Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for the spoken language
Review: Once again Pimsleur offers an excellent course for the spoken language with relevent conversations and a teaching style that is both automatic and effective. Users should realize that spoken and written Mandarin are different and this course is ONLY for the spoken language. However, it is excellent for listening and speaking. The speakers in the series are clear and easy to understand. My only objection to this course is the lack of written material to accompany it (though the booklet that does come with it is very intersting and informative). Unfortunately, much of Mandarin sounds alike and most 'words' have multiple meanings depending on tone, accompanying words and context. A pinyin or other phonetic guide to the conversations would be very helpful. But for those with a good ear who want to learn by listening and speaking, this course is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for the spoken language
Review: Once again Pimsleur offers an excellent course for the spoken language with relevent conversations and a teaching style that is both automatic and effective. Users should realize that spoken and written Mandarin are different and this course is ONLY for the spoken language. However, it is excellent for listening and speaking. The speakers in the series are clear and easy to understand. My only objection to this course is the lack of written material to accompany it (though the booklet that does come with it is very intersting and informative). Unfortunately, much of Mandarin sounds alike and most 'words' have multiple meanings depending on tone, accompanying words and context. A pinyin or other phonetic guide to the conversations would be very helpful. But for those with a good ear who want to learn by listening and speaking, this course is excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Money well spent... effective learning tool
Review: Pimsleur's Chinese is as of yet by far the best money I have spent on language learning materials. The method of repetition, questioning, and recall combined with a broad variety of phrase combinations and sentence structures (these are really the key to "unlock" your language knowledge) provide a solid foundation of spoken chinese. In my opinion, the most priceless facet of the Pimsleur method is the impeccable pronunciation that develops from learning by listening alone- there is no pinyin here to pollute one's chinese phonetics with crude approximations of chinese sounds. In this manner one picks up difficult chinese initals (j, zh, c, q, etc.) as well as the tones much more naturally. The serious flaw of the Pimsleur method as applied to chinese, though, is the issue of reading and writing- the ideographic language cannot be taught through CD's alone. If you are at all serious about learning the language, a tutor, class, or at the very least a character workbook of some sort is a must-have. By learning the written language, you will also catch on to some of the grammatical and idiomatic subtleties that that course fails to address (although to Pimsleur's credit they do a great job of fitting a solid base of useful, conversational chinese into only 15 hours of instruction). My personal experience with the course was a lot of fun- I had enrolled in a course at school and wanted to get a bit ahead of the class, so I bought the course. I started off, with my small previous knowledge base, and took off at a break-neck pace, doing two or three lessons a day- while driving in the car (this is a HUGE plus to the Pimsleur system; it is totally hands-off), waiting for class to start, or just sitting at home in the evening. I know this is not the pace suggested by the course materials, but I found that the more aggressively I tackled the lessons, the more I wanted to learn, and that the faster pace was not harming my retention in the least. On the rare occasion that I did struggle, it was simple to just repeat the lesson until I felt comfortable with it. After just two or three lessons, I found myself mumbling chinese to myself to practice the tones and pronunciations and at one point even attracted a compliment from a chinese passerby who wanted to know who my tutor was! After about eight or ten lessons
(well under a week for me), I could order, settle checks, and make a bit of small-talk in a chinese restaurant, much to the amazement of the waitress! Having a comfortable grasp of the Pimsleur material helped me immensely in class, too- I found it much easier to associate the written characters with the words I was already familiar with from Pimsleur than to try to learn both the characters and the words all at the same time. The speaking and conversation practice you get from the Pimsleur courses is invaluable and will make you sound like a pro compared to those attempting to learn from a book or in a large class setting. Overall, this course is a great investment if you are planning a trip to China (the first lessons are useful skills in introductions, restaurants, and short conversation) or are just interested in learning the language (the lessons topics and vocabulary grow more diverse as you progress through the course). I personally cannot wait for levels II and III.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Ways to Learn Mandarin
Review: There are a lot of programs that teach you Mandarin, but this is one of the most efficient out there. Learning a language obviously takes time and practice, but Pimsleur's method of almost random repeating makes for a very efficient learning curve. Most programs will have you simply listen and repeat. This program has you listen, repeat, try another phrase to listen and repeat, and then go back to the first phrase to listen and repeat. This causes you to be fully engaged and accessing your memory instead of just mindlessly repeating phrases only to forget them when you need them.
Overall, this program can be a little pricier than others, but is well-worth the extra money spent. I have tried many other programs and would have easily saved money just biting the bullet and purchasing this one. I love this program, especially if you are just trying to learn to speak it (instead of reading or study the language).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent tool to facilitate further study
Review: This was a very solid method of learning that focuses heavily on speaking and conversation. Learning characters at the same time as the speaking language can be very intimidating and most professors would agree that there should be a substantial amount of lag between the spoken and written chinese. (see Chinese Primer Ta-Tuan Ch'En - the books I use for my Georgetown University Chinese classes) The Pimsleur method does not offer character knowledge, but it does allow a student to grasp the tones and sounds which are so vital to the language. I would suggest to anyone who is listening to the audio cds to begin with the cds and then, only when comfortable with pronounciation and tones, to go pick up some character and vocabulary texts. This was definitely money well spent because it really was a great way to begin my intensive Mandarin Chinese course.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent tool to facilitate further study
Review: This was a very solid method of learning that focuses heavily on speaking and conversation. Learning characters at the same time as the speaking language can be very intimidating and most professors would agree that there should be a substantial amount of lag between the spoken and written chinese. (see Chinese Primer Ta-Tuan Ch'En - the books I use for my Georgetown University Chinese classes) The Pimsleur method does not offer character knowledge, but it does allow a student to grasp the tones and sounds which are so vital to the language. I would suggest to anyone who is listening to the audio cds to begin with the cds and then, only when comfortable with pronounciation and tones, to go pick up some character and vocabulary texts. This was definitely money well spent because it really was a great way to begin my intensive Mandarin Chinese course.
Rating:
Summary: Makes Mandarin Possible!
Review: When I first started Pimsleur Mandarin I, about six months ago, I gave up after the fourth lesson thinking it was too difficult. I just couldn't get my head around the tones and the difficult pronunciation. It seemed as though every sentence that I tried to make was too slow or had a wrong tone. Then about a week later, I tried it again and it wasn't quite so hard. I made it to lesson eleven, but then took another week-long break out of frustration. When I picked it up for the third time, it was much easier. I had finally figured out how to position my tongue to create most of the non-english phenomes (pinyin: q, x, j, r, ü, z, c), and the tones were starting to get easier, although I still had trouble when combining two falling-rising tones. After two months, I managed to finish Mandarin I, and then, with a bit more effort and patience, I finished Mandarin II and III. I can now repeat or say any sentence at full speed, and the tones have become almost entirely subconscious, making the language much more reasonable. This is the main strength of the Pimsleur program, it gets your ears accustomed to the sounds, and it forces you to make correct sentences quickly, with good pronunciation. This is especially important for a tonal language such as Mandarin. Of the three levels, Mandarin I is by far the most difficult and frustrating. This is because the four tones and many of the difficult phenomes are all introduced at once, and it seems almost impossible to master them. I had to listen to the first four lessons about four or five times each. After that, I listened to the remaining twenty-six lessons three times each. When I got to Mandarin III, I only had to listen to each lesson twice, as I had already mastered the tones and phenomes by that point and I only needed to deal with the vocabulary and relatively easy syntax. It gets much, much easier as you progress - trust me. It is also tremendously rewarding. I can carry out basic conversations with Chinese people, which suprises everyone (myself included). However, it doesn't take long before I encounter a word or sentence structure that I'm not familiar with. Oh well, I can't expect to become fluent in six months. As for pronunciation, I've been told that I don't have an accent, which is almost entirely because of Pimsleur. I highly recommend getting this course if you are serious about Mandarin. It is much more efficient than a tutor, and you'll see results. As for the cost, I'm only reviewing the qualilty of the product and not the cost/quality ratio. However, you should realize that there are other ways of obtaining this course. It is possible to buy it used, or rent it, and some libraries even carry Pimsleur programs. Keep this in mind...
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