I came across this book in Eslite here in Taipei a few days ago while looking for material for one of my English students. It's a book of 8000 conversational sentences, English and Chinese, with MP3 recordings of all 8000 in both languages. This seems to be a really popular format for language books here, because there are similar books for Japanese, Korean, etc., all with Chinese sentences. Not all of them have the Chinese audio though, unfortunately.
Anyway, the Chinese is very conversational, though it seems to stay away from too much slang (which is a good thing, IMO, better to learn the "correct" stuff first since slang changes so quickly). The book is called 史上最強的英語會話8000, and it's something like US$10 plus shipping at books.com.tw.
The book is arranged topically in 15 units: People, Emotional Expression, Functional Expression, Eating, Living, Transportation, Education, Relaxing and Leisure Time, Clothing, Numbers, Working, Culture and Tradition, Disaster, Crime, and The Society and Environment. Each unit is further broken up into sections, so in the unit on Eating there are sections on Cutlery, Cooking Utensils and Appliances, Drink, Meat and Seafood, Meat, Seafood (not sure why the redundancy), Desserts, Vegetables, Fruit, Other Food, Portions, Deciding on a Restaurant, Making Reservations, Ordering Food, Things to Say During a Meal, and Eating Habits. "Things to Say...", for example, is further broken down into General Comments and Questions about a Meal, Complimenting, Complaining and Criticizing a Meal and Restaurant, and Problems. I thought Complaining and Criticizing sounded like fun, so here's a sampling from that section (out of 20 sentences total):
I'm never coming back to this restaurant.
我再也不會來這間餐廳了。
This custard pudding is crappy.
這個卡士達布丁很難吃。
Don't you think the cheesecake is dreadful?
你不覺得這個起司蛋糕很糟嗎？
I didn't know the service here was so horrible.
我不知道這裡的服務那麼的糟糕。
This beef tastes like shoe-leather.
這塊牛肉也太硬了吧。
This chicken is quite tough, isn't it?
這塊雞肉太韌了，對不對？
Now that I look at it, those seem a little basic, because of course food vocabulary is something you learn about at a basic level. The Hot Springs section under Relaxing and Leisure Time is more representative of how useful this book is. You can learn words like bathe, boiling, bubbles, changing room, coin locker, hand towel, healing, hot springs resorts, massage, naked, nude, pools, rinse off, swim suit, fumes, lukewarm, minerals, mixed bathing, nudity, sulphur, rotten eggs, pulsating, scalding, volcanoes, price of admission, etc. There are 50 sentences altogether just about hot springs. Lots of daily words that any native speaker knows that textbooks may or may not cover adequately, in a very colloquial, conversation style. It's like gold.
I've been checking out Glossika's stuff recently (he has posted a few videos this year explaining his method in more detail than before, albeit all in Chinese), and this is exactly the sort of book he uses in his own language learning and in teaching his students English. He also advocates recording the sentences yourself and listening to those to work on pronunciation and accent (and if you listen, his accent is unreal).
I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to use this, so I'm up for suggestions and discussion. It's a huge amount of material and it's not like I can just sit down and type it all out, nor do I really want to. I'm not too worried about using it for reading, more for things like shadowing, working on accent, vocabulary acquisition, developing fluidity and prosody in my speech, etc. My reading is coming along nicely using other material.
Unfortunately there's nothing close to this made specifically for learning Chinese (this is for learning English), but this is a close second, IMO. Anyway, maybe this will be useful to some of you.
Anyway, the Chinese is very conversational, though it seems to stay away from too much slang (which is a good thing, IMO, better to learn the "correct" stuff first since slang changes so quickly). The book is called 史上最強的英語會話8000, and it's something like US$10 plus shipping at books.com.tw.
The book is arranged topically in 15 units: People, Emotional Expression, Functional Expression, Eating, Living, Transportation, Education, Relaxing and Leisure Time, Clothing, Numbers, Working, Culture and Tradition, Disaster, Crime, and The Society and Environment. Each unit is further broken up into sections, so in the unit on Eating there are sections on Cutlery, Cooking Utensils and Appliances, Drink, Meat and Seafood, Meat, Seafood (not sure why the redundancy), Desserts, Vegetables, Fruit, Other Food, Portions, Deciding on a Restaurant, Making Reservations, Ordering Food, Things to Say During a Meal, and Eating Habits. "Things to Say...", for example, is further broken down into General Comments and Questions about a Meal, Complimenting, Complaining and Criticizing a Meal and Restaurant, and Problems. I thought Complaining and Criticizing sounded like fun, so here's a sampling from that section (out of 20 sentences total):
I'm never coming back to this restaurant.
我再也不會來這間餐廳了。
This custard pudding is crappy.
這個卡士達布丁很難吃。
Don't you think the cheesecake is dreadful?
你不覺得這個起司蛋糕很糟嗎？
I didn't know the service here was so horrible.
我不知道這裡的服務那麼的糟糕。
This beef tastes like shoe-leather.
這塊牛肉也太硬了吧。
This chicken is quite tough, isn't it?
這塊雞肉太韌了，對不對？
Now that I look at it, those seem a little basic, because of course food vocabulary is something you learn about at a basic level. The Hot Springs section under Relaxing and Leisure Time is more representative of how useful this book is. You can learn words like bathe, boiling, bubbles, changing room, coin locker, hand towel, healing, hot springs resorts, massage, naked, nude, pools, rinse off, swim suit, fumes, lukewarm, minerals, mixed bathing, nudity, sulphur, rotten eggs, pulsating, scalding, volcanoes, price of admission, etc. There are 50 sentences altogether just about hot springs. Lots of daily words that any native speaker knows that textbooks may or may not cover adequately, in a very colloquial, conversation style. It's like gold.
I've been checking out Glossika's stuff recently (he has posted a few videos this year explaining his method in more detail than before, albeit all in Chinese), and this is exactly the sort of book he uses in his own language learning and in teaching his students English. He also advocates recording the sentences yourself and listening to those to work on pronunciation and accent (and if you listen, his accent is unreal).
I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to use this, so I'm up for suggestions and discussion. It's a huge amount of material and it's not like I can just sit down and type it all out, nor do I really want to. I'm not too worried about using it for reading, more for things like shadowing, working on accent, vocabulary acquisition, developing fluidity and prosody in my speech, etc. My reading is coming along nicely using other material.
Unfortunately there's nothing close to this made specifically for learning Chinese (this is for learning English), but this is a close second, IMO. Anyway, maybe this will be useful to some of you.