Free Pronunciation Packs for Review

[sinosplice]

@Walkingtree:

 

Thanks a lot, man!

 

I like your review, and I'd be happy to have you review one of those Pronunciation Packs. I'll PM you a promo code.

[Pokarface]

@Sinosplice

 

Hey, thanks for the compliment!

 

Yes, I recently started going over bad habits and learning new things with a tutor; although, I DID listen and read (pinyin) A LOT while learning.

 

Users reading this post, rest assured that you'll get progressively better as the material increases difficulty and you are able to retain new vocabulary, so give the John's products a try   (and report back to the forums with results!).

 

I'm going to skip this opportunity as I'm still juggling around with my time-management skills  . Lucky users, please write a thoughtful review of the pronunciation packs  . 

[Mr. 愛爾蘭]

@sinosplice  I think it's the abundance of white space, using the same stock photo for each pack, and the generic 3D graphic of a box that doesn't exist. I don't know if this is very useful or constructive criticism. It's possible I'm the only one who feels this way.

 

I'm sorry to hear the next book has been so difficult to complete, but I'm glad it's coming! I also hope the Grammar Wiki will have the new book's grammar points listed, chapter by chapter, like the previous books -- that's an excellent feature!

[AlexBlackman]

I'm interested in both the A2 and the B1 packs.

 

I was slightly but significantly more deaf when I started Chinese, but thanks to pressure rebalancing, my hearing has improved a lot and I'm looking for anything that'll help me repair my initial bad habits.

 

I'll give them a full review on this forum if you give me a test copy.

[jmido8]

1. Which pack(s) you're most interested in, or just level A2 or B1, at the very least:

         whichever will help the most

 

1. Why you're a good person to choose for this review

          I'm always looking for new learning tools and I study abroad at a language school in chengdu with hundreds of other foreigner language students looking for good tools as well. When one of us finds something that helps us out, we pass it along to others.

   Honestly, I'm not really a beginner, I'v studied 5 years of Chinese and have passed the hsk 5 but I still have a horrible time with pronounciation. Specifically, I can't pronounce the difference between x/sh, quan/qun, and zhu/ju. I'm interested to see if this can help me at all with some of my pronounciation issues.

 

 

1. Links to any other product you've reviewed before to show me how awesome you are at it

          I haven't posted any other reviews specifically but I have passed lots of information about study tools, books, programs I have found useful in facebook groups and my wechat groups.

[Junso1]

I don't have a problem with pronunciation, I would rank myself around the level of a northern country bumpkin, not as standard as those CCTV elitists, but better than the average southerner who's first language is not a northern dialect. The unfortunate part of studying language material, is losing the country accent I didn't work so hard to get.  Which is why I personally advocate a study plan which consists of not studying.  Anyway, back to the point. I thought I should mention that I feel your product description is really vague.

 

Why not include some samples of what you are actually purchasing? It's hard to tell whether the "package" includes 1 full page worth of exercises, or 50. 9 pdf files doesn't mean anything, just like 9 mp3s. You could break the same content up into 100 mp3 or 1 mp3.

 

Let me illustrate:

"How long is the story? "

"It's 1 pdf long."

"Wow, that's not very many pdfs for $45. I want to know that I'm getting a good value."

"Sure, now each story comes in 9 pdfs."

"Sweet, 9 pdfs, I'm not sure I can read that much!"

 

In other words, how many examples are there in each lesson? Where are the examples showing what kind of activities are in each one?

 

It's hard to know what the value is for the money. Also, it seems like the levels should be bundled, since one module seems more like a lesson and rather narrow in focus, I would imagine most people who would use the resource, would want to advance through the lessons. It would cost 45 dollars to buy the 8 lessons which consists of just a few beginner tone pairs, the two "tough sounds" lessons, and tone changes. I mean, 45 dollars will buy you a pleco bundle, 50% of a Chinese redmi phone to put pleco on, 3 months of outrageously priced Skritter, 60 notepads and a pencil, several years of VIP membership to a Chinese video streaming service, a decent voice recorder...

 

Also, it sounds like the interns just never heard Chinese before and were trying to read a romanization at first. It doesn't take 6 weeks to correct someone's pronunciation on a word in isolation. The improvement they made could have been made in a few minutes. It would be more helpful to see them speaking sentences instead of repeating words. It's much, much more impressive to have natural pronunciation when speaking, or the ability to lose your native accent. If these lessons just teach you how to read pinyin, it's hard to justify the price.

 

Finally, I'm not exactly sure how this is different or better than drilling tone pairs, and practicing with ebooks, which are both freely available in flashcard format already.

[AlexBlackman]

I've bought the $8 dollar A2 one.

 

There is a about 16 minutes worth of audio. There doesn't seem to be any problem with the speakers accent, which is positive.

 

Most of the  PDFs are just short transcript with characters and pinyin but the Chinese language explanation should be useful for tutors.

 

Like Junso, I think they are a bit too expensive for what you get, but they are certainly beneficial if money isn't a factor.

[roddy]

Did anyone get products to review from this? Were any reviews forthcoming?