Hey everyone,

I'm curious what other people's whole learning program looks like. Maybe in this thread we can also discuss the best combination of approaches to learn Mandarin. I'll start...

My complement of tools include Pimsleur tapes, Rosetta Stone, Anki, and Skritter.

Pimsleur I find terrific for some down-and-dirty words and expressions that you can quickly get the hang of. These are nice because they give you some real basics and build confidence early on. I have used other audio tools as well, like Berlitz, and I also have the Michel Thomas method ones that I might use after Pimsleur. Berlitz, in my opinion, was much more geared towards providing usable phrases for the business person or traveller and was less a grounding for more comprehensive language learning than Pimsleur. Pimsleur is a nice complement to a language learning program because you can throw them on as you're doing other stuff like taking a walk or driving (how I exclusively use them).

I also use Rosetta Stone v3. Right now, this is the mainstay of my language learning efforts. Without actual classes, this is closest I am coming to a systematic and comprehensive approach to learning Mandarin. It's a great program. One drawback is that I find the "reading" and "writing" component of the program only marginally useful. Since it doesn't give you the chance to actually practice writing, remembering the characters is a long-shot--unless, I suppose, you are doing some added work, like working in a scrapbook as you are going along with the program.

This is where Skritter comes in, for learning the characters. I know there are lots of books out there for language learning but Skritter seems like by far the best way to practice characters. I personally could not use it by itself, though.

Anki. I am using Anki less these days, but I make a habit of entering in every new word that I encounter in Pimsleur and Rosetta. I use it for about 5 minutes everyday just for reviewing these. I may start using it for character recognition as well.

I think that's it. I have also given "ZON" a try, which for those of you who don't know, is an online multiplayer game focused around learning Mandarin. Like WoW, maybe, but with language tasks. And a lot less fun :P I gave it up because I found it slow and buggy and not all that useful.

I have had tutors before, but they weren't trained, and they were primarily useful to practice basic conversations--they didn't know much about teaching. In the future I would certainly consider taking an actual language course, or finding qualified tutors.

As a fun complement to all the above, I watch a lot of mandarin movies, though I'm not yet a good enough listener to understand the vast bulk of it.

If I knew any good TV shows or music artists, I would start watching / listening to those as well.

Your turn to share!

Hey jimi02,

Have you tried any podcasts? ChinesePod and Chinese Class 101 are just a couple that publish regularly. Most of the best podcasting sites have paid content, but you can get the actual podcast files for free via iTunes. If you don't get a lot of other chances for listening practice, these are perfect.

And if you'd like to learn some songs, I've got a collection on my blog (apologies for the plug: http://ktvxiaojie.wordpress.com) or you can visit websites like Karazen (http://www.karazen.com/lyrics.php) that specialize in Chinese music.

Also consider SoJu (http://www.mysoju.com/), which posts dramas and movies you can view online for free.

For more traditional study, besides Skritter, I sometimes use http://www.chinese-course.com, which has vocab, sentences, and longer texts in flashcard format. No character writing exercises, but it's a good supplement to Skritter, and it's free.

In a search of life after Pimsleur, I had found and use:

http://www.instantspeakchinese.com/

and also, as Pimsleur, and all of popular audio programs plug;s you in mostly in mainland china dialects, while I need Taiwan's chinese more, I am considering to buy a textbook and CD's from this website:

http://www.verypracticalchinese.com/

at least I saw much Taiwan related slang.

And that is by the way a problem in Taiwan
Hundreds of examples. Like 酒店 works great in Shenzhen and Nanjing for a hotel (I tested many times with taxi drivers, and other people), then in Taiwan you are out with this. Same for restaurant, taxi, and many other useful words, which Pimsleur hammered in my mind and then it appeared misunderstood or even useless in Taiwan.

ktv,

Thanks for the music links, I will check those out. As for Chinese Pod, I have given a couple samples a try and it seems pretty good. That might be something I take up once I'm done the language tapes I have now.

One thing I was always wondering about Chinese Pod, though, is, do you keep listening to the same convo over and over for memorization? Since, unlike Pimsleur, it doesn't have repetition built into it.

Skritter is by far the best utility I've found for learning how to write and recognize characters.

Aside from Skritter, I am currently enrolled in a college Chinese course. We are using the Integrated Chinese textbook. My evaluation of the textbook is that it is o.k. and would probably be impossible to navigate the grammar principles without the help of a professor or tutor, but the grammar principles taught are very useful.

I've also turned to reading children books in Chinese. My goal is to just improve my reading speed, which is often hindered by having to look up a character every ten words or so. My logic is by accessing simpler literature, I won't have to pause to look up a new character as often, thus increasing my comfort with reading. As it gets easier, I'll find more advanced level reading to compensate.

As for audio resources, that is something that I know I should access, but really haven't capitalized on yet. I'll take the suggestions that have been given thus far and see which works best for me. I really do need to do something to improve my listening comprehension.

Oh, and movies either in Mandarin, or with Mandarin dub. Sure I don't understand 85% of what's being said, but it is nice to just hear the language, even if I don't understand all of it.

I'm using Rosetta Stone (incl. audio companion.. always turn it on before i go to bed, so i fall asleep listening to chinese and its the first thing i hear when i wake up), and do one-on-one classes.
Sometime I also play "My Chinese Coach" on my nintendo DS, which is quite nice too. Well.. and of course a dictionary, 电子辞典 tho, have it installed on my android phone so i can always look up words when im outside, talking chinese to myself and dont know a word. have another nice app on my phone which displays a new chinese word every day.
really useful ones tho, like clothes dryer -_-

I write partly chinese mails with my 老师 (teacher).

I use skritter for keeping my writing alive, Chinesepod for podcasts and Chinese blogs/newspapers for reading practice. Some that I keep returning to:
http://www.sina.com.cn/ and http://blog.sina.com.cn/
http://www.sohu.com/
http://www.bjd.com.cn/
http://dzh.mop.com/

I was self taught up to a point but adult night class ran out of steam at the upper beginner level. Coinciding with a bit of turmoil in my industry, I decided to pack in my career and go back to university. It's been interesting...

Other than that I built up a good vocab from using flashcards on Pleco, this is still my most indispensable tool. I often walk around the house reading out example sentences from some of the dictionaries. Looking forward to a version of Pleco being released with flashcard support on the iPod/iPhone platform, then I can ditch my old windows mobile (which I use a very expensive PDA just for Pleco...)

Chinesepod and Popup Chinese (to a lesser extent), it's astounding how I know words with perfect pronunciation just from podcasts. I'm at the stage now where I really need to hear more conversational Chinese rather than podcasts so I think I'll find ways to listen to Chinese radio and get hold of some soap operas and stuff.

Tencent QQ international, I like to participate in Chinese chats with people via their popular IM system. Quite fun culturally as well as language based.

Banging hard on Skritter doing half hour to an hour each day to pick up my characters. Interestingly it's not translating that well to being able to write legible characters on paper so I might have to spend some time doing boring old paper repetition excersizes.

I find websites like MBDG and nkcu invaluable, the former for great character look up tools and the latter for example sentences. Would also say a pop-up annotator like Chinese Pera-Pera Kun or Mandarin Popup for Firefox are indispensable. If only something like that existed for Chrome...

Incidentally today I'm going to take my Wacom to uni and actually whip it out to Skritter in between lectures. At least that's the idea but hot uni chicks might make it a little distracting.

Big thumbs up for Mandarin movies as earlier mentioned. A curious side effect of Chinese dialects is that many of them have hanzi subtitles which is absolutely ideal for the student. Some movies even have English and hanzi on the same subtitle like the Red Cliff movies - highly recommended :)

I take Skype classes 5 times a week at eChineseLearning.com. Highly recommended, and if you sign up for an extended time, quite a bit cheaper than finding a local teacher in the West.

Thanks for the link to mysoju ktv小姐. Was just watching the butterfly lovers series, not only does it have Chinese subtitles, but also English.

Lurks - any recommendations for websites where the Red Cliff movies can be watched? Links to radio have been posted here before, but I like something I can rewind and with subtitles...

I take Chinese classes at university (currently in third year) and I use Chinese daily to communicate with Chinese friends, either online or in person (mostly online).

BTW, KTV小姐 ah ... did you deliberately want to make that name funny?

Following up DrGrace's recommendation for eChineseLearning, my post here on passing the HSK suggests some other online schools.

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=23367286

@ximeng

No problem! And you may want to try www.youku.com or www.tudou.com for movies - plus, it's good reading practice just to navigate those sites, since they're only in Chinese.

@gacorley

Haha - I'm ok with the connotations - I quite literally live in a huge KTV (on an upper floor), so the name suits me just fine. :)

@jimi02

You mentioned the issue of podcasts and repetition:

"One thing I was always wondering about Chinese Pod, though, is, do you keep listening to the same convo over and over for memorization? Since, unlike Pimsleur, it doesn't have repetition built into it."

Just for the purpose of transparency, I'll begin my response just by mentioning that I work at ChinesePod as well as using it to learn (alongside Skritter, of course!).

ChinesePod.com has over a thousand self-contained lessons, hundreds of each level. Vocab/patterns/structures relevant to each level feature across multiple lessons.

Therefore, there's no need to constantly cover the exact same dialogues. This keeps things interesting and fresh. Once you feel confident at one level, you can try out lessons of the next level.

I hope that helps clarify things a bit!

I'm not very disciplined, so I like to use lots of different courses.

My favourites for listening (whilst driving or cooking) are:
Ultimate Mandarin Chinese by Living Language
Chinese by Linguaphone (9-cd course)

For grammar are:
Colloquial Chinese by T'ung and Pollard
Schaum's Outlines Chinese Grammar by Ross

For reading and writing are:
Beginner's Chinese Script by Teach Yourself
Skritter (of course)
MDBG practice quiz

Finally, for teaching my children are:
Follow Jade (dvds) by Jade Qian
Disney films dubbed in Chinese, with subtitles
Zhongwen
Chinese for GCSE by Hanban with the British Council
(online as Kuile Hanyu at http://kid.chinese.cn/en/article/2009-09/25/content_68533.htm , ie at the Confucius Institute site)
BYKI online flashcards
Semanda online flashcard quiz
Chinese Nursery Rhymes

Rachael.

Thanks a lot for the mysoju link.

Sharing knowledge is great!