Linguaphone for Mandarin?

[Dawei1]

Has anyone used Linguaphone? How does it compare to Pimsleur?

http://www.linguaphonelanguages.com/chinese_mandarin

To me, Pimsleur is superb. I completed the 90-Pimsleur lessons as well as another 30 Pimsleur lessons of a non-longer available version from the American Management assoc. I've supplemented this with Chinesepod lessons & watching movies. If I could get more Pimsleur lessons, I would use them.

Linguaphone claims it will teach you 4000 words. I'm bit skeptical about this. (Or maybe it teaches just a few ways to use each word?) Linguaphone also says it's been around since 1901, but I've never heard of it. If anyone has used Linguaphone, I'd very interested.

[Luobot]

I took a look at the website, but I'm not sure where you saw 4000 words. The description for the "Complete Course" says:

With the accompanying handbook you have a complete list of all 1000+ words of vocabulary taught in the course

Linguaphone Complete Course -- 1000 words in 8 lessons on 8 CD's (per the product description).

Pimsleur (Vol. 1 through 3) -- Less than 500 words in 90 lessons on 45 CD's.

Hmm...

[Dawei1]

In mentioning 4000-words, I was refering to Linguaphone's "Comprehensive Aquistion Bundle", see the bar chart under "Chinese Mandarin," on the top left corner of the link where they make this claim. (http://www.linguaphonelanguages.com/chinese_mandarin)

Thinking about Linguaphones claim, i.e., that they teach 4000 words with just 13 CDs, I realized how unrealistic their claim is.

As you note, Pimsleur teaches 500 words with 45 CDs. I doubt Linguaphone has a 28X times more effective teaching technique than Pimsleur (Pimsleur teaches 11 words/CD, Linguaphone 307). Later on Amazon, I saw some negative reviews on Linguaphone which further suggests their 4000 word claim is not credible. Too bad, I would love to find a good follow-on to Pimsleur.

I find Chinesepod is extremely entertaining, but that its verbal lessons aren't as good as Pimsleur for teaching the spoken language. On the positive side, I found Chinesepod is better at building comprehension.

[Luobot]

I located their “Chinese Mandarin Comprehensive Acquisition Course” for $499.95, which is 13 CD’s, 4 workbooks, and a 250-page phrasebook/mini-dictionary. It may be well worth the price if the CD’s and workbooks each really “comprehensively” taught the most frequently used 4000 unique Mandarin words, with the CD audio reinforcing the visual workbooks, and vice-versa, for all 4000 words. I may be too cynical, but I suspect it’s the phrasebook/mini-dictionary that “teaches” the bulk of the 4000 words.

I don’t think there is a direct follow-on to Pimsleur. As good as it is, Pimsleur is quite limited in its overall scope in that it merely covers a small subset of basic vocabulary and stock phrases. Even Dr. Pimsleur, himself, couldn’t figure out how to stretch that audio-only method into more advanced levels. If someone were to pick-up where Pimsleur left off, then how much further could they take you before you realized that you had a substantial vocabulary and knowledge of stock phrases (let’s say, around 4000 words after completing 390 CD’s in 26 volumes), but that you still couldn’t engage in a meaningful, spontaneous conversation, couldn’t read a single character, and that most intermediate and advanced material was still out of your reach.

[ChristopherB]

Hmm, I'm currently using a combination of Assimil and Linguaphone to get me started with Chinese. The Linguaphone course I'm using is the one mentioned in this video:

It's from the 1970's and I scored for a very nice price second-hand online. It basically consists of two hardcover books, one with all the dialogues on the tapes and only in hanzi and pinyin, while the other book has the translations, vocab lists and notes, breaking down each sentence in the dialogues and explaining them. It's all extremely well put together, and teaches some pretty complex stuff right from lesson one (including some rather obscure vocab such as 'pomegranate tree'). I haven't personally counted, but judging by the amount of stuff they've crammed in, I'd say the word-count is well into the 2000 mark, possibly more. The vocab and dialogues are really varied and each lesson contains a description followed by two related dialogue chats between several people. If you can still track down a copy, I highly recommend you do so. If you can supplement that with the 2-volume Assimil course, so much the better.

And just for the record, there is no comparison between this and Pimsleur. For a serious learner, Linguaphone is just leagues ahead in terms of depth, substance and overall content.

[ExpatObserver]

You are right Chris. LInguaphone lessons may be a bit dated (they are still calling each other tingzhi!), but your assessment is spot on. Linguaphone is a way ahead of Pimsleur. And 4000 word vocab claim is probably correct.

[ChristopherB]

Wow, I posted that over a year ago. In fact, while I still think it's an extremely substantial course, I do find it's a bit overwhelming for a beginner and takes too long to get through. So I'd recommend using it later as a reader or vocabulary builder rather than as a straight course to learn Chinese from scratch. Not saying it can't be done - it was obviously designed to teach you the language - I just think the lessons are bit too complex and the vocabulary not so helpful to someone wanting to learn Mandarin from scratch. When you get to the so-called upper-Intermediate stage, it would be a nice supplement to your studies.

For the record, I always found it rather amusing that Lesson 1 contains the word "pomegranate tree".