PACK CD CHINESE 1 WITH EASE Paperback – March 21, 2006

by KANTOR PHILIPPE (Author)

4.1 16 ratings

Série essentielle d'ASSIMIL, elle permet en quelques mois d'acquérir plus de 2000 mots de vocabulaire, la grammaire de base et de maîtriser la conversation courante dans plus de cinquante langues.

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

ASSIMIL
Publication date

March 21, 2006
Dimensions

6.3 x 1.97 x 9.06 inches
ISBN-10

2700520505
ISBN-13

978-2700520507
See all details

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ ASSIMIL (March 21, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 2700520505
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-2700520507
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.22 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.97 x 9.06 inches

Customer Reviews:
4.1 16 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

16 global ratings

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Bret

Chinese is with ease.

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2012

Verified Purchase

Assimil is by far the best language learning software. Ask any polyglot or hyperpolyglot. I absolutely love it, and nothing can compare.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

John

Not up to Assimil's usual standard

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2011

Verified Purchase

I'm reviewing this in light of Assimil's other excellent programs. I've used their French, German, and Russian courses to varying degrees of completion, and they have consistently been excellent. Their Chinese course just doesn't measure up to their usual standard of quality. I'm also reviewing this as someone with a much higher level of Chinese than this course provides.

The English translations are sometimes puzzling (more faithful rendering into English would be appreciated). For instance, in Lesson 100, Sentence #4 is translated as "When I get back home I give them as presents to my friends!" The original says nothing about "presents." A more accurate translation (that would serve learners better) would be "When I return to my county I'm going to give them to my friends!"

For some reason, the writer of the course decided that 90% of the sentences need to end with exclamation points. I don't really understand the reasoning behind this, but it makes it seem like the characters are always really excited about the most mundane things.

Also, the language stays at a very basic level throughout the course. The last few lessons aren't really any more difficult than Lesson 20. One would finish this course still feeling very much like a beginner, while Assimil's other courses leave you comfortably in the intermediate level. New French With Ease in particular has allowed me to begin reading authentic French material that interests me, while Chinese With Ease would barely allow you to begin reading children's books. Now, Chinese is a much more difficult language than French, so this is to be expected to some extent. But from what I've seen of the Japanese course, it goes much further than the Chinese course, and as Japanese is arguably a more difficult language than Chinese, I feel that the authors of the Chinese course have no excuse.

One feature of Assimil's other courses that is all but absent from the Chinese course is the sense of humor in each lesson. I love that aspect of Assimil's course because it keeps me entertained and thus makes it easier to stick with the course. It just isn't there in the Chinese course.

Now, all that said, it's still a decent course. Better than many Chinese courses out there. The Assimil approach (bilingual text with audio in the target language, many short lessons, passive and active waves) is great, and maybe the most effective method of learning a foreign language I've come across. But those who have used other Assimil courses will likely be disappointed in this one. On the one hand, it will teach you survival Chinese if you're planning a trip there, or will get you started on the long road to fluency in Chinese if that is your goal. On the other, it could have been done much better.

36 people found this helpful

Helpful

Warren M. Warsaw

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2015

Verified Purchase

Excellent condition. Neat approach

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2014

Very good

Very well explaining grammar and pronunciation, ideal for learning to understand Chinese Speech

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2012

For the books and CDs of:
Chinese with Ease: Volume 1 Book and Audio CD Pack [With CD] (v. 1) [Paperback] ,Phillip Kantor (Author), ISBN-13: 978-2700520507

Chinese with Ease: Volume 2 Book and Audio CD Pack (v. 2) [Hardcover], Phillipe Kantor (Author),
ISBN-13: 978-2700520514

1 For some years, I do own the German edition of these same two books and the CDs:
ASSiMiL Selbstlernkurs für Deutsche: Assimil. Chinesisch ohne Mühe 1. Multimedia-Classic. Lehrbuch + 4 Audio-CDs, 140 Min. Tonaufnahmen: BD 1 [Audio CD] , Philippe Kantor (Autor), ISBN-13: 978-2700510935

Assimil. Chinesisch ohne Mühe 2. Multimedia-Classic. Lehrbuch + 4 Audio-CDs, 140 Min. Tonaufnahmen [Hörkassette] , Philippe Kantor (Autor), ISBN-13: 978-2700510942.

2 The two books and the 8 audio CDs are comparatively expensive. But I have found them very useful for learning the Chinese language well:
3 The books and CDs are ideal for learning to understand when other people do speak Chinese. Of course they are also very good for learning to speak Chinese. The books and CDs are comparatively easy to use.
4 The grammar and pronunciation are very well explained.
5 My experience: Your CD - player should have an unlimited Repeat function for the same track or the same lesson:
For buying and using the CDs, I think it is very important that your CD-player does have a Repeat function for each track. On a Sony CD - player this is called Repeat and Repeat 1, Rep and Rep 1. Not all CD - players do have such a function. On a CD there are more than 10 lessons or 10 tracks. Your CD - player should be able to repeat each lesson or each track for e.g. 10 times. I do not mean the whole CD, but only one part of the CD, one track. I do listen to the same track or lesson on a CD for e.g. up to one hour on e.g. three consecutive days. In the book, I had before studied carefully the explanations of the lesson. When listening to a lesson without the book, I do something else like preparing a meal, I do listen for understanding the text, which is very easy with this method.
Of course you could also use a CD - player without a repeat function, but I do find such a CD - player for the CDs much less useful.
6 The advantage of the Assimil Chinese is, that the sentences are not too long. On the audio CDs of other authors, the sentences are often too long to remember them and not well enough explained.
7 The CDs are a number of years old. On the German version of the books is written the publishing year 1994. The word frequency of Chinese words has somewhat changed since then. But the books and CDs are very useful also nowadays.
8 Before I had started using the books and CDs, many of the words in the books were already known to me, also I had known about Chinese grammar. Because of this, I had not to learn all of the things in the books at the same time. I could concentrate on the new things.
9 The Assimil Chinese method, I like especially for the very good explanations of grammar and pronunciation, and for the very good method for learning to understand what Chinese people do say.
10 On the CDs is only spoken Chinese.
11 The texts in the books are in Chinese characters and in Pinyin. The texts are translated nearby into English, first translated as a whole sentence and second translated word by word. There are often numbers within the texts. Nearby, there are the explanations concerning the numbers, about grammar and pronunciation. The explanations are very clear. The two books are mainly thought for speaking Chinese and understanding Chinese by listening to Chinese.
12 In the first book there are 49 lessons, in the second book there are 56 lessons. The lessons are also on the CDs. In the vocabulary list near the end of each book, together there are perhaps about 1300 Chinese words and expressions with a translation. I have counted from the vocabulary list near the end of each of the two books, minus perhaps about 90 words double.
13 I do not know if the books are so good for learning the Chinese VOCABULARY. But there are other very good methods for learning the Chinese words, e.g. the Han Trainer Pro method and vocabulary cards. I have written about this at another place on Amazon.com (ASIN: 3000330674 , ASIN: 394336609X , ISBN-13: 978-3943366105).

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kathleen

Adequate for beginners

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2013

Verified Purchase

Not as good as their other languages such as the Japanese and French. Best use for pronounciations, especially proper tones.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ross

If you want to learn in CONTEXT this is the book for you

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2017

MOST IMPORTANTLY: If you understand some written French, buy the brand new "Le Chinois" Assimil book. It has different content and a different author than this book. It is AMAZING. That said, I think this book is a great supplement to the new french version.

Anyway..
Yes this may not be as amazing as other Assimil courses, but as far as Chinese material goes, this is very good. People complain about tone markings and translations but, personally, I have not had problems with that. Perhaps I go more out of my way to understand the components of words and verify translations than others. If I have any doubts about the translation (e.g. there seems to be an extra or omitted word etc), then I simply look it up. If you're learning Chinese, get used to looking up words A LOT regardless of what your source says it means. Besides, you really need to see multiple definitions to understand the subtleties of words.

Assimil's value is that it gives your words CONTEXT in easily understandable ways and it gently pushes your limits. That is exactly what this book does and I am very grateful for it. This book can be a Godsend--it's up to you to make the most of it. Study consistently and with focus and patience.... With Chinese you'll need LOTS of patience :p

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Image Unavailable

PACK CD CHINESE 1 WITH EASE Paperback – March 21, 2006

Product details

Videos

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries