Complete Mandarin Chinese Book/CD Pack: Teach Yourself Paperback – Audiobook, 26 Mar. 2010

I've recently bought this guide and I'm extremely impressed with it. Prior to my purchase I've attended weekly Chinese evening classes and before that I used another, more basic, self-study guide. I would say that Complete Mandarin Chinese is an excellent guide, especially for improving pronunciation and grammar, but I think it's rather advanced -- possibly not suitable for someone new to learning Chinese. There are other more suitable guides out there for the absolute beginner. Go buy one of those, spend a couple of months reading/listening to that guide, then come back and buy this one. Highly recommended.

The course is generally very good but best to warn prospective learners of Mandarin that the foundations of pronunciation and tonal system are not really covered.The few pages found in 'Introduction' are all that are available to give the student a grounding in what is going to the bewildering encounter with the tone system of Chinese and a selection of consonants never heard in any European language. The latter have about a centimeter of text and a single track on the CD, the two unfortunately not matching. One supposes that the idea is that the student will pick up the tones and sounds during the course of the dialogues however I am very much aware that things such as this learned incorrectly through lack of proper tuition in the beginning are massively more difficult to correct at a later stage. It is difficult not to feel that the book has been slightly "dumbed down" as this kind of preliminary study is hard work and not particularly interesting.For those who would in fact like to get this firm foundation, the FSI Chinese course online covers pronunciation and tones in depth and proves an invaluable resource to accompany the initial chapters of this book.Apart from the negative comments above, the book is well thought out with an excellent progression of dialogues and good explanations of the use of specific words and the social contexts in which they are used.

In all honesty I have not yet finished the pack due to other comitments but the sections I have managed to read and practise have been very good, helpful and informative. I would highly recommend to anyone begining to learn Mandarin and with the help of this pack I hope that I shall soon be able to speak the language confidently.

Well, they certainly do not hold your hand in this course. It's hold your nose and jump in and if you float good for you, and if you sink hard cheese. Don't get me wrong, this is a good course if you already know the foundation to Chinese Mandarin. I just expected more guidance with the overall intro to the language. I also expected more new words listed throughout the book and spoken on the tape so I could follow and repeat them, rather than having to use the 'English to Chinese' and 'Chinese to English vocab at the back of the book. This way I am not even sure if I am pronouncing some words correctly.Actually, it's exactly what it says on the cover. 'Teach yourself'. I'd love to give it 5 stars, but I'm not that happy with the layout of the book, although the tapes are quite good for listening to and learning from. I would recommend this package to anyone who likes long sentences and dialogues.

This very good. But where is the book to go with it which I thought I was ordering as well? The discs are not really a great help without the book Many thanks John Copping

I don't like this book, It is intended t teach the beginner up to level 4. I am a beginnerThe phases on the CD don't match the book so its hard to follow.I showed it to a native Chinese speaker and she said she didn't understand the majority of it

I purchased this because I have recently become engaged to a beautiful woman from Shenzen, and we are currently communicating via the translator app on her iPhone. I only bought the book but I can see that the accompanying CD is a must, so I have had to send off for that too. I recommend this book, and I recommend ordering the package which includes the CD.

A great improvement over the earlier edition. Complete it is not and it gets difficult rather too quickly. The chapter on seasons and weather (Chapter 11) is out of place. Talking about Beijing Olympics, pollution and government initiatives before you learn to buy a ticket or a bar of soap is strange. The final chapter also could be replaced. Too much on snippets of poetry rather than important things not in the book. For example there is a lot of vocabulary and grammar in the book that is not covered on the CD or in the examples. This is far more important than learning a few lines of poetry in the final chapter (Chapter 22) that I found very easy to forget and not really useful. All in all a good book I think, and the CD was clear enough. You can't learn any language from a single book and a single CD though. Look at Chinese in Steps Vols 1-4 as well.