Colloquial Mongolian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Multimedia))

Rating:
Summary: It's not a good colloquial book
Review: Despite the book title, it is not a book that someone who's not studying it professionally should take. With very little preparation, the author goes right into discussing complex grammar and noun cases. The dialog is very formal and will not be very useful in normal conversation. It's better for the scholars than the average speakers.

The cassetts are generally clear, however, because of the fast pace, it's very hard to follow for someone who does not have the mongolian ear.

Rating:
Summary: Not quuite for a true beginner
Review: I was disappointed with this approach to teaching the language. The book goes from explaining grammar and pronunciation right into dialog, with no pronunciation or sentence structure breakdown accompanying the dialog sentences. Unless you take to the cyrillic alphabet right away, there will be a lot of flipping back and forth to try to figure out the words. The pace presented was just not a beginner's pace. The spoken words on the tapes are not always clear and unless you have the book in front of you in a quiet room, they're difficult to follow. The overall contents of the package may be thorough but for someone truly starting from scratch, this set was not a good first step. I couldn't get past lesson one without giving up in frustration.

Rating:
Summary: Sound, but far from clear
Review: What a book! The author takes a grammatical approach that ought to have made things easy for the language learner. Instead, he has not thought to explain terms to readers less familiar than his students at SOAS. Worse, he introduces tenses and does not try to give the user a clear idea of their range and use beyond the name he's given them. However, the book appears comprehensive and is very valuable. But why didn't he look at Lewis's old Turkish intro in the Teach Yourself series, which manages to convey an equally complex language in an equally grammatical way without tears. DO BUY THE CASSETTES - the sound descriptions are inadequate. Still, I am persevering with it - it seems the best book in English.