VocabuLearn: Chinese, Level 1

By: Penton Overseas Inc.

Narrated by: uncredited

VocabuLearn is the only audio language learning system designed to teach the way you learn best...concentrating on vocabulary and helpful expressions. This three-hour program contains over 1,500 commonly-used words and expressions - the building blocks of language. This audio flash-card system will have you communicating effectively in the shortest time possible. Recommended by educators world-wide, VocabuLearn is prepared by professional instructors and recorded by dialect-free native speakers, giving you the authentic pronunciation of each word. VocabuLearn is ideal for those studying foreign languages. It can also help you prepare for more enjoyable trips to foreign countries...and can even improve your job and business opportunities. Best of all, you can listen to VocabuLearn anywhere...in your car, at home, or on a portable digital audio player - wherever you are. No textbook is required!

(P) and ©1986 Penton Overseas, Inc.

Awful

Background music is incredibly loud. The words they teach have nothing in common. Just a random cluster of words. First words are grass, moon, sound, airport, December, hand, hope?, etc. Then the next chapter they throw in another month in the middle of list. One would hope they would at least put months together in a single unit.

Some of the English words are homophones (e.g., "flower" vs. "flour"), which makes it difficult to know what word you are actually learning.

Maybe if you already had a crude knowledge of Chinese, this might
benefit you, but it is not for beginners.

I hope some one got fired for this

What were they thinking? First the speaker is almost impossible to hear. Next they only say the word once and even then it is poorly pronounced. Additionally they move on to the next word before you have a chance to practice the word. Frankly it was the worst purchase I have ever made.

Almost useless

I own several other titles and enjoy them all. This one, unfortunately, is unuseable, even irritating. The words given are utterly random, sometimes so random it makes you laugh. Worse, the music is so repetitious you end up remembering the musical phrase, minus the words....a complete waste.

You won't listen to it !

No structure, no idea, just a bunch of words put without any order. How can anybody get something useful from this ? And that loud music, through which you can't even hear words properly. They could have at least better inserted some pop music then I could use this book for other means ..

absolutely useless

I would give it zero stars if I could. This is a completely random list of words read first in English then in Chinese. Do not waste your time or money.

This is not for beginners

If you are already on your way to speaking Mandarin, this might help you build your vocabulary, but I have to agree with the other reviews. It is not for the beginner.

For a beginning Mandarin speaker, this will simply not teach you to communicate. The music is a distraction, the words are placed at random, and they have no context at all. The poor audio quality often makes it difficult to understand the pronunciation. I managed to chop it up into 60 second chapters, and played the chapters repeatedly, but after 3 weeks, I could only recall less than 100 words, and it was practically useless in communication. I couldn't say or understand anything!

Its good points: The chapters are divided into nouns, verbs, adverbs, and phrases. The phrases chapters are the only redeeming factor in this series.

If you want to learn Mandarin, I would recommend sticking to the Pimsleur Mandarin series, which is easy and very effective.

Don't buy this one!

I love the French series Audible.com has.

I have tried lots of different systems but this Chinese one is the WORST. It would be okay if there were no music but the music irritates you after just 2 minutes. At least the music stops from time to time....

You also know there is a problem when the very first vocabulary word is "the grass".

I'd be willing to pay $30 for a good system such as the French series than this price for simple vocabulary. I would prefer Chinese phrases to get a sense of the sentence structure. Otherwise, how could I possibly figure out how to say "Don't run on the wet grass" and other "useful" phrases????

Ichkk

If you want to listen to endless classical baroque music & an endless series of words that are only said once, and are far from useful, get this! Otherwise save your time and money. Here are the words they first give you: the grass, the moon, the sound, the airport, December, the hand, the hoe(/Hole?), the dress, the wine, the fire, the sound, the wool, the love, the winter, the exit, the spinach, Thursday, the ice cream, the mountain, the side....And on and on with a seemingly random blitz of words that cannot help you to say "Hello, my name is". Truely abysmal.

A bit of a let down

I was really looking forward to using this program. Unfortunately there is background music that makes it very difficult to follow what is being said, as the music is almost as loud as the speakers.

Horrible DO NOT BUY!

Random words, which are hard to hear, music in the background which is too loud. Not worth the one star which is the min. you can rate a book. Not bad- HORRIBLE!