Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning

If you are the kind of person who is motivated to learn Mandarin Chinese, and you are also the kind of person who learns well on their own, this is going to work very well for you. I haven't been using this very long, so I will drop back in with updates. There are 3 general study books ("Essential", Intermediate, and Advanced) which cover phrasing and grammar with both pinyin and Chinese character representations. There is another book that gives an excellent intro to character writing - so far the best I have seen. The tracks on the 9 CDs (I am guessing about 7 hours of content) correspond to specific sections in the 3 books. The books are well written and well formatted. The packaging is professional and clean. The content is well organized and approachable. The commentary sections are superb. Having the English, pinyin, and Chinese version together is fantastic. At least in the beginning, they stick to easily pronounceable and also very useful phrases. Basic grammar is covered early. Their explanation of tones, and practice, is very good. The lessons are small, so you can pick one and work through the whole thing in one sitting (I am finding you need to repeat a single lesson maybe 5 times). The CDs are tracked to the lesson plan, but it works surprisingly well just to listen without the book. So the first thing you are going to want to do is rip the CDs you are studying. The tracks are much easier to find when they are on your phone. There are 4 lessons per CD, broken up into many tracks. You will probably want to combine all the tracks for each lesson into an MP3 for easy listening in the car. The entire CD can be listened to this way, but I find having the single lessons to be the most convenient form. The sections seem to flow together pretty well, and you can get a lot of repeated listens this way. You *will* want to rip the CDs as MP3s as soon as possible. For learning characters, they kind of throw you into the deep end, but they really cover the material well. It is very much worth the effort to learn the writing, and not at all difficult if you start right away. I recommend you get a phone app that does handwriting recognition on Chinese characters. There appear to be several good ones. The software is great for practice, and you will want to practice writing the characters, not just reading them. The characters are a lot easier to recognize when you can write them from memory. There are a number of good books that give a different, complementary introduction to Chinese writing. I dug up a few, but if you want something that looks kind of like a children's book, check out Chineasy. It's fun. Whatever you do, don't skip the writing! So - to summarize - you will probably want to record the CDs into a format you can more easily use. You will definitely want to check out some of the software packages that help you practice (available free or cheap), especially for writing. And you may find other complementary materials to help you get started if you are stuck. The bottom line is that this is the real deal. If you do the work, you will be able to functionally speak, read, and write Chinese when you are done. I'm convinced of this after the first couple of weeks, and I will check back in as I make progress. Yes, this is only 1/10th the price of Rosetta Stone, and 1/20th the price of Pimsleur. I looked at both of those, and if all three had been the same price and I could only choose one, I would stick with Living Language. I am very impressed at the value. There is no "catch." ... Update 2014-08-14: I'm using a single 20-minute session per day to study (the timer on Android works great for this). My progress isn't fast, but I am hoping the continuous exposure over time will work for my old brain. I am slowly "getting it." It's hard to commit to a lot of time every single day, but I think I can do 20 minutes - and I look forward to it because it really is kind of fun. Once you get into the lessons, they tell you about the games on their website at [URL redacted - don't want to break the rules]. The games on the website are free (you can try without buying), but you really need to be doing the lessons for them to make sense. They really help accelerate your learning, and they are pretty well done! I am still working the 1st lesson at this point, but I have skipped to the back of the book to study pinyin pronunciation, common characters, and common signs (can you tell the men's room from the ladies?). The deeper I go, the more impressed I am. Apparently this whole set was meant to delivered as 3 rather more expensive packages, one for beginner, one for intermediate, and one for advanced. This set is the whole thing in one box. I feel almost guilty for paying this little for something that is clearly worth a whole heck of a lot more. Almost. Update 2014-08-24: I'm augmenting my active 20 minutes of study with passive listening. You must learn the characters and pinyin forms, which is fun but takes work. You also have to be able to hear and repeat the pronunciations correctly. Chinese is not a language for slackers. And you have to sort of do it all at once. You have to read, you have to write, and you have to listen and speak. By the way, Google has an excellent pinyin keyboard on the Android. It is great for entering Chinese characters (phrases) when you don't know what you are doing!

Absolutely amazing value for a course that is the equivalent of about a full year of college-level Chinese, and pitched at a much more manageable pace and without all the linguistic jargon. I've started and stopped studying Chinese probably a dozen times over as many years, mostly because the language and the instructional materials for it have proved so opaque and impenetrable. I finally broke through with the Living Language program. I did not expect a popular market product like this to be both so serious and so effective. It led me in so gently that I didn't realize how quickly and smoothly I was progressing, and in retrospect, the specific vocabulary and grammar it was teaching me was 100% spot on (HSK levels 1 and 2 are a piece of cake after this program). From absolute zero, the program led me into the thicket of Chinese--both spoken and written--and before I knew it, I was hacking away into the next and the next areas of the jungle. The vocabulary introduced is largely the same as the most popular 1st year college Chinese textbooks, and this program's introduction to characters is better than any of the dozen or so other programs I've tried and/or am now using. In less than a year, I've started emailing and speaking to a Chinese colleague in Chinese, in addition to my main and most daunting goal, doing research in Chinese on modern legal developments. I obviously have a good way to go, but after finishing the Living Language program, I am totally comfortable navigating intermediate-level material, and I am totally confident of the path forward. The next step seems to be picking up with Integrated Chinese Level 2 or the equivalent (IC seems to be the best product available now to get me where I want in terms of grammar and key vocabulary development), but I would recommend that anyone facing the juggernaut of Chinese begin to attack it with the shockingly inexpensive and yet extremely effective Living Language materials.

I almost gave this four stars because 1. it lacks zhuyin entries, 2. there are a few typos/goofs and 3. it lacks enough pinyin learning tools. The overall strength and affordable price of this product make it deserve 4.5 stars without question, so I rounded up. [Update 5/13/14: I had to come back and drop my rating down to a 4 star, which I have never done in my many years of Amazon purchases. The typos with the tone marks are increasing as I progress through the materials. Moreover, the end of chapter 5 quiz has vocabulary and grammar questions which are not introduced until chapters 6 and 7! Boo. I know how easy it is to make this kind of mistake as a classroom teacher, but that is why curriculum designers get paid so much more than teachers do. It is very frustrating for me as a learner when I come across questions that I am unable to answer even after going back and scouring the whole first half of the book! Also, the website seems to have some issues where activities won't load properly on some of the chapters.] I am a language teacher. I teach English to international students at an American university. I've seen more than my share of language learning materials through work and through my hobby of studying foreign languages. The Living Language set is really great! The online resources, CDs and multi-level books are very well designed. My boyfriend is from Taiwan and I'm American. His parents don't speak English, so I'm learning Chinese to be able to communicate with them. Speaking and listening are more of my focus, but I still want to learn to read and write. Having studied Japanese before, I'm pleasantly surprised how much easier reading and writing is in Chinese! This program is helping me to make lots of progress in a short time with minimal stress. Tips to get the most out of this program: If you are a Chinese/Taiwanese drama addict, do one of the online chapter exercises before watching an episode and again just after. If you don't have a premium acct on dramafever (or viki), use the commercial breaks to review vocab. You will know it inside and out if you review it often. Learn the vocab online with the flashcard tool first. That way you won't fall into the pinyin pronunciation trap. Force yourself to be flawless with the tones. If you don't know the tones, you don't know the word! You have to double check the tones because the books have typos where tone marks are missing or even incorrect (sigh). This program (at such an affordable price!) is overall very well designed. A few changes could have made this even better. - Pinyin sucks in general. Zhuyin is about a billion times better. If the publishers had included entries for the vocab in zhuyin as well as pinyin, I would have been in hog heaven. I promised myself I'd look up the zhuyin for each new word, but that hasn't happened. So I'm kinda forced to do the pinyin. - A section on the website with pinyin pronunciation flashcards, esp that includes the tone change rules is sorely needed. This program acts like you can just look at pinyin once and then know it. Ummmm... no. It is the MOST counter-intuitive and basically stupid romanization system ever. You will need to actively fight against what has been ingrained in you for 20+ YEARS of your life to pronounce pinyin correctly. That takes practice. - The website is essential for learning the pronunciation! You can listen to the word while looking at a picture and the hanzi for it. This is great! You can turn pinyin off and on too, which is so helpful for learning what tones a word takes. However, there are some mistakes where you are asked for a vocab item that wasn't learned yet. Also, the fill-in-the-blank exercises can be frustrating because there isn't an allowance to give you the answer when you just can't figure it out. - The book has many typos when it comes to tone marks. I am proud of myself for having caught two already by chapter 4... but it scares me to think I'm studying incorrect information. It is very do-able to learn one of these lessons per day, let's say 5 per week and review on the other 2 days. If you keep up that pace, you WILL be pretty good in Chinese in only a few months.

Mandarin is not an easy language to learn. Speaking it and reading it take a lot of dedication and practice. Living Language was an inexpensive system that really works when you make it your own. I have only had it for about 1 week+ but I decided that I wasn't going to tackle learning speaking/pinyin and the characters/Hanzi at the same time or during the same practice sessions. I have decided to break them up into a separate sessions for retention purposes and it seems to work for me. Going through the same lesson multiple times before moving on the next lesson is a great way to make sure you are ready to move on. Repetition is the mother of success when it comes to this or any language. The audio CDs are great to listen too while at work to help hone your tones and pronunciation and are a must while reading through the books. The books are easy to read follow and offer lots of exercises to help you retain. This was money well spent and I would recommend this system to anyone who wants to learn a language. I am looking forward to finish up the first book very soon and move on to the second much larger book. I have no doubt that after I complete this program I will be able to hold simple to mild conversations in Mandarin, and will be ready to continue my learning in more advanced programs.

I started out learning Mandarin with Rosetta Stone but quickly grew frustrated with their method which forces you to infer grammatical rules from examples. I have studied several languages and mastered three, and my brain works the other way around: I need to see the grammar rules and then apply them and see plenty of examples and counter examples. Living Language works for me. I have been using it daily since late May and now in mid-September am almost through the intermediate book, with command of basic vocabulary and grammar. I use the CDs in my car and they are great. I plan to finish the course by end of the year and try my luck with HSK3 by that time. I also use the companion iPad app, which is also phenomenal value for ten bucks. It has most of the same content, but they have replaced pen-and-paper exercises with interactive games which are great. My other study tools are Tuttle flash cards and a flash card app for my phone. You should be aware that the course teaches vocabulary by topic area, which makes a lot of sense from pragmatic use of the language. This is, however, somewhat out of sync with the HSK vocabulary levels, and that can be a bit confusing if you are studying with HSK exams in mind, or are supplementing with other study tools that follow HSK vocabulary more closely. This is not an issue for learning by any means, more like a quirk of the HSK system's chosen vocabulary which can feel a bit random.

At 33 dollars, they are virtually giving this course away! So, what's the catch? There is none - it's truly a real deal. The first thing you notice when you get this box is that it's heavy, about 4 or 5 lbs. The four books are very well produced and the mp3 recordings are high quality. They are self-instructional, so you can listen as you drive, walk or run, without needing to read at the same time. One complaint: Lesson One has various sections that are announced on the mp3... Vocabulary Builder 1, Vocabulary Practice 1, Take It Further 1, Grammar Builder 1, Vocabulary Builder 2, Vocabulary Practice 2, Take It Further 2, Grammar Builder 2, Work Out 1, Work Out 2, etc. Now, go to any other lesson, take for instance Lesson 9; You hear the same thing repeated over and over... Vocabulary Builder 1, Vocabulary Practice 1, Take It Further 1, Grammar Builder 1, Vocabulary Builder 2, Vocabulary Practice 2, Take It Further 2, Grammar Builder 2, Work Out 1, Work Out 2, etc. No matter which lesson you are listening to, each and every lesson has exactly the same section numbering, namely, either "1" or "2". So, you constantly hear "Vocabulary Builder 1" even if it's Chapter 9 and it's actually Vocabulary Builder 18 (using sequential numbering). In the middle of any mp3, you can't tell what lesson you're listening to from the section announcements. It's infuriating. All they needed to do was use a number system like 1.1, 1.2, 2.1,... 9.1, 9.2 or even straight sequential numbering 1,2,3,4... 30,31,32, etc.. That's my only complaint and I really hope they fix it in future. Even so, this course is phenomenal value! Learning Mandarin? Don't even think about it... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!

I starting learning Mandarin using Chinese (Mandarin) I . Although Pimsleur is an extremely good audio-only product, I feel that this Living Language Mandarin Chinese product is the best starting point. Alternatively, the two products can be used simultaneously, because they both offer unique advantages. I would certainly recommend Pimsleur to anyone that has been using this Living Language product and is looking for challenging audio exercises to improve their fluency. A purely audio approach such as Pimsleur is not the easiest method for learning correct pronunciation of Mandarin. A more standard approach is to first learn the Romanized writing system for Mandarin that uses the same Latin alphabet that’s used for writing English and other European languages. The books that are included with this Living Language product use Pin Yin for writing Mandarin words and sentences. Learning Pin Yin is helpful, because it will help you to distinguish between sounds that are otherwise easily confused. Also, the process of learning Pin Yin will help you to learn the differences between English and Mandarin pronunciation of sounds that a native English speaker will otherwise pronounce with a heavy accent. If you don’t have a private tutor to teach you the correct pronunciation of those easily confused sounds, then you can find lots of helpful Pin Yin lessons on YouTube that demonstrate the correct pronunciation of each letter of the Pin Yin alphabet. Living Language is the best starting point, and Pimsleur is a great place to continue with challenging audio exercises.

Not everyone can study language the same way, but for me this is the perfect kind of self-study program. The books are well produced and sensibly teach grammar at an appropriate level, and I can listen to the CDs in my car to practice. After a few months of study, my wife and I spent three weeks in China, and I was very pleased to be able to make myself understood in a number of situations. I couldn't always understand what people said back to me, but I generally could explain what I wanted or needed (and of course, could understand the numbers very well). I worked on the spoken language only, and ignored the Chinese characters, though more knowledge of them would have been helpful in Xinjiang (in the far west of the country), where virtually no English is spoken and where signs and restaurant menus don't have English versions, as they tend to do further east. This course is a great value, and I highly recommend it.

Happy with the order

I bought this book for my cousin. Erhan Horozoglu. He said that " I'm surprised. How can a book and CD's can be so helpful. Even after the first lesson I realised that I had no difficulty in learning 'pinyin's and pronunciation." Thanks.

È sbagliato inicare il raggiungimento del livello avanzato, specialmente con riferimento alla lingua cinese che richiede almeno 5 anni di studio continuativo. Tuttavia in rapporto al prezzo questi manuali sono utili per accrescere il vocabolario e per ripassare le regole grammaticali. Riguardo all'apprendimento della lingua scritta il punto di riferimento resta il New Practical Chinese Reader.

Easy to use with focus on the spoken language. I use the CD's in my car from and to work. High quality and straigth forward. Urteil "Sehr Gut" :-)

いやこれいい♪英語中国語両方用で買ったが 日本語がないのがいいねgood