1920’s

1930

1947

Today I ran across a video on Youtube by Active Chinese. After watching it I was intrigued! I decided to include this post because I know that many people reading are still undecided about what program to choose! There is a 30 day trial of Active Chinese and my 13 year old has volunteered for the task of checking it out! I’ll let you know what she thinks in an update!

This is a fun little video for your kids!  (Turn down your volume, it is very loud!)

I was convinced of the effectiveness of this program over a year ago and made the purchase.  We have not utilized it as much as I wish we had, but all that is going to change in the coming year.  Now that I have a Chinese Teacher to help me with pronunciation (overcoming my fear of teaching something incorrectly)   I plan on expanding the time we spend on this program.

Now, having said that Fluenz is our favorite program, I have to say that Rosetta Stone is definitely worth the money if you have little learners in your house.  Children learn by hearing and associating words and sentences with what they see, most adults have lost that ability.  I have my 6 and 4 year old using Rosetta Stone on a daily basis.  They love having control of the mouse on my computer and I can tell that they are understanding as their scores get better and better.

I recommend that you go ahead and get the version with level 1, 2 and 3 if you plan on buying this program. It saves quite a bit of money over buying them separately and you’ll be surprised at how fast your kids progress through the lessons.  (Or you if you are an auditory learner!)

Rosetta Stone does teach characters, but because my children are young, I have turned that function off.

Fluenz is by far our favorite language program! We are a house full of visual learners and so the auditory programs out there leave us wanting! We need to see the words, how they are spelled and hear the pronunciation while we are looking at the words. If you are that type of learner, I recommend you start with this program.

Fluenz does not teach you the characters, it teaches pronunciation and pinyin. If you want to learn the characters they are included in a booklet that comes with the CDs.

I suggest that you call Fluenz directly. When we purchased the program they were offering a 25% discount if you wrote a review on Amazon.com. (I have no idea if that is still the case, but its worth a call!)

Because our family lives and works in several locations they also sent us an additional copy for free so that our “traveler” could continue his studies on the road! Customer service is definitely a positive experience with this one!!

Mandarin 3+4 should be coming out sometime this year!

Xièxie nǐ,

Marmee

Occasionally I’ll be adding music or other Chinese art forms to the blog. I hope that it will allow you to increase your knowledge of China and its people.

Our Chinese teacher started out our first lesson today by teaching us the pronunciation of pinyin letters.  When I got home the first thing I searched for was something online that would help me hear/see and retain those pronunciations!  I found it on Youtube and the video is done by one of my favorite groups, Better Chinese!

Our family is actively learning Chinese.  We are taking lessons once a week from a local University student and studying on our own via many resources.  My list of programs, videos, websites, DVDs and books is getting to long to share in one conversation, thus the need for a blog.   Please feel free to share the address, and let me know what you think of it as a resource!

Xièxie nǐ,

Marmee

P.S.  If you’d like to know why we are learning Chinese, check out our family blog at www.islandschoolhouse.com!