Poorly conceived, essentially useless

The audiobook is just a stream of vocabulary in a completely incoherent order without any context, meaning the translation is often misleading. For example the word “nose” is introduced about 1 hour in, and the Mandarin translation they give means the front of an aeroplane. Similarly, the translation they give for “blade” means helicopter rotor blade. Hugely misleading for a learner and also useless vocabulary for an intermediate student - far from “essential”. In fact, few native speakers would know what you meant if you used these words out of context.

Also, the Chinese reader speaks very unclearly with what sounds like a regional accent. For example, he doesn’t pronounce the “g” sound in “cheng”. Considering “chen” and “cheng” are completely different words, it’s very unhelpful for non-native speakers.

Finally, the order or the words is bizarre. For example, the expression “last month” and “last year” are used before they teach you the words for “month” and “year”. Worse, the word for “helicopter rotor” is used before counting from 1 to 10.

I don’t see how this is useable by anyone and I don’t understand why so little thought has been put into it.

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3 people found this helpful

Do not buy

Just a few minutes I to the audio book and it’s the most uninteresting Chinese audio book so far. I senseless list of unrelated items which are not explained and the Chinese speaker isn’t clear. I wish I had red the reviews before I bought this. There is not much to learn here, and for a beginner this is not only a waste of time but it’ll make you not want to learn Chinese.

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1 person found this helpful

The worst audiobook in my life!

It’s just so primitive: the author of this book just bombards you with hundreds of words, some of them pretty rear; I would never use them… no example phrases, just words; no attention to tones. Given the amount of FREE material on Chinese of much better quality (YouTube, Podcasts) - I struggle to understand how someone dares to charge money for this primitive material…. Audible, do you have Product Managers in your company at all? They schools select books for publishing more diligently

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