Living Language vs. Instant Emersion vs. Now You're Talking vs. Teach Yourself

[Tical84]

I'm looking to purchase another study Chinese book/CD set (I started with Rosetta Stone but for some reason can't get past the first CD). These are the titles available at my local book store but after doing research for many hours (including here) I decided to ask you.

Living Language

Instant Emersion

Now You're Talking...

Teach Yourself...

Background:

I taught english in China for a year and picked up enough Chinese to get by. I'd like to continue learning but not sure of the best way. I don't have time/money for a tutor or to take it through the local University.

Thanks.

[Nathaniel Brown]

I can't really comment on any of the other text books but I've been really impressed with Living Language. I ended up buying it because three different websites recommended it and so far I've been happy with it.

The audio CD are good. You get two sets. One of the sets is a cut down version of the dialog from each lesson with the English translation. The other set has all the Mandarin from the textbook on it.

The only problem with it that I've found so far is that it's very compact. They give you a dialog, teach you the concept and build the word list but they only really cover the concept once.

If you do a coarse then they review and cover the information multiple times and from different angles and in different more relevant contexts. So if you really want to get the most out of the textbook you really need to set yourself some homework using the information you've just learned.

Unless your highly motivated none of the textbooks will help you learn mandarin they are just to boring.

If you want to practice Mandarin and get better then download iTunes and sign up to Chinese Podcasts. That will take about 15 minutes to half an hour a day and then use the Living Language to focus on concepts and listening skills (The Audio CDs are great).

[Tical84]

If you want to practice Mandarin and get better then download iTunes and sign up to Chinese Podcasts

Is that the ones from Chinesepods.com that people have been talking about on here? I downloaded a few random ones last night to check out and they seem pretty good. One was "Newbie" and one "Intermediate" and there was definately a difference.