Now that I know all the Chinese I need to know..

I started studying Mandarin with Rosetta Stone about a month ago and after getting in a decent amount of studying while on a ski trip in Utah, I found it difficult to free up time to continue. Several years ago I got Shirley the Pimsleur Chinese series on CD as a gift so that she could re-learn Chinese, having nothing to do with a move to Taiwan. I found it on the bookshelf, dusted it off, and ripped it to MP3 so I could fit the 26 disc series onto 2 CDs. Luckily my car stereo can play MP3s as my strategy was to use it on my hour (each way) commute to work. Finding something productive to do while commuting as like magically making the day 26 hours long.

Rosetta Stone is very visual, you associate sounds and writing with a photo and it runs on a computer. From my limited use with it, it at least starts out being very vocabulary based. Pimsleur is strictly audio, and immediately focuses on actual conversations. It's also clearly geared toward touristy situations. Where things are, what to eat, how to tell someone, "Sorry, my Chinese sucks".  While I can't necessarily say that the Pimsleur method is better than Rosetta Stone, for me, it is the better choice for now. I suspect the best solution long term is to use them both.

The lessons are about a half hour long. Most lessons I repeat once before moving on to the next and that seems to result in a pretty good mastery of the material. There is a lot of repetition built in so I suspect you could do each lesson once and not lose out as the following lesson will start with a review and then expand the material. I wonder if I look like and idiot driving down the road with my lips flapping away, speaking Chinese.

I just started the 8th lesson today and finally learned how to say, "I would like to drink some beer." The number 8 is regarded as very lucky  in Chinese culture. Therefore, I think it's no coincidence that the 8th lesson involves asking for a beer.

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