Best Chinese Language Instruction
Cheng & Tsui s best-loved Chinese textbook series is new, revised, and better than ever! The third edition of this time-tested series has been fully updated to meet the needs of today s students with new communicative and interactive exercises, a full-color design, up-to-date vocabulary, enhanced cultural coverage, a diverse cast of characters, and a realistic storyline linking all the dialogues and readings. What's new in the 3rd Edition? We recommend it without hesitation as an invaluable core component of a Chinese language program at both the high school and college levels.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A very useful and still fundamental system to learn Chinese."
"Outstanding quality, superior delivery, and splendid packaging!"
"This textbook is easy to understand for someone without a background in Chinese."
"Useful to help you learn, read, and write Chinese."
"Great product!"
"The textbook was a great buy, and there are many matching videos on YouTube that help supplement the text."
"Couldn't find any fault with mine,It is easy to understand and it explains it well."
Cheng & Tsui s best-loved Chinese textbook series is new, revised, and better than ever!
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The books provide a clear, coherent and well-written guide to learning Chinese reading, writing, speaking and cultural education. Travel words, food, finding an apartment, seeing tourist sites, etc."
"My only complaint is that in the 5 chapters I've covered, I feel like the majority of the grammar was just review (though people who didn't use the first two books in the series might beg to differ)."
"Overall, a great book to learn your second year Chinese!"
"It can be adapted to a variety of age groups, but it assumes foundation in characters and must be supported by textbooks that teach characters specifically."
"However, some hanyu pinyin below the characters in the grammar examples wouldn't hurt -- would make learning so much easier."
"It very much resembles Friends the way that the characters interact with one another, fall in love, go to school, express struggles, etc. The accompanying videos were the icing on the cake, as (very clearly) white actors were used with terrible dubs to tell the thrilling storyline of how Gao Wenzhong tries to intervene in the aforementioned love story. All joking aside, the approach this series takes to teaching language (much less a language which is often deemed "too difficult" for native English speakers) is simple and natural and caters well to the cultural environments that college age students encounter."
"This series was written for college students but it is also good for high school students as well."
"The quality of the material in the book is pretty good, but because it's a college textbook they rip you off with the price."
Revised and new exercises reflect the language used in real life and build skills students need to communicate in today's rapidly changing world.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A very useful and still fundamental system to learn Chinese."
"Outstanding quality, superior delivery, and splendid packaging!"
"This textbook is easy to understand for someone without a background in Chinese."
"Useful to help you learn, read, and write Chinese."
"Great product!"
"The textbook was a great buy, and there are many matching videos on YouTube that help supplement the text."
"Couldn't find any fault with mine,It is easy to understand and it explains it well."
Best Japanese Language Instruction
Second edition of the most highly regarded teaching text book on the Japanese language, covering speaking, listening, reading, and writing to cultivate overall language ability.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I moved to Japan about 10 months ago and I needed a textbook to learn the language. That's true of any textbook, but with Genki it's even more so because the authors don't hold your hand and the book is written with the assumption that you are serious about learning Japanese. There is much to be gleaned from both, though the "useful expressions" sections are usually outstanding and provide supplementary words and sentences on a variety of common topics, such as counting, classroom vocabulary, train station expressions and doctor office visits. Then there are a few pages of practice, in which you will write the kanji you learned alone and in compounds, read various letters or stories and answer questions. 4) Meet with my Japanese teacher and do the conversation exercises (took 2-4 hours of class time per lesson). I feel quite comfortable in stores, restaurants, train stations, post offices, and the like. I can talk, to a limited extent, about the weather, my childhood, my job, my future plans, my schedule for tomorrow, and other common topics. Anyone serious about studying Japanese will get a lot out of this book, provided he or she is willing to put in the necessary work!"
"Don't stress too much though because there are plenty of sites to practice, such as lang-8, a free site where you help Japanese people learn English and they help you with Japanese in terms of writing, reading and speaking. This Second Edition comes with a CD, updated lessons, simpler ways of explaining grammar, and much more. If your'e grasp on English grammar is poor, well you might need to dedicate more hours into grammar, because it is DIFFICULT if you don't know what certain things are."
"For example "せんせい” is written out as "sensee" rather than "sensei" which is the actual representation of the characters. I feel like writing it like that will make it harder to read hiragana later on because they get used to reading different characters as a different Romanized English counterpart."
"Very good if you want to learn Japanese on your own."
Best Spanish Language Instruction
Grammatical rules and concepts are clearly explained in order of importance, and more than 300 verbs and key terms are introduced on the basis of frequency. Easy Spanish Step-by-Step is based on the idea that the quickest route to learning Spanish is through a solid grounding in grammar basics. Guaranteed to get you quickly up and running with the knowledge and skills you need to communicate in Spanish with confidence, Easy Spanish Step-by-Step features:
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It divides the task into logical, sequential steps that build upon each other, in the order you would learn them if it was your first language, saving verb tenses for later. The reading exercises at the end of each chapter are a useful and motivating tool, but ideally they would have reinforced vocabulary already learned, rather than requiring footnotes!"
"I'm really happy with the layout of this book, and how easy it is to teach from."
"This us a wonderful book."
"Time is spent desperately scanning vocabulary lists, flipping back and forth between pages trying to find one word until you realize you need to move forward with your life and cut to the answer section, which can remove a sense of reward for the reader."
"We got this book for a series of Spanish classes offered by our local adult school."
"I purchased this workbook style book for my daughter so she could stay connected to the spanish she understands and can speak.."
"It is what it says - easy to learn and easy to work and learn with."
"When I decided to refresh my basic Español I tore through book reviews on Amazon and iTunes app reviews and bought/tried a good two dozen apps and books total because format and style can turn any experience either into an enemy or a best friend - so explore and see what fits you best."
Best French Language Instruction
This course includes Lessons 1-16 from the French Level 1 program - 8 hours of audio-only effective language learning with real-life spoken practice sessions. The French Language French is spoken by 55 million speakers in France, 3 million in Belgium, 1.5 million in Switzerland, 6.5 million in Canada, and 5 million in former French and Belgian colonies. Dr. Paul Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and testing and was one of the world’s leading experts in applied linguistics.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This first 16 lesson set is not really a good investment, because you really want to develop any proficiency in French, you need to buy the entire 30 lesson level on set."
"The lessons progress in complexity, but they also teach complete sentences in a way that makes me think of what I've already learned."
"A great CD to have, I aways put it on in my car in order to practice my french."
"They always say, if you are going to visit Paris, you should try to learn a little French. I took a few years of French a looong time ago, and for me this is the perfect program. (All those guttural Rs, and they do not all sound the same....) After going through the 16 lessons on this set, I am really delighted with what I have learned and retained. I feel like I have enough French to get along for a relatively brief visit, and to impress my traveling companions who, I am confident, will not have nearly as much French in their brains as I will."
"I can't wait to get the next edition."
"I learned so much the French people thought I spoke French but then I couldn't understand what they said back because I didn't learn what they said."
"The presenter is obviously American (and very good at explaining each new lesson), but the "teachers" are native French speakers, which I think is very important."
"No -after downloading can't find the right disc number in sequence .It is cheap and appears cheep."
Best German Language Instruction
German and English are closely related--you already know viele Phrasen! Building on the German language's close relation to English, this all-new edition covers everything from basic introductions to verb conversions. Whether you want to sample das stoutest Lager or converse with your grandparents in their native tongue, you'll soon discover just how easy it is to learn German! Rules of spelling and punctuation Appropriate language for correspondence in German, including e-mail Updated exercises. He is the author of several German, Russian, and ESL textbooks and wrote the first edition of The Everything Learning German Book and The Everything German Phrase Book.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"- The exercises are rather limited, I don't believe beginners will be able to properly learn and understand the cases with such a limited set of exercises about the subject. - It often feels like the vocabulary is just thrown in there, because they had to put in some words here in there, if you're looking to learn a lot of words, this probably isn't the right book for you. All in all it is a good read, but you shouldn't use this book only to study German, consider it as an introduction or a book to freshen up old skills and improve your German by actually getting books with grammar/vocabulary drills."
"Teaching German in my home school this year and this book has been the basis for our lessons."
"Trying to brush up on my Deutsch."
"Time to delve into learning German again."
"I thought that this book might be too elementary for me becaue I have been self-studying German for the last several years."
"Great And besure delivery!Thanks Amazon."
"The first few chapters are all about the fundamentals of language, comparisons of German to English, etc."
"I speak, read and understand German very well as both the progeny of immigrants and through collegiate studies."
Best Italian Language Instruction
It contains content from all For Dummies Italian language instruction titles, including Italian For Dummies, Intermediate Italian For Dummies, Italian Verbs For Dummies, Italian Phrases For Dummies, Italian Grammar For Dummies, and Italian For Dummies Audio Set. Italian For Dummies Intermediate Italian For Dummies Italian Grammar For Dummies Italian Verbs For Dummies Italian Phrases For Dummies Italian For Dummies Audio Set. Italian All-in-One For Dummies brings together content from the Italian Dummies library into one handy guide that covers all the bases of the Italian language.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"So far, so good."
"It is pretty well done."
"Excellent ( but, then I find the Dummies books quite informative.)."
"The grammar explanations are easy to understand, but I was hoping for more exercises."
"Helpful in trying to learn Italian with the help of duolingo."
"Good base book for learning Italian."