Looking for a particular type of audio course

[erduoteng]

@funnypuppy - could you recommend some good taiwanese dramas? Something with a good storyline, not too sickeningly romantic and lame like some of the dramas out there?

[snowflake]

Someone mentioned phrase books, these are for Taiwanese who are learning English;

連老外都再用的英語.........3 ½ hours English and Mandarin audio
史上最強英語會話8,000...16 hours English and Mandarin audio
環遊世界必備英語會話.....23 ½ hours of English and Mandarin audio
 

[funnypuppy]

6 hours ago, snowflake said:

Someone mentioned phrase books, these are for Taiwanese who are learning English;

連老外都再用的英語.........3 ½ hours English and Mandarin audio
 

HAHA this one looks like a must!   I bet the Mandarin translations are actually more usable than the English.    ?

Thanks @snowflakefor posting those.   Have you found this to be a useful technique?

 

A similar idea ...  I used to listen to a  ESL radio show in Taiwan.  The English they taught was quaint, funny accents, full of mistakes.   But they cued me to the explanations which were in Chinese.   I could definitely improve my listening comprehension from the highly contextual explanations.     I guess one could do the same with ESL podcasts.

[funnypuppy]

8 hours ago, erduoteng said:

@funnypuppy - could you recommend some good taiwanese dramas? Something with a good storyline, not too sickeningly romantic and lame like some of the dramas out there?

HAHA well that is definitely most Taiwanese dramas!!   But I think you're on the right track here.  Because they have tons of dialogue and it's the living language.  PLus you get the subtitles in Chinese.

I can't remember the namesof the series offhand but I saw a nice selection of them on Viki Rakuten.  They are pretty hi definition and totally free to watch.  You can get it on Android and iOS for free.  Also on Roku for watching on a TV. 

  I think one could find a some series that are not too sappy.  A lot of TV series from China too.

 

 

[snowflake]

On 4/9/2019 at 11:59 PM, funnypuppy said:

HAHA this one looks like a must!   I bet the Mandarin translations are actually more usable than the English.    ?

Thanks @snowflakefor posting those.   Have you found this to be a useful technique?

 

A similar idea ...  I used to listen to a  ESL radio show in Taiwan.  The English they taught was quaint, funny accents, full of mistakes.   But they cued me to the explanations which were in Chinese.   I could definitely improve my listening comprehension from the highly contextual explanations.     I guess one could do the same with ESL podcasts.

 

My memory is pretty bad so I have to have a steady diet of shadowing or chorusing material like this.  When I'm "on" my ability to immediately respond is pretty good and my grammar correct.  When I'm "off", my speech is not so great. 

[Flickserve]

On 4/10/2019 at 12:59 PM, funnypuppy said:

Have you found this to be a useful technique?

 

Calling in @stapler

 

I would like to know if there is a mainland one that also has English and Chinese. 

[stapler]

sorry for the late replay. I mainly found it useful for vocabulary acquisition in the end.

[Dawei3]

On 4/8/2019 at 6:18 PM, erduoteng said:

I did not know pimsleur had already put out a level four.

I just saw Pimsleur put out a Mandarin Level 5.  They're offering a 30% off on CDs & 10% off MP3s until the end of May.

 

When I've learned something from Pimsleur, I generally know it very fluently.  Like Erduoteng, I've listened to each lesson countless times. (It's a great teaching approach, but if I don't use the phrases I've learned for a while, I begin to lose it, so I re-listen to the CDs.)

 

I found that Pimsleur 4 greatly broadened my topics of conversation.  It has so many things that pop up in conversations; pollution, electric vehicles, farming, Islam, food intolerance (including Gluten intolerance), and many other things.  So I can't wait to see what Pimsleur 5 covers.  (I'm such a fan of Pimsleur, I could sell them as my 2nd job...)  

 

[Moshen]

Quote

I found that Pimsleur 4 greatly broadened my topics of conversation.  It has so many things that pop up in conversations; pollution, electric vehicles, farming, Islam, food intolerance (including Gluten intolerance), and many other things.  So I can't wait to see what Pimsleur 5 covers.  (I'm such a fan of Pimsleur, I could sell them as my 2nd job...)  

 I loved the Spanish Pimsleur seres and went through it all the way to the end.  I especially like how they train you in grammar without bringing in terms like subjunctive and preterite.

In Chinese, I'm at HSK 4 level in listening and reading.  I don't want to start the Chinese Pimsleur at the beginning.  I wonder if it would make sense for me to pop in at Pimsleur 4 and continue to level 5?  I'm thinking this might be good to prep me for speaking as we're going back to China for a trip in 4 months.

[erduoteng]

this thread has led me to some great audio courses...all the us army ones are generally not bad for drilling words and phrases, not bad,  and free to download but the best one so far is  the 'Serge Melynk' course. I got to lesson 50 in the the free first 100 lessons. I think I will pay another $97 for the full 256 lesson course. Pretty good, not too much bullshit, striaght to the point. None of this 'talkshow' style stuff, just language learning all the way. Pretty damn good.

 

I am going to go download the new pimsleurs and check out some taiwanese dramas too.

I'm really looking forward to when china, taiwan, singapore catch up to japan in terms of creating entertainment like animations or even technologies like old-school synthesizers or games that only came out in japan. You only had the manual in japanese, they were the coolest technology items to have.

If only China could stop the bad things and just put out some great synths and games consoles instead? Wouldnt have to worry anymore.

Beautiful language and country.

[erduoteng]

As I am getting through this 'Serge Melnyk' audio course I really like it but I think they should add a period of silence after each sentence is introduced so that you have time to repeat the sentence in your head before the 'narrator' or 'teacher' continues speaking.

 

That is something I found annoying with quite a few courses, they are already continuing with the teaching straight away at the end of introducing a new chinese sentence, so whilst you are repeating the sentence in your head they are already talking again. Quite annoying. You dont want to constantly be pressing pause at the end of each new sentence...they just need to add enough silence that you have time to repeat before they carry on, especially for longer sentences. Otherwise this 'Serge Melnyk' course is really great. I'd recommend it.

[erduoteng]

Thought I would add one more thing about Pimsleur courses.

 

Probably some of you are English teachers, so if you have some students who arent picking up enough English its probably a good idea to buy the Pimsleur english course which is taught in mandarin and give it to them on a USB stick or help them put it on their mp3 player. Its a great way for students to learn english properly because it is taught in chinese. Maybe even the parents could learn something to help out their kids with it too...

 

Ive seen so many kids struggling with english language because of the whole 'immersion' method, where the teacher cant translate and cant explain what words mean. This method really sucks for the kids. Much better when they have a translation into mandarin or someone explaining to them how to translate to an 'eqivalent' type sentence or word in mandarin as well as english. With the english only approach its just like repeating gobbledygook for the kids...no fun at all. I had a french teacher in high school like that and I have to say I picked up zero french with the 'immersion' - french only approach