Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

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Yaya100000
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Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby Yaya100000 » Thu Nov 15, 2018 5:10 am

Hello board. I'm going to start studying mandarin within the next month or two. I have Pimsleur 1-5, Assimil Chinese, Teach Yourself and also the Linguaphone Chinese course. I plan to start with Pimsleur 1 alone. I was wondering if anyone had the direct experience of completing all 5 levels, and what their results were. I'm not so sure if I should complete all 5 levels before moving on to another course or do maybe 1-4 levels before moving on. I completed all 4 levels of Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese in the past and I took me at least 2 months to finish each level because I needed to repeat almost every lesson at least 4 times before moving on to the next one. Also the return on time and energy invested seemed to drop off significantly somewhere in the second or third level, and by early in the fourth level I felt that I should have switched to something more advanced instead of finishing. I was just wondering if anyone had a similar experience with the Mandarin course. Thanks.
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Glossy
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Languages: Russian (native), English (almost native), French (reading: fluent, listening: intermediate, speaking: none), Spanish (reading: fluent, listening: upper intermediate, speaking: none), Mandarin (reading characters: intermediate, actively learning, listening: intermediate, actively learning, speaking: none), German (reading: upper intermediate, listening: none, speaking: none)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7920
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby Glossy » Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:24 pm

I’ve done all five levels of Pimsleur Mandarin. It doesn’t get you to a very high level. Certianly not the kind where you’re ready to watch movies or TV shows.

After Pimsleur I signed up for ChinesePod. Pimsleur prepared me for ChinesePod’s Intermediate level, which I’ve done. Now I’m doing the Upper Intermediate level. Currently on my 82nd lesson out of the 160 that ChinesePod recommends in it. In total they recommend 610 lessons, but they actually have thousands of them available.

I like ChinesePod more than Pimsleur. If I could do this over, I’d sign up with ChinesePod right away, skipping Pimsleur. You can start with the ChinesePod’s Newbie level.

ChinesePod lessons are more fun to listen to. I especially like the ones with John Pasden and Dilu. ChinesePod has many times more lessons and they go up to a much higher level. The iOS app isn’t great, but that’s a small problem.
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Mandarin listening comprehension, hours: 1522 / 5000 (1,522/5,000)

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stelingo
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby stelingo » Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:20 pm

Chinesepod has an excellent series of videos called Say It Right, which take you through the Chinese tones. I would highly recommend it.
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ALR
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby ALR » Tue Nov 27, 2018 8:52 am

I also really recommend ChinesePod. They have tons of lessons and is great for improving listening. They aren't connected though so you may prefer something a bit more structured. I was a huge fan of ChineseFor.Us for beginners. It was my favorite Chinese course and I've tried pretty much all of them. It's not terribly expensive either. Speechling could be pretty useful to use with it, either the free or paid. For free it'll help you get more comfortable speaking mimicking sentences. The paid version gives you some feedback on if your pronunciation is correct. The feedback isn't thorough but does help you spot your mistakes.
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AML
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby AML » Tue Nov 27, 2018 1:24 pm

Yaya100000 wrote:Hello board. I'm going to start studying mandarin within the next month or two. I have Pimsleur 1-5, Assimil Chinese, Teach Yourself and also the Linguaphone Chinese course. I plan to start with Pimsleur 1 alone. I was wondering if anyone had the direct experience of completing all 5 levels, and what their results were. I'm not so sure if I should complete all 5 levels before moving on to another course or do maybe 1-4 levels before moving on. I completed all 4 levels of Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese in the past and I took me at least 2 months to finish each level because I needed to repeat almost every lesson at least 4 times before moving on to the next one. Also the return on time and energy invested seemed to drop off significantly somewhere in the second or third level, and by early in the fourth level I felt that I should have switched to something more advanced instead of finishing. I was just wondering if anyone had a similar experience with the Mandarin course. Thanks.


Assuming you have more than 30 minutes per day to dedicate to learning Mandarin, then you should definitely do another course simultaneously. You also might want to start learning characters, with Heisig or some other method.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Nov 27, 2018 8:21 pm

Yaya100000 wrote: … I completed all 4 levels of Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese … the return on time and energy invested seemed to drop off significantly somewhere in the second or third level, and by early in the fourth level I felt that I should have switched to something more advanced instead of finishing…
Hello, Yaya100000. Although I have never studied Mandarin, I would like to respond to your comments and questions concerning the Pimsleur programme.

I have used Pimsleur for all of the languages that I have studied (Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish). I either completed all of the Pimsleur modules which were available at the time that I embarked on a new language or I returned to the programme later as additional modules became available. While I enjoyed working with the Pimsleur programme, I would have to say that my experiences reflect your own. Yes, by completing the entire Pimsleur programme, with each lesson and at each level, I continued to increase my knowledge of the target language. However, this can be said about every other language course provided they are used wisely. So then, …

While I did benefit from completing the entire Pimsleur programme up to Level V, I came to consider this use of my study time as less-than-optimal. Over the past couple of years, I have begun recommending that students complete only Levels I and II and that they to switch to materials which provide a more concentrated coverage of the language such as Assimil, Linguaphone, FSI/DLI, and the like.

EDITED:
Tinkering.
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Yaya100000
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Languages: Portuguese (Intermediate)
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Re: Pimsleur Mandarin 1-5

Postby Yaya100000 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:13 pm

Thanks for the responses. I greatly appreciate the excellent advice. I had a look at chinesepod and it seemed like a really nice resource.
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