Pimsleur

[bomaci]

I'm currently studying chinese by myself and have some questions about the Pimsleur language programs. I have studied chinese for about two years, but

up until fall of last year my chinese ability really didn't amount to much. However in September of last year I went to Shanghai on a business trip and got really interested in improving my Chinese. At that time I could say some things, but I understood almost nothing.

I'm currently using the Integrated Chinese textbooks in conjunction with the "Making Connections" listening comprehension course from Cheng & Tsui.

I recently completed level 1 part 1 of IC and have now started on level 1 part 2. I'm also very fortnunate to have a chinese coworker who is willing to speak mandarin with me practically every day.

My question is this: Is the pimsleur language program still worth looking at

at this point? How much does Pimsleur teach you compared with the Integrated Chinese series? I really like the methodology of the Pimsleur programs, but I'm reluctant to invest that much money if I already know most of the material it teaches.

[markpete]

If you've already studied Chinese for two years, you probably know most of the vocabulary that Pimsleur teaches. However, it does seem to be pretty good for improving pronunciation and correctness of the four tones. I was told that using Pimsleur helped my pronunciation quite a lot.

I haven't used Integrated Chinese, so I can't compare the two, but if you are interested, I could e-mail you the vocabulary lists that I compiled from the Pimsleur level 2 and level 3 CDs and you could see what you already know. There are maybe ~400 vocabulary items in the three sets of Pimsleur CDs.