Behind the Wheel Chinese (Mandarin), Level 1: Learn to Speak Mandarin Chinese Quickly and Easily! (8 One Hour CDs) 
asked by jdog on November 5, 2006 8:32 AM
At last a Mandarin CD course which requires no reading and which teaches you to actually speak Mandarin Chinese in a minimum of time and effort. Designed by the experts at Language Dynamics, 'Behind The Wheel Chinese For Your Car' takes the learner from basic to intermediate level Mandarin without the guesswork and pain usually associated with language learning. An expert English speaking instructor talks you through these tapes in English while 2 trained professional native Mandarin speakers teach you Chinese the way it is really spoken! Behind The Wheel Chinese For Your Car is the ideal way to learn Mandarin Chinese while you drive because there is no confusion, no reading, no looking up meanings, and no guessing. It's all on the CDs. Use your commute time to effectively learn Chinese with this delightful course whose method will have you speaking your first words in Mandarin within minutes of receiving your course, and enjoying it. The product has superb clarity of voices and exudes a spontaneity which makes learning Chinese fun. You'll be thrilled with the fast and easy to learn design of the course, beginning with the immediate gratification you feel when you conclude your first one half hour session with the CDs speaking sentences in Mandarin that Chinese speakers understand 10 minutes later on the street. You'll be amazed at the 'natural' way you just seem to pick up Chinese without having to learn grammar or reviewing. No need to go back. It's all 'built in' the course. Just imagine the thrill of being able to express what you really feel in Mandarin in 100 different ways because you know own a Chinese linguistic blueprint, a template that you can manipulate over and over again in different and personal ways while increasing your fluency in Mandarin. What' s more, you will also learn to speak in the past, present and future along with idioms all in the same course.
Reviews
0%
0%
This is one of the most underrated of all the Behind the Wheel courses I have reviewed.
For all of its shortcomings (which I assure you are few) Behind the Wheel Chinese accomplishes what all others fail to do, namely, teach you to speak and understand the practical basics of Mandarin Chinese.
I would rather have an oversimplication and learn something than to have an overcomplicated presentantion and learn nothing.
This course gets my highest recommendation.
I do however believe that Behind the Wheel Chinese is better when used with 'Power Chinese'. One for the car and one for home.
For all of its shortcomings (which I assure you are few) Behind the Wheel Chinese accomplishes what all others fail to do, namely, teach you to speak and understand the practical basics of Mandarin Chinese.
I would rather have an oversimplication and learn something than to have an overcomplicated presentantion and learn nothing.
This course gets my highest recommendation.
I do however believe that Behind the Wheel Chinese is better when used with 'Power Chinese'. One for the car and one for home.
reviewed by artdealer on November 14, 2006 9:00 PM
0%
0%
The 'good' doesn't stop with CD1. It's just beginning.
I notice no difference between the approach used in 'Behind the Wheel Chinese/Mandarin' and other Behind the Wheel courses I have used.
CD 2 and beyond evolve sentence building, tenses, expressions,
and tons of vocabulary that they teach you how to assemble.
Great course.
I notice no difference between the approach used in 'Behind the Wheel Chinese/Mandarin' and other Behind the Wheel courses I have used.
CD 2 and beyond evolve sentence building, tenses, expressions,
and tons of vocabulary that they teach you how to assemble.
Great course.
reviewed by jbritt on November 15, 2006 1:34 AM
0%
0%
This audio set is very useful for getting an idea of how things are pronounced natively, and some slight variations on those pronunciations. However, it would not be a good idea to start here, as it relies heavily on memory. However, a good accompanying set to any books and courses.
Meant to be listened to, not to replace study while not driving.
Meant to be listened to, not to replace study while not driving.
reviewed by nexus on November 20, 2006 8:08 AM
0%
0%
I recently bought the BHTW Chinese and honestly, I was disappointed. Let me say that I am a translator/intrepreter for some Western languages, teach languages, including at an Ivy League university - so language-learning is an important part of my life.
Before I start with the specific comments, I just want to say a few words about all-audio courses in general. They are NOT for everyone. People learn in different ways and to learn a language, you generally have to inundate yourself in all ways, through visual AND audio stimuli. If you are very busy and spend a lot of time commuting, this obviously has value but I question how much you are actually retaining and more importantly able to reproduce in a different situation when you just listen. It can take longer when just having the audio stimulus. [...] they say right on the cover it can also be for home use, say on the computer while you are working, laying in bed etc. When I teach my language classes, I tell the students the audio materials are very important but ALWAYS review the text first before just listening. If this is such a nutty idea, why does Language Dimensions offer a script for some of its Spanish courses? Obviously, some people would like this.
The good points: This is the opposite of Pimsleur were they just take 4-5 dialogues and repeat everything a million times, exposing you to very little vocabulary and very few situations. Here you get lots of good vocabulary. Also, they start out CD 1 just the right way, you start building simple sentences - you learn I, you - then some verbs work, eat etc. Then you make sentences "I want to eat", "I have to go" etc. Very good.
The bad points: 1) After CD 1, any real efforts to build sentences in a systematic way stop. Yes, there are some attempts to have structure - changing to different pronouns, negative verbs etc. but these instances often have no rhyme or reason. We often get lists and lists of expressions, with only the occasional question by the English native, "How do you say that?", "Wonderful", "Let's have some fun.." He will ask for the pronunciation of some word he finds interesting but ignore structures etc. which are much more complicated
2) Generally, the focus of the course is focusing on the ENGLISH and translating it to Chinese. Thus, you will get a whole series of things in English that sound alike, "I'm going to".... etc. but in Chinese the structures can be very different, "Wo qu...", other times "Wo dasuan" (I'm planning to), I give to/he gives to, sometimes "wei ta" sometimes "gei ta" - yet no explanation is ever given on why these things are different. You have the male and female speaker translating "I'm afraid" in 2 different ways, no explanation. This becomes a HUGE problem if you want to suddenly apply the Chinese vocabulary. One English sentence can be translated many ways, and it is, and no explanation is given why. It would be better to have a bit less vocabular and a but more instruction on how to use structure. This happens sometimes in the series but there is no rhyme or reason.
3) Not only do they make it oriented to the English words instead of the Chinese words, I am 99% sure that they used their original Spanish course as a basis and just translated everything into Chinese, based on the grammar objectives of the Spanish course. For example, there is a whole section on "indirect object pronouns" - an important issue in Spanish but in Chinese, the output can be very different, involving different ways for saying "to" - wei/gei, different verbs etc. Another section has "time and weather" - Why would they keep putting this together in one phrase in Chinese, I wondered. But in Spanish, the same word, tiempo does double duty. So in Chinese we get "tianqi haishi shijian" or "tianqi huo shijian" (neglecting to mention the important difference between "haishi" and "huo". When you look at it from this perspective, you see how the objectives for translating into Spanish work, but they don't for Chinese. For example, a lot of time is spent negating present tense verbs. In Chinese, for most present tense situations, you just use "bu" in front of the verb, that's it. But so much time is spent on this. Or changing from person to person - the speaker keeps stressing he wants this "formal" - well, if you are talking about tu/usted in Spanish, this is an issue. In Chinese, it's just ni versus nin, the verb form itself never changes for person. Sometimes, they are even sloppy enough to say formal and the Chinese speaker still uses "ni" instead of "nin"!
At another point, the speaker tries to make the Chinese shi/zai constructions into something like Spanish ser/estar. There are similarities but the attempts of the English native to do this is not productive and misleading.
So much time is wasted on this stuff while other stuff, like say particles zhe, guo etc. are ignored. Word order issues in Chinese are ignored. The point is, if you try to reproduce these structures on your own, you will have a lot of problems unless you do it exactly as was said.
4) Part of the problems lies in the fact that, while there is a ton of useful vocabulary, there are many, many things which you are unlikely to say - "Every child is a gift from God", "I never ate there, not even once" - things that are nice to know but it is at the expense of reinforcing sentences that are more standard. Vocab is not reviewed in a consistent way. They will throw in a word like "cai", guess, but never really do anything with it. The stories are just heaped on without any real hope of actively reproducing the vocab - like so-and-so "speaks with a thick accent" - just thrown in. I'd say they do nothing with 50% of the vocab or mention something only once.
5) Fully devoid of any cultural context outside of the language commentary. They mentioned chop sticks once. Beyond that, this could be the Arabic course or French course. No mention of famous sites in China. In their numerous examples, they never ONCE have a Chinese name! Always Bob, Maria etc., never Miss Li or Mr. Wang. So the course is oriented to the English key words and seems also to be based on the original Spanish AND it lacks any real cultural context for China.
6) The English-speaker. His role in this is very strange. As stated above, he will often go for pages reading phrases. Then through in a "wonderful". He will ask about an occasional word or pronunciation but it is worse when he makes his observations about grammar. Many things are just wrong or absurd. He asks the speaker if there is a way to say "I give to him" (Um, what language in the world doesn't have a way to say that?). At one point, he starts referring to the PAST TENSE in Chinese with LE. This is deceptive and incorrect. LE can happen in the present tense too, Wo bing le - but they translate this as "I'm sick", no explanation. At one point, he wants to review the subject pronouns, after 15 minutes of sentences using the subject pronouns. In CD 7, he is surprised to learn that there are no specific object pronouns in Chinese - they are the same as the subject ones - um, wouldn't it be a good idea to talk about that in CD 1? At another point, he says, "Chinese does not distinguish plural" um no, that is not accurate either. There are many cases when you can use "penyoumen" (friends) etc. No one says the person has to be a walking linguistics professor but what he says should be accurate. And, as I said above, he says many structures which sound alike in English but product different structures in Chinese, so this does not help you to reproduce the structures.
7) Attempts are made to address certain subjects, clothes, ordering food etc. Yet there is often no real attempt to speak about a certain topic. You'll get 5-6 sentences on a restaurant and then something completely different. It would be better if they could have more of a topic focus.
In summary: Yes, it has value. If you can learn the many phrases, you can say some very intesting things in Chinese. The problem arises, however, if you try to USE the structures beyond CD 1. You are given very little guidance for a whole mass of vocabulary, English structures that translate into many Chinese structures, vocabulary that many not be suitable for everyday situations. Buy it for the car, but something else for more comprehensive study at home.
Before I start with the specific comments, I just want to say a few words about all-audio courses in general. They are NOT for everyone. People learn in different ways and to learn a language, you generally have to inundate yourself in all ways, through visual AND audio stimuli. If you are very busy and spend a lot of time commuting, this obviously has value but I question how much you are actually retaining and more importantly able to reproduce in a different situation when you just listen. It can take longer when just having the audio stimulus. [...] they say right on the cover it can also be for home use, say on the computer while you are working, laying in bed etc. When I teach my language classes, I tell the students the audio materials are very important but ALWAYS review the text first before just listening. If this is such a nutty idea, why does Language Dimensions offer a script for some of its Spanish courses? Obviously, some people would like this.
The good points: This is the opposite of Pimsleur were they just take 4-5 dialogues and repeat everything a million times, exposing you to very little vocabulary and very few situations. Here you get lots of good vocabulary. Also, they start out CD 1 just the right way, you start building simple sentences - you learn I, you - then some verbs work, eat etc. Then you make sentences "I want to eat", "I have to go" etc. Very good.
The bad points: 1) After CD 1, any real efforts to build sentences in a systematic way stop. Yes, there are some attempts to have structure - changing to different pronouns, negative verbs etc. but these instances often have no rhyme or reason. We often get lists and lists of expressions, with only the occasional question by the English native, "How do you say that?", "Wonderful", "Let's have some fun.." He will ask for the pronunciation of some word he finds interesting but ignore structures etc. which are much more complicated
2) Generally, the focus of the course is focusing on the ENGLISH and translating it to Chinese. Thus, you will get a whole series of things in English that sound alike, "I'm going to".... etc. but in Chinese the structures can be very different, "Wo qu...", other times "Wo dasuan" (I'm planning to), I give to/he gives to, sometimes "wei ta" sometimes "gei ta" - yet no explanation is ever given on why these things are different. You have the male and female speaker translating "I'm afraid" in 2 different ways, no explanation. This becomes a HUGE problem if you want to suddenly apply the Chinese vocabulary. One English sentence can be translated many ways, and it is, and no explanation is given why. It would be better to have a bit less vocabular and a but more instruction on how to use structure. This happens sometimes in the series but there is no rhyme or reason.
3) Not only do they make it oriented to the English words instead of the Chinese words, I am 99% sure that they used their original Spanish course as a basis and just translated everything into Chinese, based on the grammar objectives of the Spanish course. For example, there is a whole section on "indirect object pronouns" - an important issue in Spanish but in Chinese, the output can be very different, involving different ways for saying "to" - wei/gei, different verbs etc. Another section has "time and weather" - Why would they keep putting this together in one phrase in Chinese, I wondered. But in Spanish, the same word, tiempo does double duty. So in Chinese we get "tianqi haishi shijian" or "tianqi huo shijian" (neglecting to mention the important difference between "haishi" and "huo". When you look at it from this perspective, you see how the objectives for translating into Spanish work, but they don't for Chinese. For example, a lot of time is spent negating present tense verbs. In Chinese, for most present tense situations, you just use "bu" in front of the verb, that's it. But so much time is spent on this. Or changing from person to person - the speaker keeps stressing he wants this "formal" - well, if you are talking about tu/usted in Spanish, this is an issue. In Chinese, it's just ni versus nin, the verb form itself never changes for person. Sometimes, they are even sloppy enough to say formal and the Chinese speaker still uses "ni" instead of "nin"!
At another point, the speaker tries to make the Chinese shi/zai constructions into something like Spanish ser/estar. There are similarities but the attempts of the English native to do this is not productive and misleading.
So much time is wasted on this stuff while other stuff, like say particles zhe, guo etc. are ignored. Word order issues in Chinese are ignored. The point is, if you try to reproduce these structures on your own, you will have a lot of problems unless you do it exactly as was said.
4) Part of the problems lies in the fact that, while there is a ton of useful vocabulary, there are many, many things which you are unlikely to say - "Every child is a gift from God", "I never ate there, not even once" - things that are nice to know but it is at the expense of reinforcing sentences that are more standard. Vocab is not reviewed in a consistent way. They will throw in a word like "cai", guess, but never really do anything with it. The stories are just heaped on without any real hope of actively reproducing the vocab - like so-and-so "speaks with a thick accent" - just thrown in. I'd say they do nothing with 50% of the vocab or mention something only once.
5) Fully devoid of any cultural context outside of the language commentary. They mentioned chop sticks once. Beyond that, this could be the Arabic course or French course. No mention of famous sites in China. In their numerous examples, they never ONCE have a Chinese name! Always Bob, Maria etc., never Miss Li or Mr. Wang. So the course is oriented to the English key words and seems also to be based on the original Spanish AND it lacks any real cultural context for China.
6) The English-speaker. His role in this is very strange. As stated above, he will often go for pages reading phrases. Then through in a "wonderful". He will ask about an occasional word or pronunciation but it is worse when he makes his observations about grammar. Many things are just wrong or absurd. He asks the speaker if there is a way to say "I give to him" (Um, what language in the world doesn't have a way to say that?). At one point, he starts referring to the PAST TENSE in Chinese with LE. This is deceptive and incorrect. LE can happen in the present tense too, Wo bing le - but they translate this as "I'm sick", no explanation. At one point, he wants to review the subject pronouns, after 15 minutes of sentences using the subject pronouns. In CD 7, he is surprised to learn that there are no specific object pronouns in Chinese - they are the same as the subject ones - um, wouldn't it be a good idea to talk about that in CD 1? At another point, he says, "Chinese does not distinguish plural" um no, that is not accurate either. There are many cases when you can use "penyoumen" (friends) etc. No one says the person has to be a walking linguistics professor but what he says should be accurate. And, as I said above, he says many structures which sound alike in English but product different structures in Chinese, so this does not help you to reproduce the structures.
7) Attempts are made to address certain subjects, clothes, ordering food etc. Yet there is often no real attempt to speak about a certain topic. You'll get 5-6 sentences on a restaurant and then something completely different. It would be better if they could have more of a topic focus.
In summary: Yes, it has value. If you can learn the many phrases, you can say some very intesting things in Chinese. The problem arises, however, if you try to USE the structures beyond CD 1. You are given very little guidance for a whole mass of vocabulary, English structures that translate into many Chinese structures, vocabulary that many not be suitable for everyday situations. Buy it for the car, but something else for more comprehensive study at home.
reviewed by papi on November 23, 2006 12:17 PM
0%
0%
I tried Pimsleur's Chinese (Mandarin) (Instant Conversation) and returned it because it didn't have multi-tracks, they presented too little vocabulary and the the course was 'rigid'.
I prefer the method in Behind the Wheel Chinese because there are multi-tracks
(very important for in-car language learning), a good memory technique and great original sentence formation exercises that get you speaking Mandarin from the get-go.
I prefer the method in Behind the Wheel Chinese because there are multi-tracks
(very important for in-car language learning), a good memory technique and great original sentence formation exercises that get you speaking Mandarin from the get-go.
reviewed by daddyadd on November 29, 2006 6:26 AM