Recommendations for Good Text Dialogues

[bluetortilla]

I have plenty of material on characters and grammar (and consequentially tons of example sentences), but almost no good dialogue material with audio. When I say good, I mean colloquial speech for beginners that has a lot of useful modals. The stuff I have now is mostly of the "Are you Professor Lee?" variety and I'm not hearing much of the language in the real world.

Any recommendations? As I said I'm a beginner but I can read and write Japanese. Thanks.

[abcdefg]

When I say good, I mean colloquial speech for beginners that has a lot of useful modals. The stuff I have now is mostly of the "Are you Professor Lee?" variety and I'm not hearing much of the language in the real world.

That's a real frustrating problem. When I was a beginner I wanted to learn how to order lunch, not ask "what is your major?"

[大肚男]

Have you tried podcasts like Pop-up Chinese or Chinese Pod?

[abcdefg]

You will need to look beyond textbooks to find what you are seeking. Podcasts, as mentioned above, are an excellent source of practical language.

[bluetortilla]

I got a hold of Chinese Pod Newbie with transcripts. Looks promising. Too bad there doesn't seem to be a good integrated course though. As an English teacher I always grumbled about 'communicative' courses like Interchange. Now I'm a beginner in Chinese and wish I had something just like that! Chinese Pod should do well though- it sounds very colloquial. At least to me...