Looking for a particular type of audio course

[erduoteng]

Hi. Does anyone know of some audio courses that are structured in a way that I can learn while walking around?

That is to say, I dont want to have to carry around a textbook to read the transcript.

 

I need courses that are list-like...as below

 

chinese word -> english translation of word

chinese sentence -> english translation of sentence

 

I think a lot of the courses dont include english translation in the audio to make sure people need to buy the course for the textbook to get the translations.

It quite annoying and inconvenient.

 

Any suggestions very welcome.

 

(here are the sudio courses I already have)

 

rosetta tone 1-3

pimsleur 1-3

ispeak, mandarin

book2, mandarin

Foreign service institute

living language

dk-visual phrasebook

dk 15 minute chinese

alltalk

chinesepod

 

I listen to all of these constantly every day in a big loop to reinforce and just memorize it all.

 

I find the 'flashy bullshit modern method' courses quite annoying... I just need long lists of vocabulary and sentences with english translations after them.

The longer the lists, the better.

[mouse]

Glossika sounds like it would be useful to you. But if you've already got pimsleur, why not just use that then move on when you've finished? Collecting all these courses probably won't help much in the long run, especially as learner material is deliberately simplified to aid comprehension. It also sounds to me like you might be relying too much on English translations, which can become a crutch if you're not careful.

[Shelley]

I wondered if this is all you do too.

 

14 hours ago, erduoteng said:

I think a lot of the courses dont include english translation in the audio to make sure people need to buy the course for the textbook to get the translations.

I don't think thats the only reason, I think its because they go into more depth about the grammar, tones and characters to round out your learning.

 

14 hours ago, erduoteng said:

listen to all of these constantly every day in a big loop to reinforce and just memorize it all.

 

And then what do you do with it?

 

14 hours ago, erduoteng said:

 

I find the 'flashy bullshit modern method' courses quite annoying.

 

I agree they can be very annoying but there are other choices, I use New Practical Chinese Reader, this textbook in one form or another has been around since the 80s and is based in my opinion on solid teaching methods used for years.

 

I know this is probably not what you want to hear, and you just wanted pointing to more long list of translated words and sentences, but I feel I can't encourage this method only, I do think you need to fill out your study with some written materials and a structured course.

 

You can and probably will think - Ha silly woman she doesn't know anything about me, how can she just assume I need to do that - well I would suggest this to everyone who is learning Chinese.

 

I think you have collect most of this style of audio course, I can't think of any more that are not on your list.

 

 

Edit:

P.S. I suddenly remembered my old Linguaphone course and wondered if they still did them and yes they do and they have one that might be just up your street, not just long lists of words, sentences but a fuller course. Find out more here https://www.linguaphone.co.uk/language/chinese/mandarin-all-talk-mp3-download-course.html

[edelweis]

16 hours ago, erduoteng said:

rosetta tone 1-3

pimsleur 1-3

ispeak, mandarin

book2, mandarin

Foreign service institute 

living language

dk-visual phrasebook

dk 15 minute chinese

alltalk

chinesepod

That's impressive.

Did you finish all of these?

Maybe you could write a review for some or all of these courses?

 

You can have a look at the Us military Language Survival Kits here, some of them are military oriented but others are more generic

https://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/productList.aspx?v=lsk

but that might be too basic for you (?)

[Publius]

1 hour ago, edelweis said:

You can have a look at the Us military Language Survival Kits here, some of them are military oriented but others are more generic

"Stop or I'll shoot!" Haha, that's a sentence you can't learn elsewhere.

 

Also have a look at 50Languages. They have a pretty long list (supposed to cover A1-A2 vocabulary).

https://www.50languages.com/phrasebook/en/zh/

It's designed by a German institute. So there may be grammar points that are not applicable to other languages. The texts are translated from German. The English and Chinese may not match perfectly.

[Dawei3]

I would add Pimsleur 4 to your list.  I've found that what I learn on Pimsleur, I know fluently.  Pimsleur 4 has a remarkable number of topics that I regularly use in conversations.  

[funnypuppy]

Hi, for self study while commuting or mundane times like cleaning house I'd also suggest Chinesepod audios, although they tend to avoid using bilingual after a certain level.   As for the right level of Chinese, your profile here on chinese-forums is currently blank..

 

But IF you want straight up bilingual audio, why not try some sentence books?

These are the books a lot of Chinese use to learn  English. They contain nothing but hundreds  of sample sentences.  The titles are often something like "3000 English Sentences for Daily Use".   There are so many millions of books like this out there that they can even be found in used bookstores.

Of course you want to check the cover to make sure it includes BILINGUAL audios.  : )

 

[Flickserve]

You want bilingual sentences without the bulls**t. That's Glossika but it only does sentences - not individual words.

 

You can rip the mp3 audio from this link

 

https://youtu.be/1iD4SrAOXns

 

 

[funnypuppy]

@Shelley I couldn't agree with you more.    Maybe someone could get by learning Spanish or French for a travel purposes.

I guess it depends on what one's goals are.  For conversational fluency in a "hard" language  there's NO shortcut to some proper courses with a teacher and drills for getting the fundamental structure own.   Then auxiliary A/V materials are great, maybe even necessary, add-ons. 

 

 "B.S." means  different things to different people.    I have no prob with bilingual learning, hence my post about the sentence books. 

At a certain point one will be ready to go full immersion, but it seems very contrived and gimmicky to do that at the beginning of learning a language.  Maybe this is what was meant by B.S.?   I'm not sure.

 

Most of the famous commercial packages seem useless to me.   Millions have bought them, but how many do you folks know who actually attained Chinese fluency through those programs?  I know ONE fellow who learned broken Hebrew through Rosetta Stone and many hours of live tutoring on italki, attending an ulpan (Israeli style buxiban) and a LOT of app use and TV watching. That's it. 

 

But never heard a laowai who started and learned decent Mandarin from a retail package. Most people end up at a very broken tourist-level at best.

@erduoteng  I learned a lot by listening to tapes constantly, even in my sleep.   The best thing about them is it helped my tones in Mandarin./ 

But other than that, best bet of all you mentioned is Chinesepod which you will retain far better than the other ones you listed.  You will not get the natural sounding flow of the language properly from a lot of the other sources.   

 

Also do not underestimate the need to learn cultural context.  Unfortunately, bilingual translations will not be able to provide that and they are critically important for Chinese.

Want a laugh?  There's a radio ad currently  playing  around here   that says "Why do Europeans speak so many languages ? Because they use Babel...... the number one selling language tool in Europe."      :  O    If that advert isn't B.S. I don't know what is/

[DavyJonesLocker]

42 minutes ago, funnypuppy said:

Most of the famous commercial packages seem useless to me.   Millions have bought them, but how many do you folks know who actually attained Chinese fluency through those programs?  I know ONE fellow who learned broken Hebrew through Rosetta Stone and many hours of live tutoring on italki, attending an ulpan (Israeli style buxiban) and a LOT of app use and TV watching. That's it. 

 

I went through all RS, Pimsleur and while good and no doubt interesting it was very limited. When I landed in China I had a test on day one with the language teacher of a school in Beijing. She promply dumped me into the beginners course which depressed me immensly. The problem with these course are that you are highly insulted from everyday Chinese as they very reactive (listen and repeat) and highly westernised (i.e. a lot of tennis and bowling going on and anything cultural seems to be 京剧 which hardly any native chinese are interested in now)。Culturally, as shelly noted aboved NPCR is right on the money. I have heard exact same idioms repeated many times and passages almost reinacted a few times in a villages in china. However it might seem quite odd for a younger learner outside China to appreciated these textbooks 

Pimsleur use 美金 and some times 人民币 which always seemed odd to me given i have hardly ever used either of those words in the years i have been here. always 块

 

One quickly finds that most natives don't speak with the same clarity nor use full sentence patterns as the speaker on the tape. They will be quite economical with their language,  perhaps lots of incorrect grammer and have localised topics and phrases. Oddly enough, it was the little sentences that threw me.

 

For example: the CD might teach you  (at a supermarket) 你想要一个袋子码 ? whereas I started hearing 袋子要吗  and then 微信，支付宝？ A very simple interaction and I was stumped

I lost count of how many times people said to me 哪里人 which I never remember hearing on any of the RS or Pimsleur

 

Listening to a wealth  of CD's and teaching material like that its easy to view the Chinese language as only being encompassed by the universe of sentences in the CD's 

 

 

[Wurstmann]

3 hours ago, funnypuppy said:

For conversational fluency in a "hard" language  there's NO shortcut to some proper courses with a teacher and drills for getting the fundamental structure own.

 

That's not true. You could get good just by listening. It may not be the most efficient approach, but still.

The problem is, most people who got fluent don't know why they got fluent. If you talk to them, you will discover they all spent a lot of time listening and reading.

Textbooks and lessons waste a lot of time with exercises and wordlists etc. I think it would be better to just read through all the grammar explanations once and then move on.

 

The worst part about teachers is that lot of them require their students to speak from the beginning. That doesn't make sense. It's way easier to speak when you already understand most of what you hear. Also, languages are not creative. You don't want to make up your own sentences by some grammar rules you were taught. You want to say it like a native speaker would. And that knowledge comes from input.

[Publius]

Well said, @Wurstmann, I couldn't have said it better.

[永鈞]

@Wurstmann I wholeheartedly agree! 

 

“Speak from the start” is really something of a religious dogma among language learners. Both in teaching and learning I come across it. 

 

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people confuse correlation with causation. If you do students who ‘speak from the start’, chances are they are very highly motivated individuals who are able to move past frustrations and keep working at it. That they improve is no surprise, but it’s not exactly true that it’s because they spoke from the start.

[murrayjames]

+1 for the power of the discriminating ear to help us improve our ability to reproduce strange and unfamiliar sounds.

 

In language and in music (my chosen profession), regular intentional listening over a period of years has made me a more convincing, fluid, interesting, and effective communicator.

[Flickserve]

1 hour ago, Wurstmann said:

reading

 

I am not sure about the reading bit because I learnt to speak Cantonese fairly well but my reading ability is quite low. Cantonese has that issue with what is said is not how it's written in standard Chinese.

 

 

I got it mostly from listening.

[erduoteng]

Hey. This is great. Thanks so much for all the replies here.

Ive just downloaded the american military language courses.

I forgot to include it in the list of audio courses in the post i made above but I think I have tried one of those already.

 

I got one of them randomly a while back on a p2p torrent thing when I searched 'chinese audio courses'.

I did not know they had four others available so Im pretty happy about that!

They are free to download. That is excellent.

 

The one I have already is quite strange at times, but also quite useful and 'list-like'.

Good for repeated listening, no bullshit.

 

It does have some phrases you might never use if your not an army guy like:

 

"lie on your stomach, put your hands behind your head"

"dont push, we have plenty of food",

"we need 20 gallons of pottable water" etc..

 

However, it also has a lot of useful everyday vocabulary in there too.

I learnt cool stuff in mandarin which the other audio courses didnt have in them like  'machine-gun', 'hand-grenade', 'hyraulic fluid' etc.

Even some english words I did not know previously, like 'azemuth'.

 

Im not generally interested in army stuff at all but the mandarin course they made was pretty good.

I think the one I got must have been the 'basics' course..

It will be interesting to check out the others:

 

public affairs guide

navy commands guide

medical guide

civil affairs guide

air crew guide

 

I did not know pimsleur had already put out a level four. I will have to get that.

Ive already done pimsleur 1-3, over and over again countless times.

 

Same goes for rosetta stone. It only goes to level three, but it would really be nicer if it went to level 20 or 30 even.

Once youve been through the course on your computer, having seen the photographs...you dont need the english (no english in the audio).

Although its too short, it is a great course.

 

I found the 'book2' and 'ispeak' audio courses to be good ones...just a long list with english translations.

Foreign service institute was good too.

 

The problem with 'chinesepod' is not when listening to it the first time, but after repeated listenings because they try to be 'chatty', like a radio show.

It just gets annoying the second ( or hundredth ) time listening to it.

 

As beautiful and interesting as they are, Im not learning characters.

I just need to be able to talk to people without being the "broken-tourist" ( as someone said above )..

Learning characters will take up my lifetime too much.

Its  a very ancient way of writing, much like 'coptic' which is essentially simplified heiroglyphs as used in ancient egypt and, as such, takes too long to learn.

Having said that, I did start trying once and an app called "wordtracer" for iphone is a really excellent way to learn them.

 

There is a lot of meaning and history inside each of the characters, some of which was lost during simplification.

For example, the character for 'male/man' has 'sword' and 'fields' inside it, so the english translations of words might not be considered to be full translations, rather english equivalents.

 

Anyway, the characters are quite fun and calming to write in 'wordtracer'...Id imagine you could pull off a good painting or two after learing a lot of the characters, if learning them quite large. It requires an epic memory. If you have other things to study there isnt enough time. Traditional characters look way cooler.

 

I know that I will need to know at least some translations of individual characters in order to be able to progress in mandarin learning.

I should add to my request from the opening post and say:

 

I need a chinese language course structured as follows:

 

1. chinese word -> english translation of word

2. character by character translation (where necessary)

3. chinese sentence -> english translation of sentence

 

O.K. Thankyou. Sorry for the long post.

Great suggestions here and even a nice big new audio course for free.

I will try glossika, 50languages and the  New Practical Chinese Reader textbook as well.

 

 

 

 

[Flickserve]

29 minutes ago, erduoteng said:

need a chinese language course structured as follows:

 

1. chinese word -> english translation of word

2. character by character translation (where necessary)

3. chinese sentence -> english translation of sentence

 

There is a podcast by Serge Melnyks who does something similar without the chatty style of

Chinesepod

 

otherwise the only recourse for such specific requirements will be to commission  your own course.

 

[funnypuppy]

14 hours ago, Wurstmann said:

18 hours ago, funnypuppy said:

For conversational fluency in a "hard" language  there's NO shortcut to some proper courses with a teacher and drills for getting the fundamental structure own.

 

That's not true. You could get good just by listening. It may not be the most efficient approach, but still.

The problem is, most people who got fluent don't know why they got fluent. If you talk to them, you will discover they all spent a lot of time listening and reading.

Textbooks and lessons waste a lot of time with exercises and wordlists etc. I think it would be better to just read through all the grammar explanations once and then move on.

 

The worst part about teachers is that lot of them require their students to speak from the beginning. That doesn't make sense. It's way easier to speak when you already understand most of what you hear. Also, languages are not creative. You don't want to make up your own sentences by some grammar rules you were taught. You want to say it like a native speaker would. And that knowledge comes from input.

 

I agree that one could get good (convo) by listening...  What helped me get fluent was many hours of Taiwan TV shows with the primary purpose of learning, not entertainment.  Like you said, not efficient, but good for getting the tones.   And the characters in the subtitles helped my reading too.

  However as you pointed out one still needs a guide to the grammar points, either by a teacher or from a book or both.   It's risky to intuit them from our own observation, right?

  I know what you mean about the textbook exercises. But they are not a waste of time when you have a teacher or tutor.  They can be extremely valuable if you have a teacher who will force substitution drills on them.  

Similar with the word lists. They only help if someone actually forces you to form sentences.  That only happens with a teacher. Otherwise you usually forget the vocab pretty quickly.

I agree that listening in the beginning is the key.  I was almost silent for the first 6 months of Chinese classes in Taiwan.  Then suddenly Spring happened and I started having fluent conversations.  I even surprised myself. 

I've met several Taiwanese who learned fluent English from TV and Hollywood.  They sound very chatty and hip.  Perfect for a job at Hooters.  But the problem is they cannot conduct any formal conversation.      They haven't encountered the vocab or learned proper sentence structure.  I can tell they are smart when I speak Mandarin with them.  But they don't sound educated when they speak English. 

 So, in the end I still think one needs textbooks for structured guidance and explanation. But not be isolated. MUST put it to use  too.

 

 

[Dawei3]

16 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

lot of tennis and bowling going on and anything cultural seems

As much as I like Pimsleur's teaching approach, I completely agree with you about Pimsleur's content.  The bowling thing is just so weird;  I've never had anyone ever mention bowling to me.  Also, Pimsleur seems like it's in a time warp.  Ten years after email was totally dominant, Pimsleur 1 started teaching about writing letters.  Their latest, Mandarin IV, teaches about digital cameras (when film had disappeared long before).  If they create a Pimsleur 5, they'll probably teach about faxing documents. ?

 

Also, some of the terminology is strange:  why teach people to ask if they speak Putonghua, rather than Zhongwen?  And they introduce lessons in English, regardless of the level, rather than Chinese.  

 

This said, I've not found another self-teaching approach that is as effective as Pimsleur in getting me to think and speak in Chinese.  It claims it teaches grammar implicitly and I think it does.  Also, I've used Pimsleur to a limited degree for other languages and people have noted I don't speak them with an "American accent."  In contrast, I like the old Chinesepod lessons, but I found it difficult to pay attention (as much as I like the teachers & the lessons).  Pimsleur keeps my attention.  Friends who've used Pimsleur for other languages also had success with it.

 

Pimsleur 4 introduce lots of things that appear in conversations.  And when I've learned it from Pimsleur, I usually know it fluently with good pronunciation.    

 

If there is another teaching approach that is as effective, I'd welcome hearing about it.  

[Yadang]

3 hours ago, erduoteng said:

I need a chinese language course structured as follows:

 

1. chinese word -> english translation of word

2. character by character translation (where necessary)

3. chinese sentence -> english translation of sentence

 

3 hours ago, Flickserve said:

the only recourse for such specific requirements will be to commission  your own course.

 

In line with making your own course, you could check out Gradint. You can use it for words or sentences. Maybe even both at the same time (I've only tried it with Chinese only, and shadowing). That would satisfy requirements 1 and 3. Although if I were you, I might consider using it only for sentences, and instead of having both Chinese and English, only have Chinese, which you then shadow. This is for two reasons: 1) it's much easier to find Chinese content without an English counterpart, 2) even if you do find an English counterpart, it will take more time to make your courses in Gradint, and 3) even if you do find an English counterpart you'll be listening to half as much Chinese as you would if you were Chinese only. I would combine this paired with Chinese word --> English translation of the word (or the other way around) via flashcards, if necessary (for unknown words come across in the sentences).

 

Then you can mine sentences from whatever interests you: movies, podcasts, tv shows, audiobooks, etc., providing Chinese which is both more "authentic" and more interesting to learn.