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Mandarin Chinese

Complete Language Lessons Mini Review: Almost Useless

Complete Language Lessons

Rating 0.2
★
★★★★★
Price:

$8.99 for the CD/$1.29 per track on Amazon, free on Spotify

Summary

Complete Language Lessons has audio courses for numerous languages on Amazon, Spotify, and Deezer. We tried out the Swahili audio course, Learn Swahili Easily, Effectively, and Fluently – and were extremely disappointed. The audio tracks we sampled consist of Swahili phrases repeated over and over again, with no translations, explanations, or anything in English. The audio quality isn’t great, either, and the occasional muted club music adds to the bizarreness.  It feels to us like the audio tracks are supposed to accompany a textbook, but we couldn’t find one. If one existed at some point, we suspect it’s no longer available. If you already speak the language and are looking for native audio recordings to help you improve your listening and pronunciation, you might get some value out of Complete Language Lessons. However, if your aim is learn the language, we would skip these CDs.

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Vocabulearn Mini Review: Unlikely to Teach You a Language

Vocabulearn

Rating 0.6
★
★★★★★
Price:

$29.99 on Amazon, free on Spotify

Summary

Vocabulearn has so-called audio courses for numerous languages on Amazon and Spotify. We don’t believe you’ll learn much from them, but they could help you practice your pronunciation. For this mini review, we tried out the Vocabulearn Swahili/English Level 1 course. It’s split into four CDs, each with its own theme, and then each theme is divided into four lessons. The themes are: Nouns; Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions 1; Expressions; Verbs. In each track, we listened to long lists of words and phrases. First, it was said in English; secondly, it was said in Swahili. However, there were no grammar or contextual explanations, drills, or activities to help you remember the material. In short, we’re not convinced that you’d be able to make your own sentences or even remember the vocabulary after listening to these CDs. However, if you’re studying a language with fewer resources, we think you could use it to practice your pronunciation by repeating each word after the speakers say it.

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Chinese Breeze Mini-Review: Not as Engaging as Mandarin Companion

Chinese Breeze

Rating 4.0
★★★★★
Price:

$8.95

Summary

Chinese Breeze is a series of graded readers by Cheng & Tsui. The books range from level 1 (300-word vocabulary) to level 4 (1100-word vocabulary) and cover themes such as romance, fantasy, horror, and mystery. Their adaptation of 青凤 (Green Phoenix) from the short story collection 聊斋志异 (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio) is probably the most engaging story in the collection. The other stories are probably not grand pieces of literature, but rather books to help you improve your reading skills through repetition.  At the end of the story, you will find a vocabulary list and a series of exercises to reinforce your understanding of the text. You can also stream an audio recording for each book by scanning the QR code on the back cover. Purchasing Pleco‘s OCR reader or handwriting function can help you identify new words, which you can then add to your Anki or Pleco flashcard decks.  If you are looking for graded readers with engaging storylines, check out Mandarin Companion — they rewrite famous stories using vocabulary appropriate for earlier levels. Next, you can tackle the Readings in Chinese Culture series or the Tales and Traditions series for intermediate to advanced learners. You can also read plenty of graded articles and stories online with Du Chinese and The Chairman’s Bao.

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Tales and Traditions Mini-Review: The Next Step in Graded Readers

Tales and Traditions

Rating 4.2
★★★★
★
★
Price:

Books start at $17.99

Summary

Tales and traditions is another set of graded readers by Cheng & Tsui that focuses on providing level-appropriate, interesting reading material to support students in attaining Chinese fluency. In this series, you will find poems, stories, and anecdotes written in both simplified and traditional characters, with discussion questions and vocabulary lists to guide your learning. For additional support, Pleco‘s OCR reader or handwriting function can help you identify new words, which you can then add to your Anki or Pleco flashcard decks. This series (or the Readings in Chinese Culture series) could be your next step after Chinese Breeze or Mandarin Companion. Volume 1 is appropriate for advanced beginners (A1 on the CEFR scale), while volume 4 is appropriate for Advanced (B2) learners — you can see the ACTFL and CEFR comparisons in this document. While Volumes 1 and 2 contain fables, myths, and introductions to festivals and historical figures, Volume 3 focuses more on poems, myths, and love stories. Once you reach Volume 4, you will explore excerpts from classic Chinese novels. You may not find every text equally as engaging, but each of them will take you deeper into Chinese culture and refine your reading skills through repetition and level-appropriate language. Alternatively, you can read plenty of graded articles and stories online with Du Chinese and The Chairman’s Bao.

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My Language Exchange Mini-Review: Millions of Active Users

My Language Exchange

Rating 4.2
★★★★
★
★
Price:

Freemium, Gold Memberships start at $6/mo

Summary

My Language Exchange has been growing since 2000. Although the website seems out of date, it still has an active community of millions of language-learners who speak almost 200 native languages (including less commonly studied languages). You can choose a pen pal by reading their bios, or there is a chat room available for you to instantly connect with a language exchange partner — note that if you create a Gold account, you can initiate chats with other users, but as a regular user, you will have to wait to be contacted. Using the Cormier Method, the website provides tools to help intermediate speakers effectively practice with other learners. It advertises a Chat Companion with lesson plans to accompany your exchange, or lesson plans developed by teachers (although the quality of these resources varies drastically).  You can also find language teachers on the site, but given that the transactions take place directly between you and the teacher, you may feel safer using a 3rd party platform like italki or Verbling.  Although there are outlines on how to participate in language exchanges, how these outlines are followed depends entirely on you and your partner(s). My Language Exchange will help you build connections with other learners, but it’s up to you to plan how to practice. The concepts can also be used with any language exchange platform, such as Lingbe, italki, Tandem, and Amikumu.

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Maayot Mini-Review: Best For Those Who Struggle To Stay Motivated

Maayot

Rating 3.7
★★★
★
★★
Price:

Freemium, with paid plans starting at $10/mo

Summary

Although you can get unlimited reading practice through Du Chinese and The Chairman’s Bao for a lower cost, some people may be overwhelmed by having to remember to do their daily Chinese practice. Maayot helps to motivate you by delivering daily bite-sized reading activities to your inbox. The free activities include 5-minute stories for beginner to advanced learners (although the advanced lessons don’t seem to contain very complicated grammar structures), while the standard subscription adds audio recordings by native speakers and a daily quiz. With a premium subscription, you will get corrections to your daily writing responses and private tutoring once per week. To customize a similarly enriching experience, you can get free written corrections from the LangCorrect community, and find a community tutor on Italki. You can expect beginner stories to contain about 70 characters, while advanced stories contain about 250 characters. Clicking on characters you don’t know will send you to the MBDG dictionary website, so you may want to download the Zhongwen Chrome Extension extension instead. The Gymglish Series (Frantastique, Frantastique Ortho, Hotel Borbollón and Wunderbla) also takes the daily e-mail approach, so if you are studying French, German, English or Spanish, you can check them out (although the series is quite pricey).

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Hacking Chinese Course Mini-Review: Great Advice for a High Price

Hacking Chinese Course

Rating 3.8
★★★
★
★★
Price:

Freemium, with paid courses starting at $97

Summary

Hacking Chinese’s creator, Olle, is completing his graduate studies in teaching Chinese as a second language in Taiwan. His blog posts are just a taste of the two courses he developed to support you in your Chinese studies. These courses are more about how to learn Chinese and less about language content — they help maximize your studying efficiency, but they do not replace study time. The beginner course, Unlocking Chinese, teaches you the basic principles of writing and speaking and can guide you in your studies. It includes about 5 hours of videos divided into five sections that cover: how to approach learning Chinese; how to improve your pronunciation; techniques for learning new words; how to write and remember Chinese characters; and a ‘roadmap’ for your continuing studies. A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin is both a book and an e-course. The course includes the book, the audiobook, videos, and a study checklist. Olle has condensed the information he has learned in his years of Chinese study to teach you how to improve your pronunciation, which resources to use, study management and planning, and more. Hacking Chinese may be a good investment if you want a clear and concise guide to learning Chinese. However, if you are looking for a course that will teach you comprehensive language content, check out Chinese For Us.

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Domino Chinese Mini-Review: The Answer to Your Struggles

Domino Chinese

Rating 4.0
★★★★★
Price:

Freemium, monthly plans starting at $3/mo

Summary

Domino Chinese provides an affordable and entertaining path to learning Chinese. If you’re someone who has struggled to stay motivated, or if you have been overwhelmed with Chinese characters, Felix, the creator, has developed a manageable series of lessons to set you up for success. From lesson one, you will learn the logic of character composition and problem-solve the meanings of new words. Each level is about 10 hours long, and after level 10, the courses are entirely in Chinese. For supplementary material, they have printable character grids with stroke order diagrams, a workbook, and vocabulary sheets. The workbook gets you to break down characters into different parts, create new words, and practice integrating the new concepts from each lesson. Apparently you will reach an academic level of Chinese if you go through all of the levels. However, this seems far too optimistic. The success stories on the site are from students who have had private tutors or lived in China during their studies, so Domino Chinese alone will probably not take you to fluency. This course seems most appropriate for casual learners, as the earlier videos use lots of English and build the concepts quite slowly. If you’re looking for a comprehensive, faster-paced course, check out Chinese For Us.

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An Honest Review of Duolingo With Image of Man on Tablet

Duolingo Review: Useful But Not Sufficient – 2 Language Learners Test It (With Video)

Duolingo

Rating 4.0
★★★★★

Summary

Duolingo is a super popular free language-learning app. It’s available for desktop as well as mobile and offers over 90 different language courses in over 20 different languages — there are currently 35 languages with English instruction. The Duolingo approach is gamified and easy to use, but the bite-sized lessons don’t offer much in the way of in-depth practice. The Duolingo tag line is “Learn a language in just five minutes a day.”

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

It’s easy and fun to use, but some pronunciation and grammar instruction is of low quality, especially for Asian languages.

Thoroughness 3.5
★★★
★
★★

The app works well for learning the basics, but there’s little speaking practice and grammar instruction is limited.

Value 4.5
★★★★
★
★

It’s a lot of content for free, but you’ll need to use supplementary resources.

I Like
  • The short lessons are ideal for quick, convenient practice
  • The game-like features make the exercises engaging and fun
  • The community aspect is motivating
I Don’t Like
  • There’s no opportunity to create your own sentences
  • Grammar instruction isn’t part of the lessons
  • Text-to-speech audio is sometimes low quality
Price

Duolingo is totally free. Duolingo Plus offers a few additional features and is available for:


$12.99/month (paid monthly) $6.99/month (12-month subscription)


Their family plan is $119.99 a year

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What is Duolingo?

Duolingo is one of the most popular language-learning programs out there. It’s been on the scene since 2012 and offers instruction in 35 different languages. It even offers courses in three constructed languages (perfect for brushing up on your Esperanto or High Valyrian).

…

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Duolingo Review: Useful But Not Sufficient – 2 Language Learners Test It (With Video) Read More »

Rosetta Stone Review — Updated and Improved…And Needs More Improvement

Rosetta Stone

Rating 3.2
★★★
★
★★

Summary

Rosetta Stone is one of the most well-known resources for learning languages. It takes an immersive approach to teaching and is widely used by corporations and individuals alike. High levels of repetition and an absence of translations or explanations are hallmarks of the course. Rosetta Stone course could be most suitable for learners that don’t mind repetitive exercises and prefer to learn from pictures and context rather than translations and explanations. It’s probably not a good option for anyone wanting to significantly improve their speaking or writing skills, or those looking for an engaging course.

Quality 3.0
★★★★★

The platform is a bit clunky on desktop, but the material is accurate and presented clearly; lesson mechanics are fairly intuitive.

Thoroughness 3.0
★★★★★

Without much opportunity to build your own sentences, I don’t think you’ll reach a conversational level with any notable speed.

Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★

Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Subscription ($199 on sale) is quite attractive if you like the Rosetta Stone Method. Shorter subscriptions are quite reasonable, too.

I Like
  • The audio quality is very good.
  • Lessons progress naturally and logically.
I Don’t Like
  • It’s repetitive and boring.
  • You don’t get to generate your own sentences.
  • Speech recognition doesn’t work very well.
  • No grammar explanations in core material.
Price

A three-month subscription to one language is $35.97, which works out to be $11.99/month.
A year-long subscription to one course is $95.88, which is $7.99/month. Both of these subscriptions are automatically recurring.
Lifetime access to all Rosetta Stone language courses is available for $199.

ALR Readers Exclusive Holiday Deal!! Get the Lifetime Subscription for 25 languages for $179 (everywhere else it’s $199 right now!). See details on the website.

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Chances are, this isn’t the first time you’re hearing about Rosetta Stone for learning languages. The company has been hugely successful since its early start in the computer-assisted learning scene in 1992, and part of that is thanks to stellar advertising efforts.

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Rosetta Stone Review — Updated and Improved…And Needs More Improvement Read More »