The Governess Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Here is a link to the first set. They are around $12 per set of six 12-13 page books, and there are quite a few levels. I ordered the first set and will post a review after I have had a chance to look at them. I am excited because it is hard to find Chinese reading material at this level. We are using Better Chinese, which comes with readers, but you can only read an 8-page book so many times. ;) If anyone else has found a similar resource, please share! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C_l_e_0..Q_c Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Oh thank you! I have a young girl here who's loving her Chinese lessons (her what? fourth language at age 9?) Anyway it's the first subject she wants to work on every day. Reading material would be nice to have. Do you know if those books are in Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Governess Posted November 25, 2009 Author Share Posted November 25, 2009 I am not completely sure, I went to the publisher's website and learned that they are a Hong Kong company, so I am guessing they use traditional characters (which is what we are learning). Unfortunately there are no samples of the books on their website. I will let you know for sure once I have them in hand! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C_l_e_0..Q_c Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I am guessing they use traditional characters Thanks for letting me know. My daughter is learning simplified, not traditional. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom2hunangirls Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Do you already have the Max and Mei series? We have set 1 that we got in HK. It comes with a CD too. They are available at Amazon. Or were at some point. And we just started this with dd, http://www.activechinese.com . She loves to play the games. We've just signed up for the 30-day free trial at this point. But she loves it! (she's 6 and in her 2nd year of Mandarin) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Governess Posted November 25, 2009 Author Share Posted November 25, 2009 Do you already have the Max and Mei series? We have set 1 that we got in HK. It comes with a CD too. They are available at Amazon. Or were at some point. And we just started this with dd, www.activechinese.com . She loves to play the games. We've just signed up for the 30-day free trial at this point. But she loves it! (she's 6 and in her 2nd year of Mandarin) Oh, thanks! Both of these look great! We are finishing up unit 7 out of 36 units in our Better Chinese curriculum, I am starting to get more serious about being more consistent with her lessons. I am guessing that it will keep us busy for another year and a half. But I've bookmarked the Active Chinese site as well, we may use it before moving up to the next Better Chinese level. It looks great and now I am interested in the adult version for myself! :D It seems that most of these curricula are meant to last a year or two but then there is nothing suitable to use in between while you are waiting for your children to grow into the next age bracket. So I am thinking that using multiple programs and supplementing with a lot of readers, songs, etc. is the way to go. I've bookmarked the Max and Mei books as well, it looks like they are simplified (we are learning traditional characters) but I think it is good to have exposure to both. And I love that it comes with a CD! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom2hunangirls Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I wish I knew where dd was in her studies! She and her dad take a class at a local Chinese church. 2 hours, once a week. And her text book is alllll Chinese, so I have no clue. I really liked the looks of Better Chinese, I think it was a post of yours a while back that had me looking into it. But similar to your situation, we couldn't figure out where to put her in relation to her other class so we left well-enough alone. I really wanted to learn with them, but as a curriculum junkie, I couldn't study a language and everything else. I admire you for giving it a go yourself. Since you have Better Chinese, where would you guess my daughter would be in the program? just as a jumping off point for us to look at it again. She knows about 65 characters/words and can speak a basic introduction paragraph...and one poem. She knows several songs but only from wrote. Have you looked at Chinasprout.com and cultureforkids.com? they have a lot of bilingual books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Governess Posted November 26, 2009 Author Share Posted November 26, 2009 I wish I knew where dd was in her studies! She and her dad take a class at a local Chinese church. 2 hours, once a week. And her text book is alllll Chinese, so I have no clue.I really liked the looks of Better Chinese, I think it was a post of yours a while back that had me looking into it. But similar to your situation, we couldn't figure out where to put her in relation to her other class so we left well-enough alone. I really wanted to learn with them, but as a curriculum junkie, I couldn't study a language and everything else. I admire you for giving it a go yourself. Since you have Better Chinese, where would you guess my daughter would be in the program? just as a jumping off point for us to look at it again. She knows about 65 characters/words and can speak a basic introduction paragraph...and one poem. She knows several songs but only from wrote. Have you looked at Chinasprout.com and cultureforkids.com? they have a lot of bilingual books. The Better Chinese program I am using is My First Chinese Words. It is 36 units, each unit teaches about 10 vocabulary words, one or two sentences, a song, sometimes a poem, and then there is a book to read. After 7 units we have learned about 80 vocab words (and she can read all of these in traditional characters), 10+ sentences, 7 songs, a few poems, and we can read 7 of our readers. We have learned colors, numbers, animals, school supplies, family members, nationalities, and countries so far. I think that you could totally use this program to supplement what she is learning at school. She would probably recognize some of the characters and some of them will be new. Or she might know the vocabulary but will learn how to use it in a new sentence. The program is very teacher intensive though, you really couldn't use it unless you were learning along with her. I've taken an intro to Mandarin class and that has helped me a bit with pronunciation. I have to use an online Chinese dictionary a lot to really understand how they are teaching things. But I like the fact that we are pushing through it together and after 6 months I feel like I really have the hang of it now! I love Chinasprout but haven't been to the other website, I'll have to check it out! Now that dd's vocabulary is growing I think I'll start investing in more Chinese readers/bilingual books. Do you have any? What are your favorites so far? Thanks for sharing your resources! :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Governess Posted December 3, 2009 Author Share Posted December 3, 2009 I received the first set of readers in the mail yesterday. They *do* use simplified characters, not traditional. They are very basic, with only one word (1-2 characters) per page in the first set. They are not bilingual, in that only the characters are given on each page without the English or pinyin. Just a big photo with the characters in small print at the bottom. They are about 12 pages long. In the back of the book there is a glossary that shows all of the characters as well as the pinyin and English translations. For the price of $11 for 6 books I guess it's not too bad. Some of the pictures look like they came out of someone's personal collection. :D But overall, I think they serve their purpose. I'll see what my dd5 thinks. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makita Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 I wasn't previously familiar with Active Chinese! It's great! I wish they had a CD version to purchase... I'm a little leary about the subscription rate. Perhaps they have a monthly rate... ? I have created a list of resources at Squidoo... Fun With Mandarin. Please let me know if there is anything else I should add. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sudgrimul Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 :glare:I too was scandalized when I picked up the New Practical Chinese Readers, especially as it was Palanka who first introduced Gubo to Ding Yun. We can only hope the mystery is resolved in NPCR 6 to be published next year. The other great mystery from the reader series, which country the first book was set in, has at last been cleared up. The strangly unidentifiable country with the suspiciously clean living students and peasants is in fact Canada! (At least that's what I infer from Ding Libao being Canadian) Are Palanka and Gubo supposed to be Sinofications of Western names, I've spent many an hour scratching my head over this? As for comparison, the new series improves on the old one in almost every respect. Some people on the site have complained that the NPRC go downhill with every level, but I've been using them and are quite happy. The old ones are still worth picking up second hand as the material in both is completely different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bug's Mom Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 Here is a link to the first set. They are around $12 per set of six 12-13 page books, and there are quite a few levels. Thanks for the tip. We just got ours today and had fun reading them. Just what we needed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweetbabe Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 What do you recommend(beside the readers) if we just started out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bug's Mom Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 What do you recommend(beside the readers) if we just started out? We're very happy with Better Chinese. We're using the My First Chinese Reader level. If my dd (7 1/2) was much younger, or if we didn't have access to native speakers, I would start with My First Chinese Words. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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