Description:
Chinese is one of those languages that demands its students keep using it to maintain their skills; otherwise they forget fast. Learn Chinese Now! will help you combat your brain's sievelike tendencies and keep your Chinese--specifically spoken Mandarin Chinese--fresh. Using a rigorous conversational approach, this program includes QuickTime video of dialogues between native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. To improve pronunciation, you'll use your computer's microphone to record your voice reading the dialogues and compare your pronunciation to native speakers'. Various other practice modules use communication-gap exercises, crossword puzzles, and guided conversations. You can even slow down the recorded audio and video to ease comprehension. As in all of their software Transparent Language gives each word, as well as each sentence, with its English translation. There is also a basic grammar-help index to look up unfamiliar concepts. Two criticisms of the software: First, there is no realistic practice with Chinese characters, and at this level, Chinese students should be learning characters and stroke orders and practicing reading. (For this, start here.) Instead, the software uses only Pinyin transliterations (which mark tones, happily). Second, the transliteration style shows the thousands of compound words apart when they might better be written together, such as you lan versus the more logical youlan, "travel." This software is ideal for students who have already had about one year of Chinese; you should have some familiarity with Chinese vocabulary and terms like "the particle de." Beginners should start with a more elementary system like Kidspeak. Learn Chinese Now! offers a fairly effective audio-visual way to maintain your conversational skills, however, and recording your own voice for playback and comparison is its single greatest strength. --Erik Macki
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