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27
Apr
2010
Learn Standard Chinese E-mail
City Life - Practical Tips
Written by ND
We discovered a great free resource to learn standard chinese and dozens of other languages as well. And we want to share it with you: "Standard Chinese: A Modular Approach", provided by the Foreign Service Institute. This institute teaches foreign languages to U.S. diplomats, military- and embassy personnel abroad. These courses were developed by the U.S. government and are in the public domain now. FSI says:

"This course is designed to give a practical command of spoken Standard Chinese. Nine situational modules form the core of the course. Each core module consists of tapes, a student textbook, and a workbook. In addition to the core modules, there is a resource module and eight optional modules". The amount of materials for Mandarin is excellent and will keep you busy for many days - if not weeks. The content comes as .PDF files. That makes it easy to use the materials and lessons on every platform (Iphone, Mobile PSP, iPad, Linux, Windows, OSX...).

Take this as another option in the big ocean of free chinese learning resources. Since the goal is situation dialogue, it might be a better compliment than a replacement to your current language study techniques.

Review

This website wrote an interesting review about this program: Quote:

"Very complete program with nine modules with each module having between 9 to 22 cassettes, plus several optional modules on specific topic (like restaurant, marriage,...). Each module has a workbook and a student book. This method is pretty old (published between 1979 and 1983) : the presentation very austere (no pictures, stitched Xerox copies), and the recording of the tapes very poor. It is however very complete and you can really use it by yourself without the help of somebody else.

Don’t forget that it was done to be used by US military personnel going to Taiwan, so it is done to be efficient. The other advantage that no other method has is that it goes very deep in the language. It doesn't stop at an intermediary level, letting you in the blue. Pimsleur is probably better for the beginners as Standard Chinese doesn't focus on small talk what can be frustrating. Standard Chinese can however, with its numerous drill tapes, let you master much more complex structures than Pimsleur and gives you grammatical explanation that are really helpful." ► Click here for the full text

Screenshot

Important note

The .PDF files are stored on archive.org. But archive.org is blocked in China...yup. Use your favourite proxy to access them.

Enuff said: Click here and start using this free resource!. Happy learning! Let us know your opinion and experiences with it by leaving a comment!
Our valuable Editor ND has been with us since Monday, 15 June 2009.

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Comments  

 
+1 #3 Brandon 2011-07-24 02:07
Wow - there are a lot of materials there but man it could use a bit of a redesign. It's interesting that it looks like some of the content itself looks like it was written on a typewriter, which it probably was.

If you're looking for more free content to learn Chinese you can also try this community project / social network - has videos, blogs, photos etc.
studymorechinese.com/
Quote
 
 
+1 #2 Marx 2010-08-25 06:22
Perfect!!! Thanks a lot!
Quote
 
 
+2 #1 Great site! 2010-07-03 20:35
wow, that's a great site to learn chinese! thanks for sharing guys!
Quote
 

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