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I picked up The Third Ear's Cantonese 2 and 3 CDs at Dymock's in Hong Kong. Hadn't heard of it before. Had studied the Pimsleur introduction, various cassettes and written grammars, yet still had difficulty ordering in a restaurant.
I like this set because it drills for mastering basic sentence patterns, leading to the spontaneous generation of simple language. Not a lot of vocabulary... focuses more on getting a solid functional grasp of the vocabulary you do have.
In a three-minute track you might start by hearing a complete sentence... "Is there an ATM machine nearby?", eg. Then the components of that sentence are repeated, followed by various types of answers ("inside the shopping mall", "to the right of the restaurant", etc). The English is spoken first, then two to three repetitions of the target language, rather rapidly. Trying to speak the Cantonese before the native speaker can be challenging.
The music is for background... sounds like a Casio keyboard playing basic chordbook tunes. Some of the progressions, cadences and intro/exits are a bit distracting. Only rarely do the speakers speak in rhythm.
There is more opportunity to repeat and internalize the language with The Third Ear system. Useful.
- Original Release Date: May 9, 2008
- Release Date: February 4, 2009
- Label: Third Ear Publishing
- Copyright: 2009 Third Ear Publishing
- Genres:
- ASIN: B001U7Z4P8
- Customer Reviews: 1 customer review
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,202 Paid in Albums (See Top 100 Paid in Albums)
