Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

For All Your Pinyin Needs

3-5 Mandarin, Audio Lessons, Websites

I read about this pronunciation table in Yong Ho’s book Beginner’s Chinese. Mandarin has amazingly few sound combinations—only around 400 different syllables, versus many multiples of that in English—so they can all be stuck in…

Beginner's Chinese: A Friendly Introduction

4 Mandarin, Books, Multimedia

This book by Yong Ho is for beginners, but I decided I needed to do a bunch of Pimsleur Chinese audio lessons first, before starting it, and I’m glad I did. Despite its inviting name, Beginner’s…

iTunes: for the Latest Hits, and Chinese Nouns, Too!

3 Mandarin, Audio Lessons, Vocabulary

VocabuLearn Mandarin Chinese comes in three different levels, for a total of nine hours of vocabulary instruction. I tried only the first level for Mandarin, but I have logged many VocabuLearn hours across a number of languages and would say…

Schoenhof's Website Is a Window to the World

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s claims to have the “largest collection of foreign books in North America.” As a student at Harvard, I used to shop at their main store in Harvard Square for my language and literature course materials. I…

Mandarin Tone Quiz: I Hope You Do Better Than I Did the First Time

4 Mandarin, Tests

This 10-question quiz on About.com will score your Mandarin tone recognition capability. I will not tell you my original score, because it’s too embarrassing. However, the good news is that doing the Mandarin tone quiz helped me improve…

Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese Develops Your Speaking Skills

5 Mandarin, Audio Lessons

Pimsleur is my favorite language-learning product to date across multiple languages. Over the past four years, if I count repeat lessons, I have done literally thousands of Pimsleur lessons.  A Pimsleur lesson is a highly interactive oral and auditory…

Reducing the Intimidation Factor of Learning Chinese Characters

Mandarin, Books

According to the highly enthusiastic book Learning Chinese Characters, it represents “a revolutionary new way to learn and remember the 800 most basic Chinese characters.” That’s a lot. There are thousands of characters, but 800 would be an…

You Can Speak the Word You Want Translated...

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Apps, Dictionaries

I have a tendency not to get around to downloading iPhone apps onto my iPhone, but fortunately I have a husband who will take my phone and do it for me. I’m very glad he stuck this app on…

Action Shot, Fluenz Mandarin Language-Learning Software

4 Mandarin, Books, Multimedia

Fluenz Mandarin is an interactive multimedia product, with audio, writing, reading, and speaking instruction. I am as of this writing on lesson 57 out of 75 lessons. When I first started using Fluenz Mandarin, I was surprised to discover that my…

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