Customer Reviews
Beginner's Mandarin - By: R. Morton, 05 Jan 2009 
This book was a requirement as part of my Chinese module at university. The book is good, showing good examples of pronunciation & also the chinese wordsin english writing, however the book lacks the chinese charactors & for that reason I don't think this book is very good.
It would work well for someone just wanting to speak the language, but if you are going there on holiday & need to read signs or write things down etc. this book is not for you!
Fantastic - By: Mr. S. Iles, 21 Oct 2007 
A great way to learn Chinese. I found it fantastic.
There are no translations of the conversations, but all the words & grammar you need to use are given, so you can work out the translations, this makes it a great learning tool.
good but some problems - By: Mark Anthony Larkin, 20 Jun 2007 
Overall I think the course is good. I also find it quite enjoyable. One problem I have with it is that there are no translations of the conversations.
Excellent - By: Mei-Ying, 17 Jun 2007 An incredibly helpful course covering a wide variety of topics. I thoroughly enjoyed using it & would recommend it to anyone who wants to begin learning Mandarin.
A good introduction to learning chinese - By: , 18 Feb 2004 This course provides a good beginning to those wishing to learn chinese with no previous foreign language experience. It moves slowly & steadily, explaining every step along the way & helping to build your confidence as you move through the chapters. It covers not only spoken mandarin, butin the later chapters begins to tackle written mandarin & also provides cultural tips throughout the book. The dialogs are comprehensive & helpful, & are taken slowly to prevent you being too overwhelmed.
Problems can be encountered, however, when using this as your sole source of learning - many of the words & phrases are repeated on the tape only once, giving you only one source of reference. This does make it difficult to distinguish the particulars of one specific phrase from the general intonation, something which is imperitive when learning Mandarin (it has 4 different vocal tones, each one changing the meaning of the word if pronounced differently).
The course does provide a perfect introduction to Mandarin, & i would recomend it to anyone wanting to learn if usedin conjunction with classes or regular conversational speaking.
