Instant Immersion Mandarin Chinese 2 CD-ROM Set (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: SELF DESCOVERY
Review: I DISCOVERED A TRUE LANGUAGE IN ME. FROM THE TIME I STARTED SPEAKING CHINESE I KNEW IT WAS IN MY ROOTS. WITH THIS GREAT PRODUCT HELPING ME ENHANCE MY LANGUAGE I GIVE IT 5 OUT 5 RATING. I RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT TO ANYONE WHO IS A BEGINER THANK YOU.

Rating:
Summary: Warning to beginners
Review: I know three phrases in Mandarin; I am a true beginner. These CDs are a complete waste of money and time for the beginner. The two CDs are not marked as to which is disk 1 or 2. No instuctions are given. I found the first disk and tried to begin, but there was no clear instruction on where the beginning was. Games are started and all words and sentences on the audio are in full speed Mandarin. The English Help section only told me to click certain buttons to respond, but gave no clue as to what the speaker was instructing me to do. I tried both CDs. Even tried game after game trying to understand what I was to do and how I was suppose to learn, but to no success. I spend everyday on a computer interacting with computer interfaces. The CDs are poorly designed and had no place on the CD on how to properly pronouce the language. I read the reviews on Amazon and bought these CDs. I looked up another Instant Immersion product on Amazon - Italian - and found other users had the same experience that I had. There was no warning on the Mandarin Chinese CDs. Now there is.

Rating:
Summary: Okay for speech, but doesn't help with Chinese characters
Review: I was a complete beginner, and wanted to learn Mandarin. I said LEARN, not acquire four or five phrases or words. I mistakenly bought this cheap software (like said in other review, get what you pay for) to begin my learning process. The CD's proved to be better frisbees than tutorials and are gathering dust on my computer desk. If you really wish to learn a language DO NOT buy this software. Translations are sketchy, explanations non-existant, and pronunciations deceptive. You don't know what words of a phrase mean what, that tones are vitally important to Chinese, and they don't even bother with pinyin. I recommend other means of learning language than this piece of software...

Rating:
Summary: If want to learn 5 words...
Review: I was a complete beginner, and wanted to learn Mandarin. I said LEARN, not acquire four or five phrases or words. I mistakenly bought this cheap software (like said in other review, get what you pay for) to begin my learning process. The CD's proved to be better frisbees than tutorials and are gathering dust on my computer desk. If you really wish to learn a language DO NOT buy this software. Translations are sketchy, explanations non-existant, and pronunciations deceptive. You don't know what words of a phrase mean what, that tones are vitally important to Chinese, and they don't even bother with pinyin. I recommend other means of learning language than this piece of software...

Rating:
Summary: Good program but have a few problems
Review: Ok first id like to state that i just recentley started to use the program but i found it to be very good i learned 19 words in one day and i still remember them. :) ok my first problem is that taking advice from another reveiw here i decided to get a chinese english dictionary and when i looked up the words alot of them didnt match what was being said ex.yes on the cd is pronouced Dway but online i found them saying Shi no way that could be confused for dway by the way im not sure if thats how you spell it. any how other than that the program does work as far as the other guy who says its a waste of money i think he didnt really study it if you play it once you wont be able to speak chinese :p with constant practice tho i could easily see being able to learn from it my only concern is that im not sure which language im speaking now i thought it was mandarin but according to alot of online dictionaries im not which could be a huge problem not to mention quite embarrsing.oh and for practice i made up flash cards which i pull from a hat and try to say either the chinese or english meaning depending on which side faces up i think it works really well i do this so i could practice a few words at a time instead of trying to learn them all at once i figure once i learn them all that way i will do the test/games and not untill i can score a perfect on them at least 20 times will i move on to the next section :) seems like a good method all it takes is a lil hard work and ingenuity to make these cds work. So wether or not the words are correct the cds deffiantely work if your willing to do them

Rating:
Summary: Warning Mac OS X users!
Review: Ok product otherwise, but hangs OS X Classic environment after a while, so beware!

Rating:
Summary: keep shopping
Review: re the first cd, talk now: The girl enunciates well but speaks with a tiawanese accent. In one case, (the ankle) the girl gives the wrong (tiawanese?) word for the body part rather than the mandarin word. The guy slurs his word endings a bit. The cd only has a handful of words, perhaps what you would expect to learn in the first week of a standard college class. The cd makers neglected to pay an artist to draw the pictures that correspond to the sentences so good luck there as well. I think they had a not particularly gifted first grader do the scribbles.
The second cd, world talk, does NOT pick up where the first one left you but jumps ahead by an unbridged leap. There is no real help provided. you find yourself learning which picture matches with which sentence without ever learning what they are actually saying. Futhermore, the second cd is boring and not at all engaging. surely there is better stuff out there.

Rating:
Summary: Amazon has their reviews mixed up.
Review: The Amazon review is for Talk Now! Mandarin by EuroTalk....but the product is Mandarin Chinese by Topics Entertainment. Ignore the Amazon review.

Rating:
Summary: CD 1 was well done; CD 2 was less engaging
Review: The Instant Immersion CD set is very good on the whole. The lessons are logically divided, and the games and quizzes are surprisingly fun and effective. Learners can have vocabulary words repeated by either a male or female speaker. The graphics are attractive and amusing. However, the second CD just didn't seem as well executed as the first. I found the lessons more random and less useful (would have preferred more time on money and transportation, less time on how to say giraffe and hot pink for example), and the pacing erratic. Even with its flaws, I definitely got a lot more out of the disks than the [money] I paid for them.

Rating:
Summary: CD 1 was well done; CD 2 was less engaging
Review: The Instant Immersion CD set is very good on the whole. The lessons are logically divided, and the games and quizzes are surprisingly fun and effective. Learners can have vocabulary words repeated by either a male or female speaker. The graphics are attractive and amusing. However, the second CD just didn't seem as well executed as the first. I found the lessons more random and less useful (would have preferred more time on money and transportation, less time on how to say giraffe and hot pink for example), and the pacing erratic. Even with its flaws, I definitely got a lot more out of the disks than the [money] I paid for them.