I've been listening to the Chinese Learn Online podcast for about a month now, in my first steps towards learning Mandarin. I did learn a little from a different podcast before we went to China last year, enough to ask a few basic questions and say "thanks" and the like but I had very little ability to understand it when spoken to me. I spen quite a bit of time sampling different podcasts over the past few months trying to find one that really clicked with me in terms of teaching style and variety of accents. A lot of them, like the BBC one for example, are meant to get a business person or tourist through a short trip to China. I'm more interested in really learning the language with essentially narrowed it down to CLO or Chinesepod. I felt like I was getting more out of CLO quicker, so I'm sticking with that one though Chinesepod is quite good as well.
A few things about it that I particularly like:
- they bring in different people with different regional accents
- extensive use of 'listen to this conversation and try to keep up'
- notes, tips, and worksheets
wo de shung rì shì liù yuè san shí hào
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HK Muse commented, on June 28, 2008 at 12:57 a.m.:
I learned how to sing "Happy Birthday to You" in Mandarin when we took a class...
But I have since forgotten. I will have to check my notes and get back to you!
Singing the birthday song and saying "I don't know" were the two things I learned the quickest.
rev matt commented, on June 29, 2008 at 10:15 p.m.:
Yea, "I don't know" is critical. Oddly enough it doesn't appear until around lesson 13 or 14...
skywind commented, on June 29, 2008 at 11:32 p.m.:
I've been picking up japanese as a side effect of watching many hours of anime with japanese audio and english subtitles. I have gotten a lot better at hearing the syllables and words as a result of listening for hours and hours and hours.
I suspect that ready access to authentic media to listen to makes a big difference in learning, and how the brain processes sound.
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