while I'm driving is very good use of my time. This series is primarily for travelers. If you want conversation, this is NOT for you! It barely covers "hi", "thank you", etc.) before it jumps into how to ask where the train station is, or which hotel, etc.
The booklet may be helpful, but you are listening to this CD in your car, the booklet is useless, as it's dangerous to read and drive at the same time. So, what is the point (of it in a "Learn In Your Car" series)?!
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Language learning in a car..., April 26, 2007
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
I was quite excited to begin learning Mandarin in my car, however, I quickly realized this technique was not one for me. If you cannot learn without some sort of visuals, then this method is also not for you. While the words were clearly stated, I had a horrible time trying to retain anything. Also, as I did not intend on traveling to China any time soon, asking for directions to the bathroom or how to change over my money seemed irrelevant.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
So-So for beginners, July 7, 2009
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
I bought this CD to learn some Mandarin in hopes to be able to understand some conversation. However, it is very difficult to retain any of the vocabulary without understanding the basic of the different tones used in Mandarin. This CD is good to try and learn and memorize a set of vocabularies, but it wasn't useful for real understanding in conversation.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5 stars, for the money., June 6, 2008
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
I'm trying to teach myself Chinese. Learn Chinese in Your Car is a nice tool to help with vocabulary. Using the 30-minute commute times that I have to-and-from school/work, I figured it'd be productive to try building my Chinese vocabulary. This looked like a good buy, and so far, I've been very satisfied.
Don't buy this thinking it's a be-all-end-all "learn Chinese NOW" course. It's very incomplete as far as sentence structure or grammar. I recommend thins along with Beginner's Chinese by Yong Ho and Reading and Writing Chinese (Simplified Character Edition) by William McNaughton to anyone trying to teach themselves this language.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
terrible, September 27, 2009
This review is from: Learn In Your Car Chinese: Mandarin (Foreign Language)(Level 1) (Chinese Edition) (Audio CD)
Unlike the other Learn in Your Car programs I've used (Japanese and French), this one is terrible. Now please let me explain, because I have a specific way of using these, which may be different from others. I listen to the program in my car, and repeat. I don't use the transcripts, and I don't make an effort to master a lesson before going on to the next. I expect it to teach me its contents by merely playing it in my car.
So the quality of the recording, and the graduated nature, or gradual building of the program is crucial. This program builds alright, so that is not the problem here. However, recordings must be realistic, or they are useless to me. Part of being realistic is their speed, and therein lies the problem. These are painfully slow. Learn in your car is not the only Mandarin program I've heard that uses incredibly slow pronunciation, so in that respect it wasn't a surprise. But instead of being a way to reinforce old vocabulary, reinforce grammar, and learn new vocabulary, like it's other programs, this program tries to teach very basic, and very bad, pronunciation by speaking unnaturally slow.
My Chinese friends' most common complaint about foreigners Chinese is that they speak too slowly, and over pronounce. So the gravity of this teaching error shouldn't be underestimated.
I have learned basic pronunciation separately, and I was expecting this program to be at the same level of the others. So I was terribly disappointed to receive something so useless. IMO, this program reinforces bad (way too slow) pronunciation and should not be used for anything.
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