Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
July 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Free Software
Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
• The fastest, most intuitive way to learn Mandarin Chinese
• Learn the same way you learned your native language!
• Suitable for all ages, child through adult
• Takes you from beginner level to intermediate level, “step by ste
Rating: 
(out of 7 reviews)
List Price: $ 29.95
Price: $ 13.42
Review by Red Violin for Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
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I am a hobby language learner. Over the years, I have spent thousands of dollars on various language recordings. I am very fluent in French and Spanish. Native speakers usually describe my accent as “near perfect”. I have linguistics training. These days, I do most of my study “in the car”.
About a year ago, I discovered the “Instant Immersion” Italian method. I found the recordings charming and fun. I really appreciated the bell clear pronunciation, which eliminated the need for a transcription. Of course my extensive background in French and Spanish made this easier for me than it would be for most people. Nevertheless, the recordings inspired me to check out the “Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese” recordings.
I was not a complete beginner in Mandarin when I started. A few years ago, I spent about fifty hours working on an audio/book Mandarin course put out by the Bejing University This course was extremely rigourous, with a steep learning curve, and not much fun. But it did give me some pronounciation basics.
I found the “Instant Immersion Chinese” to be almost perfect for my needs. Each word and sentence, is given twice, with a male and female speaker. The recordings give you lots of time to process the information. The speakers speak slowly and with great clarity, as they should for beginner and intermediate level courses.
The material is standard beginner level material. You learn basic greetings, how to tell time, basic conversational topics. Unless you are a lot smarter than I am, you will have to go through each CD many times to fully absorb the vocabulary. This is to be expected for a language as different from English as Mandarin is. I believe that the key to successful langage learning is to go very,very slowly in the beginning, and to be meticulous with the pronunciation. These recordings are just right for that.
If you learn everything on these recordings, you will only have the tiniest foothold on the language. You will not be able to carry on a meaningful and useful conversation with a native speaker, and you will probably remain puzzled even about some of the basic structures of the language. But, you will be well equipped to go on to some more rigourous courses in the language.
These recordings lack phonetic transcriptions of the dialogues, and a physical description of the phonemes. For those who are perfectionists like I am, I would recommend that you search other texts and recordings for this information, and that you check your pronunciation with a native speaker. When I went through these recordings, I was constantly memorizing sentences, trying them out on native speakers, and asking them if/how they could tell I wasn’t a native speaker. It was a great help to notice how they kept their teeth together while pronouncing many of the sounds.
I decided to write this review after reading some of the negative comments in some of the other reviews. I think those comments say more about the reviewers than the material reviewed. I feel they underestimate how difficult it is to get started in a language as different as Mandarin. Much of the other audio language learning material out there is either much more difficult than this, or ineffective. These recordings should be judged for what they are; an inexpensive, soundly thought out first step to the language that will prepare you for more rigourous material. I really hope the publishers will soon come out with a continuation of this course.
One final comment: I have been continuing my study of Mandarin using other materials, and I am finding that my progress is accelerating greatly. The difficulties in Mandarin come in the beginning, mastering the tones, the basic sounds and structures. Mandarin doesn’t have the endless verb forms and gender agreements of European languages, nor does it have the intricate levels of social distinctions of Korean or Japanese. If you take your time and get the fundamentals right, it becomes a matter of learning vocabulary to put in a simple and very elegant structure.
Review by David Cohen for Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
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I had spent several months in Beijing a few years ago and had picked up some elementary conversational Mandarin before getting this series of recordings. I’m well into the series and have some complaints but generally find it useful.
As someone else has noted, there’s almost no vocabulary on the first recording. This, however, is not a complaint — the first recording focuses on learning tones and sounds, which are quite different from English. They use some words as examples of the sounds and tones, and I think they give you the translation mainly as a courtesy, not as vocabulary instruction.
My major complaint is that once you get into learning phrases and sentences, the recording usually doesn’t parse them or explain their literal meaning, so you don’t expand your vocabulary as much as you might. For example, you learn that “Wo hung gaoxing yo jian dao ni” means “I’m very happy to see you,” which is great, but they don’t tell you what the “yo” and “dao” mean or what function they have in the sentence. They teach you that “zai jian” means goodbye but don’t tell you that it literally means “see you later,” and you’re on your own to figure out that the “jian” in “zai jian” is the same word as in “wo hung gaoxing yo jian dao ni.” So it’s pretty tough to recombine words and form your own sentences, since you don’t *quite* learn what all the words mean. That seems inefficient to me.
Also, the pronunciation varies between the female and male speakers, and some of the distinctions between sounds are VERY subtle, almost indistinguishable on the CDs.
All that said, this is a pretty good way to get started learning Mandarin. Conversations with a native speaker are FAR better — it’s especially hard to learn the tones without feedback — but with diligent practice you can get enough from these CDs to move on to a more thorough course.
Review by RolandGS for Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
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Personally, I have found this CD quite informative and educational. However, it takes patience and a willingness to learn. As above, I don’t just listen to the first CD, get frustrated and then give up. Learning a new language, especial for an adult, is a difficult task, and learning it from a static recording will not make it easier. Immersion into the language via conversation and face to face instruction will always be the best way. However, Topics Entertainment Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese has put forth a good product to start you down the correct road. After completing only the first 3 CDs; I can now count to 99, tell and ask for the time and date, introduce myself and have a vocabulary of approximately 150 words. What surprised me is that I have an understanding of the words and their uses and can form simple sentences with them that are beyond what I have heard in the CDs. The European method used is a tried and true approach teaching you the language in much the same manner as you learned your native tongue. First, with sounds and then common, simple phases and words begin your vocabulary. Words are repeated and then expanded on in the next lesson to reinforce the instruction. The difficulty ramps up at times and frustration is going to part of the game. I listen to each lesson (track not CD) several times and then move on only when I am comfortable with what I am saying and hearing. These CD will NOT teach you to fluently speak Mandarin. If that is what you are expecting then you have some misguided expectations from a few recording. However, it will help you on your way by laying a solid foundation and give you the confidence to attempt conversation in Mandarin and kick start your journey into this wonderful language.
Review by Christopher J. Benz for Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
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There are really two ways to utilize this series – as a beginner in which case I would call it an excellent starting point, or as practice for an already active student, in which case it is a fantastic practice resource.
On it’s own, these CD’s will get you excited about Mandarin – it’s pretty easy going and nice and relaxed and user friendly for beginners although even at this rate, you might want to listen to each chapter 2-3 times.
There are handy chapter divisions within each topic on the CD that help you go back and have another listen (as you will want to do often).
I have bought a lot of Mandarin related resources over the years, many Book/CD tie ins but few of them have been useful to me. The use of pure learning from audio (no text) has been a revelation to me. I just seem to learn better and quicker using this system. It’s nice and simple and focuses on talking only. You will learn nothing about characters here (believe me the learning curve goes quicker if you understand speaking first); nor about grammar – just let yourself absorb this by listening – the recording occassionally explains the literal meaning of a sentence – ie ni jiao shenme mingzi? The recording will not explain grammar but just say “Literally – You are called what name?”. Go to the books for grammar – for now – just listen and absorb. You can only expect to achieve so much – the important thing is to be moving forward with language – not to bombard yourself with detail.
The rhythm of these cd’s I found really good. Each text is said once in Mandarin by a female speaker, pause (while you say it out loud), once again in Mandarin by a male speaker (you can check your pronunciation and memory with him), then in an English translation by a woman with a very clear, friendly voice. I liked this rhythm – it was slow, friendly and kind of hypnotic – lots of time left for the learner to catch up. The voices, recordings and pronunciation is really clear and easy to catch on to.
Each topic has just the right amount of time spent on it. Obviously, with weather, for example, you could devote an entire two hours to just discussing the details (chinese love detailed conversations about weather, food etc) but that is not the goal here – you’re just getting started. Hence you learn all of the seasons and ways of describing cold, hot, snowing, raining, windy, air temperature and so on. The amount of deatil in this series made a lot of sense to me where others seem to go off on bizarre tangeants.
If you don’t want to fork out a lot of your money on Pimsleur style intensive audio training, I’d recommend this highly as a quality, cost-effective alternative. And if you love Mandarin after listening to these tapes, you might want to take it further and invest in a more expensive product.
Everyone likes to learn in a different way – I find pure-audio really works for me, because I’m not distracted away from speaking by characters, vocab lists and so on.
Review by for Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese
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The only reason I found this set helpful was that I had a solid background of elementary Chinese. This tape helped me transfer some of that knowledge to oral comprehension rather than just reading comprehension. However, the tapes use rote memorization and repetition to learn words and phrases. This may be good for some, but not for me. I don’t feel that my money was a waste, but I am confident there is better out there.