The Secret Garden

Mandarin Companion Graded Readers: Level 1, Simplified Chinese Edition

By: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Narrated by: Zhang Xiuye

Li Ye (Marry Lennox) grew up without the love and affection of her parents. After an epidemic leaves her an orphan, Li Ye is sent off to live with her reclusive uncle in his sprawling estate in Nanjing. She learns of a secret garden where no one has set food in 10 years. Li Ye finds the garden and slowly discovers the secrets of the manor. With the help of new friends, she brings the garden back to life and learns the healing power of friendship and love.

Mandarin Companion is a series of easy-to-listen-to novels in Chinese that are fun to listen to and proven to accelerate language learning. Every audiobook in the Mandarin Companion series is carefully authored to use words and grammar that a learner is likely to know.

Level one is intended for Chinese learners at an upper-elementary level. Most learners will be able to approach this audiobook after one to two years of formal study, depending on the learner and program. This series is designed to combine simplicity of characters with an easy-to-understand story line that helps beginners grow their vocabulary and language-comprehension abilities.

Please note: This audiobook is in Chinese.

©2013 Mind Spark Press (P)2018 Mind Spark Press

Great in combination with the printed book

As a beginner studying Mandarin this audiobook is excellent. Listening to this book a few times along with reading the corresponding paperbook has done wonders for my Chinese. It teaches you useful vocabulary in a way you naturally remember. This company has some other audiobooks for their graded readers and I hope they make more - I plan on working through all of them. 谢谢！

Helpful in learning both Traditional and Simplified

This is an excellent resource for expanding vocabulary and reinforcing character comprehension. The narrator is pleasant to listen to and an indelible resource in my ongoing Chinese language learning process!

excellent

love it
narrator was good, easy toisten too and story was easy to follow. great book for young and old alike.

A great tool for learing Chinese

This book is great for people in the stage of language learning where they have a decent grasp of basic vocab and want to move past simple question answer dialogs. The story and vocab are simple but still convey the story well. Great for reaching a comfort level with hearing Chinese. For those who think it's too easy, try speeding it up to 1.5 and it will be closer to actual conversation speeds.
The voice performance was very clear and easy to understand; perfectly delivered for ears still learning to pick out individual words.

Great for Chinese learners except for 1 thing

This is exactly what I wanted as a Mandarin beginner. Slow spoken Chinese with clearly enunciated tones. This quality is hard to find. The only drawback is the immersion-ruining "CHAPTER ONE", "CHAPTER TWO", etc. that is yelled out in English at the beginning of every chapter. Good god, WHY?! Why can't you say "Chapter Two" in Mandarin? Such an easy thing to fix, I'm honestly confused as to why it was overlooked.

Improves your listening.

Excellent resource to improve your listening skills in understanding Mandarin Chinese. Great storyteller...very clear and concise.

Great practice listening for HSK 2

Great listen for people practicing HSK 2 Chinese. The narrator speaks at a clear speed that is slow but just fast enough to stay engaging. The story is also lovely, although I did have to consult with the summary of the book to clarify the ending.

Excellent for learning, comprehension , listening

Listened several times , very good pace and vocabulary. Clear voice reading . Enjoyed listening. Recommend for learners to improve comprehension, vocabulary and listening skills

Love the story and the narration!

I think they did an excellent job simplifying the story. The only thing that could have improved the recording, in my opinion, is if the chapter numbers had als been narrated in Chinese. Suddenly hearing "Chapter 2", etc. (in English!) in the middle of a Chinese story seems a bit jarring and unnecessary.