People have different tastes when it comes to learning materials. I dislike the FSI material because it is simply too boring. I find the Chinesepod material excellent for beginners. In fact any kind of simple dialogue works for beginners. However drilling pronunciation as milestones recommends is not how I like to learn.
I am sure milestones did not intend to criticize any of our lessons or lesson providers. Still, it is wise not to be overly dogmatic in recommending lessons, nor can we assume that everyone will like or benefit from the same kind of material.
I note that the Chinese natve speaker who started this thread has not created any content for us. Thank you Hape and others for all the content you have provided.
There are times when I offer opinions/recommendations I can come across a bit…dogmatic. I forgot to add – the FSI module and Pimsleur route is what I think is a good idea for people who need to start saying stuff right away. I agree with Steve that the FSI stuff is dated and really dry. I was not suggesting the whole course but the pronunciation and romanization module (not overwhelming in time duration), which I started on before I moved to China and enabled me to communicate with people & say “thank you” without saying shay shay. It made me aware of the the x, c, j and ch/sh,r sounds, which I think was good at least to be aware of, even if I was not getting them spot on. I think the listening, reading (Linqq) approach is absolutely the best for elementary learners onward…I think with Mandarin though, there is a sort of pre-elementary phase that exists that involves getting used to sounds/tones before getting to the meaning. However, for those who want to listen and absorb before speaking, they probably will get to the same result and figure out how sounds are made by way of listening. For me, I was curious how native speakers could possibly say what they said, because it sounded so alien to me and I wanted to know how they went about making those sounds. However, some people view it as…“I will figure it out in time,” and, eventually, they will…through listening. For me, I wanted to get the technical aspects out of the way so as to communicate for survival purposes – which was necessary based on my situation. Thus, I appreciated that FSI module for that reason.
I started learning Chinese on lingq with damn simple Chinese, and I think it was a good starting point. When I had learned the words and gotten bored with it, I moved on to other lessons. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on lingq?
I really like this as a beginner because just going over the sounds out of context is boring, and I’ve watched a few chinese movies (Kung Fu and Jackie Chan, go figure) to know how it’s actually supposed to sound, so I can tell it’s like they’re trying to teach a baby to speak madarin, but regular speech is just too difficult to listen to and get the pronunciation at a beginners level.
I’m doing the most recommended version in Russian and they he sounds slow, but to me it sounds faster than any conversation I’ve had with anybody, and this is supposed to be at the beginner level for somebody hearing words for the first time in a foreign writing system?
Anyway, it’s great to point out the pros and cons of things. I like to see feedback from other users.
The way they teach Chinese is like teaching spoken English like this:
“Gooo deee Morrr ninnng”, instead of “Good Morning”!
So then a good solution might be for the native speaker to repeat the phrase slow to fast…so:
Native Chinese speaker (in Chinese of course):
“Gooo deee Morrr ninnng”,
Goood morrninnng"
Good morning
In other words, repeated slowly at first, then faster, and finally up to normal speed in the native tongue. So the last thing the listener hears is the actual native pronunciation at a natural conversational speed.