User Review of Pimsleur Mandarin, Chinese Pod, Mandarin Chinese Learning Podcast and Powerspeak Online vs. Rosetta Stone

My husband and I have been studying Mandarin for several years and used a number of different programs. For more on my experiences learning mandarin see my hub You can learn Mandarin! Here is my review of the best products we have found:

Pimsleur: Mandarin Chinese I, II and III is the Best Program for Beginning Mandarin

The Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese audio courses have been the backbone of my Mandarin language study and I think they are a great way to learn how to speak and get the tones intuitively. The Pimsleur method uses immersion, repetition and a quiz format to teach. Paul Pimsleur devised a language learning method which is all auditory. In fact, it is hard to get transcripts of these lessons, which unfortunately becomes a big drawback to this program as you progress past the first level. However, especially with a tonal language, it is very important for a beginner to listen and practice trying to imitate the sounds over and over. The Pimsleur tapes are designed to focus on developing that ability to hear the sounds of Mandarin and to repeat the tones without having to think about them.

• How the lessons work

Each lesson is 30 minutes long and consists of an English speaker saying words and phrases which are then spoken in Mandarin by a native speaker. There are pauses along the way for you to try to repeat the Chinese words and phrases. After a word or phase has been repeated a few times there is a pause after the English speaker so that you can try to remember and say the Chinese yourself. One of the greatest aspects of Pimsleur over some of the other methods is that you are not expected to gain 100% mastery. Instead, you are advised to move on to the next lesson when you are answering around 80% of the phases correctly. The lessons are designed to come back and repeat previous material periodically so that your mastery gradually builds up more and more. I found that generally this works. Sometimes I just could not remember certain phrases or had a hard time pronouncing certain words. When these words or phrases came back in later lessons, I generally was able to pick them up more easily.

• Pros and Cons of Pimsleur

Pimsleur is sometimes criticized for not introducing enough vocabulary. There are about 500 vocabulary words in each level. However, I found that I really was able to master those vocabulary words well and was not frustrated. The question and answer format is very effective because it requires active listening. The whole course is basically in a quiz format, so it helps you to judge whether or not you really do know the material. However, since there is no timeline for how fast you complete the lessons, you are free to spend as long as you need to master each one. Generally, the lessons seem to be paired in themes and to make it more interesting, I tended to do two lessons a week, listening all the way through both lessons before I went back to repeat the first one. Which leads me to the biggest drawback of Pimsleur: it can be very dull to listen to over and over. Unfortunately, the quiz method means that no dialogue is very well developed and although they do have dialogues at the beginning of each lesson, these are for some reason never translated for you, although some of the material in them does relate to the lesson.

• Pimsleur is a good foundation course but you will want other materials for variety

Pimsleur is an excellent foundation course, but you really need to have a couple of other types of courses to use alongside of it, to keep you interested and motivated in learning. It took me about a year to go through Pimsleur Mandarin I lessons 1-15. After going to China and realizing that I was really learning how to speak, I came back much more motivated to learn and went through lessons 16-30 in just three months. Then I took another five months to finish Pimsleur Mandarin 2 (while also doing ChinesePod and Mandarin Chinese with Serge Melnyk). It has now taken me another three months to go half-way through Mandarin Chinese 3 and I expect to finish Pimsleur in another couple of months. Unlike some of the Podcasts, Pimsleur is not free, but if you buy it used and then resell it when you are done, you can this course for under $50, which is a great bargain for about 15 hours of lessons. Recently, they added the possibility of downloading lessons also. For free you can try out the first lesson of Pimsleur Mandarin I.

ChinesePod: Fun Listeng format and lessons which go from newbie to advanced

ChinesePod offers hundreds of free downloadable podcasts on ITunes for newbie, intermediate and advanced learners. ChinesePod is fun and easy to listen to! Listening to the cultural facts and banter of hosts Ken (Irish linguist) and Jenny (native speaker) makes ChinesePod a great break from the more monotone style of Pimsleur. However, you do have to listen to a lot of English before you get to the Chinese and this makes ChinesePod harder to recommend as a main tool for language learning. Like Pimsleur, ChinesePod tries to introduce Chinese by giving short phrases and dialogues which are repeated several times. Unlike Pimsleur, Ken and Jenny talk extensively about each of the words and phrases in the dialogues and explain what they mean. They also give many cultural facts and hints, like the fact that you should present your business card with two hands and receive one the same way. That fact would have helped me more in China if I had remembered to bring business cards with me in the first place; however, I did remember to take the cards that were given to me with both hands and to look at them carefully before putting them away (another Ken and Jenny cultural tidbit!).

• ChinesePod works better with Pimsleur

Along with having a bit too much banter at times, ChinesePod lacks a systematic teaching curriculum and the lessons are rather short, about ten minutes. Generally, the dialogues are thematic and sometimes there are several dialogues on the same theme, which is helpful, but there is less instruction on how to take the words in the dialogue and use them in other sentences. However, putting ChinesePod together with Pimsleur is very useful. Many of the topics and vocabulary is similar but they do not completely overlap. So using both together helps you to expand and deepen your vocabulary. Moreover, since there are hundreds of ChinesePod dialogues to choose from, you can skip around to ones which are interesting to you. For a small fee, you can download transcripts of the dialogues. My husband paid the fee and downloaded all of the ones available in one month. He called and they said that was fine.

• ChinesePod offers a social network, transcripts and advanced lessons

While Pimsleur does offer a better beginner curriculum, ChinesePod takes your language learning much farther. I've mostly used just the newbie and beginner lessons, but they also offer intermediate and advanced Chinese podcasts which have much less English discussion. So eventually, when I'm ready, I will be able to learn Mandarin in a Chinese immersion environment. Even better, ChinesePod seeks to create a community of Chinese learners by offering a discussion board and other activities to get involved with as you learn. Using their transcripts also allows you to broaden your learning by studying the pinyin and characters. ChinesePod is definitely something you will want in your mix of lessons.

Mandarin Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnek has a great topical approach

Like ChinesePod, Mandarin Chinese Lessons are podcasts that can be found on ITunes for free. You can also download them from Serge's website. Two great things about Mandarin Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnyk: the lessons contain a lot of vocabulary which is thematically organized, and Serge does a good job of enunciating the words clearly and explaining the meaning of each vocabulary word. If you want to learn a lot of vocabulary, then Serge is very helpful. Like ChinesePod, Serge also offers transcripts of each lesson for a small fee. After I have listened to a lesson several times, I find that I can just take the transcript copies with me while I'm waiting somewhere and read them to help me study the words.

• Not for beginners but great for learning topic specific vocabulary

However, I don't think that Serge's program works on it's own because there is no systematic development of vocabulary, and not enough repetition. I tried listening to Serge after I had done about 15 lessons in Pimsleur and I gave up after about lesson 3. There were just too many vocabulary words to remember and I got frustrated. This course is really much more like a regular textbook course in Chinese and made me feel discouraged in the same way a course did. However, after I'd gotten through two courses in Pimsleur, I was able to come back and read the Serge lessons more easily. Like ChinesePod, Mandarin Chinese with Serge Melnek can help you expand your vocabulary in specific areas that you want to know more words. For example, I was very frustrated when we were ordering food in restaurants on our last trip because I kept on getting foods that were too spicy. Serge has a great lesson about describing the taste of food, and I especially appreciated learning how to say "bu la!" not hot and spicy! I definitely go to Serge to learn vocabulary about directions, riding in a taxi, using an internet cafe and other specific topics.

Powerspeak Chinese Online uses gaming approach

I've just started using Powerspeak Mandarin, which is available through my local library for free. Powerspeak is also available to buy and I discovered that it can be purchased with a tutor for credit in some school districts. I'm hoping to find out soon if that works in our school because I'd love to have my kids be able to take Mandarin for school credit.

• How Powerspeak works

Powerspeak is a computer learning program which is similar to Rosetta Stone but which incorporates English and Mandarin within the lessons rather than relying only on full immersion. The advantage of using both English and Mandarin is that Powerspeak eases you into the language learning situation and is able to explain both cultural and grammar clues clearly, similiarly to ChinesePod. Each unit starts with a story where a person who is learning Chinese encounters a situation when they can use the language. The story format is very effective in helping you imagine how you would use these words and also in helping you remember them. What I like about the stories is that they include the people speaking in Mandarin, but they also have them speaking in English. That is a realistic situation for English speakers who are beginning Mandarin lessons. For the most part, beginners will be talking to Mandarin speakers who also speak English and we will be using our Chinese vocabulary as only part of our communication tools in any situation, more as a "practice" than really as a way of communicating information.

Like most of these Chinese learning programs, Powerspeak starts off by teaching how to greet people in the first lesson and how to talk about your family in the second lesson. After the user listens to the introductory story, they are taught the vocabulary by using simple computer games like matching, fill in the blanks and sorting words into sentences. Each lesson is divided into very small units which makes it easy to use in small chunks. You can also listen to audio recordings of native speakers saying words and phrases and record yourself saying the phrases to see how closely you match the tones. There are virtual "flashcards" too. Powerspeak doesn't have the highly touted voice recognition software that is included in Rosetta Stone, but most reviews don't seem to suggest that works well anyway.

• Powerspeak is more like a Mandarin class

Powerspeak is advertised as a way to learn Mandarin, and I think that it is more beginner friendly than Serge but not really the best place to start learning this language. It definitely has a systematic way of teaching language and plenty of opportunities for practice, but I don't think that it works as well as Pimsleur at teaching you how to speak. Probably that is because Powerspeak does work much more like a regular language class than the other programs and therefore has all of the disadvantages of classroom language learning: too many vocabulary words, not enough dialogue practice and more of a focus on learning visually (it is a computer program and not an audio one).

• How Powerspeak can supplement other programs

What I do like about Powerspeak Chinese is that I can move through the lessons at my own pace and can listen to the audio of the speaker as many times as I want. Some words are harder to hear than others and it can get frustrating on Pimsleur or ChinesePod to have to go back and either listen to a whole lesson again for just a few words, or else try to find those words and repeat them over and over. Powerspeak lets me pass by words I know I can say and focus on words I need to practice on. I've also enjoyed is that Powerspeak teaches a lot of different ways to say the same thing. For example, all of the programs teach "Nihao" (hello) in one of the first lessons, but Powerspeak also teaches you how to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night and good bye. In Chinese these words are more different than in English, so they do not naturally go together as a group, but it is very useful to hear them together so that you can recognize that someone is greeting you with these different words.

As a person who has studied Mandarin for a while, I really appreciate expanding my vocabulary. However, I don't think that introducing all of these words in the first lesson of a program is very helpful. There is an overload of words that are used in the same way rather than words which help you continue on in a conversation. In the first lesson of Pimsleur, you learn to say hello and then ask people if they can speak English. Surely that is the most useful thing a beginner language learner can know!

Although I think that Powerspeak might be tough to use as a starting tool for Chinese learning, I do believe it is a powerful way to reinforce and expand a person's Mandarin skills. Because it is a computer program and visual, it helps in learning the pinyin (characters are also included but not emphasized). I do find that after I know how to say the words, it helps me to remember them if I see them written down. The game format also adds some variety which can help motivate me to want to spend more time in learning Mandarin each day.

Guide Boods and Grammar Books

One final help for me has just been going through phrasebooks (Essential Mandarin Chinese and Streetwise Guide Emergency Chinese) and a Chinese Grammar book (Schaum's Outlines). These are not too helpful as starting tools, but are very helpful as you deepen and broaden your understanding of Chinese. In fact, after you have done some basic language learning orally, these can help you put what you've learned together with what you already know about how English works. Unfortunately, I actually had a terrible time learning some of the very basic things, like how to count from 1-10, when I was listening to Pimsleur because they never do teach you how to count. They introduce one number, like san (3) and then use it throughout a couple of dialogues before introducing another random number like qi (7). Eventually, I knew all the numbers but had a hard time remembering them in order, or counting quickly. Going through the grammar book helped me to put that together. Also, going through the section on prepositions also helped me to understand what was going on with some of the phrases I was learning, since Pimsleur doesn't explain how this works very well. For people who have a good background in their native language (I actually teach college English) grammar books can help you take what you already know and apply it to the language you are learning.

What I love about looking at the phrase books is that I can look for words and phrases I know I will need, circle them and learn them if I haven't been introduced to them in one of my lessons. When we go back to China next year, I'm planning to take note cards of some of the phrases I know I am going to want like: "Do you have any decaffeinated drinks?"

You Can Teach yourself Chinese!

Can you teach yourself Mandarin? Yes! In fact, our experience is that we have learned more from studying Mandarin on our own than we ever did in taking language classes in college. Really remembering a language requires a lot of repetition. In a class, you are always needing to move on to the next list of vocabulary, whether you really learned the words or not. When you study on your own you can work at your own pace and make learning the goal, not just passing a test. In a class, you are generally relying on hearing just the teacher speak the words correctly, and you only hear the teacher in class. When you use audio study methods, you spend most of your time listening to native speakers talking, so you have much more of an immersion experience. Many tapes use several different speakers also, so you can hear different accents. However, studying on your own does takes effort and can get boring. I've found that it really helps to use a variety materials to keep myself motivated. Whether have a specific goal in mind for learning Mandarin,like a business trip or a vacation, or whether you want to make Chinese fluency your long-term goal, all of the products reviewed here will be helpful for you.