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+--- Thread: Pimsleur or Chinesepod? (/thread-13315.html)
Pimsleur or Chinesepod? - Kewickviper - 2012-08-28
Hi Everyone!
I have studied Japanese for the last few years and feel like learning a new language! I have decided to learn Mandarin since they share a lot of the same characters and history/culture and also I love the way it sounds when spoken. At the moment my Mandarin knowledge consists entirely of "ni hao" and "xie xie".
I am not interested in learning the characters and grammar yet as the thought of doing a harder version of RTK1 is too daunting, so I just want to learn it casually through audio in my free time when I am not studying Japanese.
Which method do you think would be best suited for this? I have heard that Pimsleur and Chinesepod are both good audio methods, but I haven't had any experience from either. I've read a couple of reviews from Pimsleur, but they seem to be mixed with some people claiming it's amazing and some people saying it's a waste of time.
Any help would be wonderful.
Pimsleur or Chinesepod? - KanjiDevourer - 2012-08-29
I can't help you decide between Pimsleur and Chinesepod, but I started doing reps with listening only cards of the sentences from zhongwen red/blue/green (zhongwenred.com). I would recommend to use a grammar resource as well then, because their explanations are not always complete and consistent, but so far I like it a lot and an advantage to Pimsleur/ChinesePod, I think, is that you can do it at your own pace. I found it very helpful to look at the phonology of Mandarin at wikipedia first, because I couldn't always hear the differenence in the x/q/j/s/z/c/zh/ch/sh... sounds. I've got some excercises specifrically aimed at tones and sounds as well (from this beautiful forum of course!), so if you need them just shout.
Pimsleur or Chinesepod? - kame3 - 2012-08-31
+1 for Zhongwen Red. There is a good Anki deck with audio. I finished it, and now I am doing a (so far amazing) listening-only Chinese sentences deck (you can find it here: http://forum.reviewingthehanzi.com/viewtopic.php?pid=179779#p179779).
Also +1 for looking at Chinese phonology. Chinese is very hard to pronounce correctly in the beginning (for me anyway), and it really helps to know what aspirated consonants are and where to put your tongue. If you are able to, I would try to find a Chinese language exchange partner at least for the beginning stage to correct bad pronunciation (and tones of course).
You seem to imply that you already did RTK1 and have some experience reading Japanese. If that's the case, there's no need (I think) to do RTH. You'll be amazed how much you can already understand (with a little bit of grammar explanation), and you have all the tools to learn the characters you don't know yet.
So I would recommend not to focus solely on audio, because (for me) listening (and understanding) Mandarin is very difficult, and you need some more knowledge of pronunciation etc. to understand it. Besides, having the experience of working with Kanji gives you a huge advantage when learning Mandarin that you can utilize. So I would start with reading cards in Anki and then after some time start with listening cards.
Of course, this is just my opinion and you should do whatever suits you best.
EDIT: Edited link, because the old upload links of the Core decks were dead.
Pimsleur or Chinesepod? - horakely - 2012-10-22
I haven't tried Pimsleur Chinese, but about a year ago I did the first few lessons of Pimsleur for Czech, so I only have a general idea of how the system works.
I have studied many Chinesepod lessons and I think they are a lot more interesting and useful. Pimsleur is incredibly boring, in my opinion, but one advantage is that you have progressive levels. In chinesepod there are hundreds of lessons under "elementary" "intermediate" etc. and they do not go in any order, which is nice to find lessons that are useful and interesting to you, but some people like the progressive lessons.
Chinesepod can also be much cheaper if you buy monthly. They offer discounts often too, I bought a month for $1 (usually $20 or $30 I think) and downloaded as many lessons as I need for now.
Chinesepod also has the advantage of including transcripts and some other visual resources. I don't think Pimsleur has anything like this, I borrowed the discs from my Dad so I'm not positive if there is a book or something also.
Anyway, it can depend on preference, but I think chinesepod is a lot more enjoyable and helpful. Hope that helps.
Also, popupchinese.com is another good podcast lesson website, they are really fun and interesting, they also have short stories and advanced discussions. You have to pay $100 for a year to get access to the transcripts and stuff, but ALL of the audio is completely free. I listen to these on my phone for free while I walk to class and study chinesepod at my apartment with the transcripts.
Hope this helps.
Pimsleur or Chinesepod? - bflatnine - 2012-10-24
Between the two, I'd definitely say to go with ChinesePod. But if your Japanese is good enough, you may want to go with something for Japanese speakers, since this will take advantage of your knowledge of kanji.
I'm doing the same thing but in reverse, using Japanese textbooks for Taiwanese students. The variety available is so far beyond what's available for English speakers, so it's very much worth it. I have a book called 《第一本快速開口說的日語200句型》 (something like "My First 'Quickly Open Your Mouth and Speak' Book of 200 Japanese Sentence Patterns", though it sounds snappier in Chinese), which of course teaches 200 basic sentence patterns (JLPT N5 and N4 level), with example sentences and dialogues for each, all with audio. One popular form of language "textbook" here is essentially a list of a few thousand sentences (some with up to 10,000), usually grouped by situation and/or JLPT level (because this is Taiwan, everything must be geared towards a test of some sort), and always with audio. They almost always have a native-speaking author, so they tend to be of good quality. I've gotten some of my Japanese friends to check them, and they've all said they contain natural, standard Japanese.
And the key point is, they don't assume I'm afraid of kanji like most Japanese textbooks for Westerners. The Japanese text is there in all its glory, as it would be in a Japanese publication (plus furigana). That's a big deal, because you're allowed to progress like it's "just a language" rather than some big scary thing that foreigners just simply can't comprehend (really...I read that about us recently in a book about Chinese philology), and must therefore learn as slowly and painfully as possible.
Anyway, my point is you should get a textbook for Japanese speakers if you can. There must be tons of them. You'll kill two birds with one stone this way, or 一舉兩得 if you prefer.