Conversation Material

[devon_v]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a conversation material that contains daily conversation in the banks, restaurants, shops, hospitals... thank u

[tooironic]

Well there's the obvious one - chinesepod.com

Also, depending on your level, Pimselur might be a go.

[devon_v]

Thank u tooironic!

http://chinesepod.com/ is a great site...

[anticks]

http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/

breaks it down to the categories you described more or less ;)

[tooironic]

My Chinese bookmark site

http://plot.org.au/chinese

might help too

[devon_v]

Thank u anticks!

I like it and it's free

[dsrguru]

FSI is very good. If you work through the entire course (aim for about a year), you should attain a pretty good degree of fluency, from what I've heard. Just note that the course is almost 30 years old and certain vocabulary words are outdated. The most notable example is the use of tóngzhì, which means comrade. The FSI course says to address people in the People's Republic of China as tóngzhì, which is no longer the case. Nowadays in Mainland China, just use the equivalents of Mr, Mrs, and Ms as the course instructs you to do in Taiwan.

[ocpaul20]

this one is quite good too. You can pay for the transcripts (eg: 60 USD for 6 months) if you want to but all the lessons are free.

[atitarev]

New Practical Chinese Reader (use MS IE, not Firefox!), 3 volumes:

http://unclp.org/oneword/xin1/1-1.htm (video and audio)

In another thread user Aloysius posted: "David and Helen in China"

http://classes.yale.edu/chns130/ (20 audio texts, 15 have transcripts)

The old "Practical Chinese Reader" is also available (2 volumes).

[self-taught-mba]

I also recommend the Melnyks Podcasts - one of the more systematic systems.