Fluenz Mandarin DVD-ROM Language Course

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May 24, 2008

Fluenz compliment by Cathy

This Mandarin language course has been wonderful. I am still learning from it but it by far is the best such course I've tried. As a result I've been keeping with it. There are a few quirks here and there but this course broke new ground and is much better designed than the Rosetta Stone course I borrowed from the library and tried. I'm told from a native speaker (who thinks the course is good too) that the instructor Sonia Gil has a non-native accent that isn't good to learn pronunciation from. They make up for this by complementing the course with a native speaker. Besides, she's cute.

The the DVD-ROM has to be played on the computer. The interface is simple enough that it could be formatted to play on typical DVD video players so that would be more convenient at times. They sell a mobile version too that you can play on your Blackberry/smart phone. I sometimes regret not getting that version instead.

They promise in the course that they are going to have complementary audio podcasts for more instruction...I haven't seen those yet so I hope they can be downloaded soon.

Though not perfect, it's the best language course I've found--at least for me. Nothing will do the learning for you of course. It's still hard work to learn such a completely different language like this. But this course meets you halfway and provides a really helpful path and practice exercises. This doesn't teach you how to read or write Chinese characters though - that's a different (intimidating) animal, so I'm focusing on speaking the language for now. That means even if I learn to speak perfect Mandarin, I'll still be illiterate. However, that's a much better world than being illiterate and mute.

Recommended.

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Comments (1)

1. Written by Cathy, on 21-06-2008 03:16

I wrote the review above but I did not add the bold text for certain words and some other things. I think people's reviews should be untouched and I'd rather such things be removed. For the example of the bold text, if I wanted to emphasize something over other words, I would have bolded it myself. Please undo any editing you've done to reviews.

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