Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Garbage
Review: Seriously folks, if you go abroad, you will say good morning a thousand times your first week-- the same goes for all the set phrases the Pimsleur stuff teaches you. You don't need to spend hundreds on something that you can do with a book and making an effort. It's fun, though (hence the 2 *'s), because it's easy and it makes you feel like you learned something. But try to step outside what your have been Pimsleured to spout off and you don't know where to go. Grammar and vocabulary study will never be replaced by some easy to swallow pill like this.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for everyone
Review: I've learned so much Cantonese with these tapes in just three weeks. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning the language.
Rating:
Summary: a few tips
Review: I'm currently using Pimsleur to learn Japanese and Cantonese, and I'm thrilled with my progress. Pimsleur has a truly effective system for learning language painlessly and effectively. I've noticed, though, that on many Pimsleur reviews here on Amazon, people say they needed to listen to each tape 2-5 times before they felt they knew the material. Fortunately, that's not necessary. Here's how to make equal progress on just one listening: Each time you're prompted to come up with an answer on your own, *stop the tape* and give yourself time to think before you get interrupted by the soundtrack. If the tape gives you the answer before you've come up with an answer yourself, you haven't learned anything. (...)
Rating:
Summary: This course was a turning point in my Chinese studies.
Review: I had learned about 1000 Hanzi on my own, but my listening and speaking skills weren't very good. After completing this course, I am much more comfortable with conversational Chinese. I think this is an excellent resource for the beginner to intermediate student. I have already pre-ordered the second course due to be published soon.
Rating:
Summary: Wanting More
Review: This system allowed me speak and understand more Mandarin than I had in the previous year of beginners' classes. Some words are not exactly clear to the English speaking ear so I found a good dictionary to be useful. Will purchase second volume when it becomes available.
Rating: 
Summary: getting sick of waiting for Mandarin II
Review: It was suppose to be out July 2001 and still it is not out. This is unacceptable! I have been waiting almost a year now and still no Mandarin II. When will people get their act together and stop making up false release dates! Sheesh! Simon & Schuster--if you do not release Mandarin II right NOW this very minute I will switch to Living Language; I am warning you! You know, I could just write my own Pimsleur style script and read and repeat it ad nauseum until it is drilled into my brain... but then how will SS gouge and delay us to death?
Rating: 
Summary: They need to add the pinyin
Review: I'm a beginning Chinese language student. I actually started these tapes a few weeks before my class began. I drive around in my truck and listen and speak while going back and forth to work. I get in about 1 hour per day and am currently on lesson 12. I have listened to each lesson over 10 times. It takes me that long to know what to say when they ask how to say "I can speak a little Chinese". I usually know what to say at each pause and they have continually reviewed earlier material. It is surprising how much I can remember. The reason I didn't write the Chinese version of the above question is the same reason I only gave Pimsler 4 stars. They do not supply the pinyin translation for the tapes. Having been in Chinese 1 for 4 weeks now, I find this to be a serious omission. (From my Chinese class I can now write "Wo3 hui4 shuo1 yi4 dianr3 pu3 ton1 ghua4." The numbers indicate the tone for each syllable.) There have been many times where I am not sure what the speaker is actually saying. I try to parrot what he/she sounds like, but often I just have to guess. I wouldn't have to do that if the pinyin translation accompanied the tapes. One of the other reviews says that a child just learns by listening and doesn't need to read or write. However, a child doesn't have any timeline to learn either. It is a very long process, spanning many years and the child lives in total immersion (the best method). Every moment of every day is a language lesson for a child. When you are an adult, you don't have that luxury and you need to be more efficient to overcome the discouraging ineptitude of a beginning speaker (your expectations are at a higher level). This is the fourth foreign language I have studied (French, Spanish, Japanese are the others) and this is the toughest. The sounds are very difficult to master, with a single syllable like "ma" having 5 different possible emphases and meanings. I have found I need to use my ears to hear, mouth to speak, eyes to read and hand to write. The tapes are a 5+ for the ears, but I am still not certain what I am saying in many of the phrases. If the pinyin was included I could easily correct that problem. Pinyin has some funny associations between the letter grouping and the sounds, but you will never learn Chinese without learning them (unless you move to China for the total immersion approach). The tapes are good for training your ear to the up/down tonal sounds of Chinese, but you will have to supplement them with pinyin training so you can read and write too.
Rating:
Summary: We Learn Language through the EAR, not the EYE.
Review: PIMSLEUR : CHINESE MANDARIN - I. 2nd Edition. (30 Lessons on Audio Cassettes). Simon & Schuster Audio, 2000. ISBN 0671045849 Every country in the world is agreed that a knowledge of foreign languages is important. Every year the world devotes an enormous amount of time, energy, and money to trying to teach its young people to understand and speak some foreign language or other. In the West, millions of high school and college students are busy desperately trying to learn French, German, and Spanish; in China and Japan they are undergoing the torture of English courses. But despite the intense effort and enormous resources that are devoted to these studies, the results, as everyone knows, are pitiful. After years of study, students might be able to read simple passages in a foreign language, but usually won't be able to say much beyond such things as - "Good morning. How are you?" - and they will be completely baffled when hearing foreigners speak. I've often wondered why no-one ever seems to ask why the teaching of foreign languages is such a catastrophic failure. Why does it produce so few who become fluent? I've wondered because the answer is painfully obvious, and can be stated very simply : WE LEARN LANGUAGE THROUGH THE EAR, NOT THE EYE; LANGUAGE CANNOT BE LEARNED THROUGH THE EYE. No child ever learned its own language by studying a book and working out exercises. We learn our own language through the ear, first by listening to others and then by participating. That's why we learn it so effortlessly and so well. Reading is a secondary skill that comes much later. It has never been the case that the ability to speak a language required that one be able to read it, and traditionally the Chinese writing system was mastered by very few. If PIMSLEUR is an anagram for SIMPLER U it makes sense, because not only is the PIMSLEUR method SIMPLER for YOU, its also the ONLY method that has any hope of real success. Language is primarly an AURAL-ORAL phenomenon, a matter of listening and speaking. Using these tapes gives you lots of practise in both. Repeated use will bring a basic fluency that will give you the confidence to start interacting with native speakers of Chinese or French or whatever language you are studying. And if you have enough opportunities for that you'll soon be on your way to real fluency. These tapes require application but they do work, and it's not only work but fun. But what a wonderful idea the PIMSLEUR method is! I wonder why no one ever seems to have thought of it before? After all, if you do think about it, it's the only method that makes sense.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Program
Review: I have "listened" to several tape series and Pimsleur's by far is the best. I have been able to acquire a confident speaking ability simply listening to the CD's on the way to and from work. Note: The 8 tape series is repeated in the CD series (I wish it was not) so your rebate "breaks even". However, the overall quality of the Speaking program itself is so much higher than other popular series, that it is worth every penny. Also Note: This course does not teach the writing... fortunately. Sino-Tibetan languages (i.e. Chinese) are fundamentally different than Indo-European languages (i.e. English). In other words, it is harder to learn Chinese than French or German, and requires significantly more time. Learning the character writing "during the same process" as learning the speech greatly increases the complexity of this process. I supplement my character-reading learning during times I am free to read. This frees me to learn during times I am only free to listen, such as driving time.
Rating:
Summary: life after Pimsleur worrisome
Review: I am Chinese but have never been able to speak my own language and have always felt intense shame. Chinese people always look at me as if I am weird, since I have an accent. But now after finishing this Pimsleur course, I have a hard-wired Mandarin vocabulary of over 200 words. It is amazing how with the Pimsleur method one retains completely what one learns. Now I don't even mentally "translate" from English to Chinese, but think natively in Chinese. I can pretty much get by in Chinatown and make very small talk with other Chinese people. The only drawback to this extremely valuable program is that there is as yet no second course. Other languages like Spanish have four levels, but there is still no Mandarin 2. I have written to an editor at Simon and Schuster and he claims that Mandarin 2 should be out by this summer, and Mandarin 3 in the near future. I hope so. Life after Pimsleur is kind of worrisome. I really wish to continue learning and since I am so astonished with the results I have been able to achieve with this program I am wary of other Mandarin programs. I hope that Mandarin 2 does come out this summer so that I don't have to resort to other programs.
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