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Type of bind: CD-ROM
Brand: Transparent Language
EAN num: 0744573239053
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Transparent Language
Manufacturer: Transparent Language
Publishing house: Transparent Language
Release Date: March 29, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 3585
Studio: Transparent Language
Features:- Fully animated stroke-by-stroke writing of the 600 most-common simplified Chinese characters.
- More than 800 phrases and 1,200 sentences chosen for their high frequency in everyday speech. See these words and phrases over and over in sentences, in dialogs, and in video clips.
- Over 2,500 audio clips of words, phrases, and sentences all spoken by native speakers.
- Extensive interactive drills to help you retain what you have learned.
- Humorous dialogs to further promote retention of key phrases and concepts. Video clips of impromptu interviews with real people speaking Chinese in real-life situations.
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Rated by buyers -
Power Chinese is good, but you need to know that with it you will not be able to create your own original sentence in Mandarin. For this reason I suggest you take Amazon's recommendation of 'Better Together' and order this along with Behind the Wheel Chinese (Mandarin), Level 1: Learn to Speak Mandarin Chinese Quickly and Easily! (8 One Hour CDs). If you can only order one at a time then begin with Behind the Wheel Chinese (Mandarin), Level 1: Learn to Speak Mandarin Chinese Quickly and Easily! (8 One Hour CDs) and then move on to Power Chinese.
Rated by buyers 
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Power Chinese is relatively inexpensive introduction to the chinese language.If you devote enough time to study you will learn the same language skills that more expensive DVDs may teach you.
Rated by buyers -
First off, with respect to the compatibility issues, a quick stop at www.transparent.com shows that the program must run at 1024x768 or at 800x600. This is unfortunate, and it is annoying to have to change my monitor's resolution, but it seems a small price for an interesting and useful program.
Pimsleur is a great tool for learning the spoken language and the pronunciation. Where it falls down is the lack of additional resources if you're not sure what you're hearing. This program provides those resources in spades. You get to see the actual Chinese characters, as well as their pinyin equivalents. This makes it much easier to validate your ears. The ability to see the stroke order for characters adds to the value of the program.
The examples and exercises are excellent. The discusion of the progression of the Chinese characters for king, jade, and country (whether true or not) truly helps to "cement" those characters in your mind. The exercise where you see the character, play its sound, then position it under the correct table heading--depending on which of the four tones you hear--is extremely valuable. The same can be said for the exercises in which you must select which consonant you are hearing. This ear training, combined with the visual link to the characters and the pinyin, adds a great deal of clarity to the learning process.
Since I'm already using the Pimsleur CD's, I cannot say whether or not Power Chinese is adequate to stand on its own as a Chinese language learning tool. I can definitely say that it augments Pimsleur quite nicely.
Rated by buyers 
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If you're will to put in the time and effort to learn a completely new and unique language, then this software can help a lot. After only getting through the very first 6 screens of lessons, I learned simple words which I actually used when visiting Shanghai, and I impressed those I spoke them to - and I only knew a few words.
The structure of this program seems to be well thought out and it teachs words and phrases, as well as providing nice facts about the language and culture of China. This software does a great job for the price.
If you can borrow this from a library which might hold this type of software, try it out before buying, but I'd recommend it as long as you seriously want to put the time and effort to learn. As other reviews noted, no one method works the best for all people though.
Rated by buyers -
I love this program. It's visually entertaining, and the text is entertaining, too. The author has a sense of humor. You click on a shivery little button (the buttons jiggle until you click on them), and read some humorously phrased piece of information. Each page is like an adventure game where you click on things and learn some surprising new fact. Plus the material is very clearly and logically presented - in addition to being entertaining.
I know that some people think that you should just jump into speaking without understanding anything, but I have an analytical turn of mind, and I like understanding stuff. That said, I don't want to be overwhelmed and bored with technical grammatical terminology. This program balances explanation and practice perfectly. For example, in an exercise to learn Chinese sentence structure, you rearrange pictures (e.g. of a man, and eye to represent "see") in the order a Chinese would say it.
I could go on and on about how much I like this program, but I think you get the idea. I went to the Transparent Web site to see what else they have, and ended up downloading the free version - and then buying the enhanced version - of "Before You Know It - Chinese". It's an excellent electronic flashcard program with a clever design that allows you to add modules.
Power Chinese is elegant, well-done software - a great self-teaching tool to learn Chinese. People always talk about Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone... They should be talking about Power Chinese!!
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