Ian Mitchell

Ian Mitchell

Rocket Chinese
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This reviews Rocket Languages' Chinese Premium and Premium Plus. The program is well organized in its audio and website. Audio lessons use a typical conversation to teach new words and basic grammar lessons. Lin Ping, the teacher for the course, has a good clear Northern Chinese accent and speaks the majority of the time. It is peculiar that she converses with Dave, an Austrailian with a good accent, but not one I'd try to imitate if I was trying to blend in while visiting. This is fixed in the Premium Plus section. There is some English to introduce the subject and context, but the majority of the lesson is repeating words while you can follow a written transcript in Pinyin and I think Simplified characters. Then you practice memorizing by repeating sections of the conversation, hearing and identifying words, and speaking the words in Chinese knowing their equivalent in English. (hard!) The only major complaint is a lack of a translation dictionary to double check if the words you are adding to your vocabulary have the right definition (the audio tapes breeze through definitions only once); when looking up a word you will most often find it used in other lessons/sentences.

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