Any good inter-advan Chinese listening resources in the USA?

[gao_bo_han]

Hi all,

I know that Roddy posted up a great resource for listening that is available in China, however I read the instructions for ordering from overseas the books and tapes, and it appears complex and expensive. Although there are many good resources for improving listening for beginners (I highly recommend DeFrancis' beginning reader series + the accompanying 17 tapes), I am having trouble getting my hands on an available intermediate - advanced listening set of books/tapes.

I bought Ultimate Mandarin, and it helped some except that there are really only 4 tapes for "on-the-go", and the 4 for "learn-at-home" are exactly the same thing except without any English translation. Also, the book only contains a few Chinese characters in an exercise section and not for most of the vocab.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I could search the net for photocopies of DeFrancis' intermediate and advanced books, and order the tapes from Yale...but I would rather get something more modern...

As always any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Bo Han

[beirne]

Check out Making Connections (http://www.cheng-tsui.com). It is an intermediate level book that comes with a CD of spoken dialogues. The dialogues cover a number of topics. The book has questions to answer to make sure that you understood the material, and it provides additional background.

[gao_bo_han]

Beirne,

Thank you for the advice. I purchased Making Connections a couple of weeks ago and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I feel that it is definitely helping my listening.

Cheers,

Bo Han