Nice idea...Shame about the music!
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This conversation pack is aimed at the complete beginner and, from that perspective, I think it is successful, introducing some of the most fundamental vocabulary and basic grammar structures of Mandarin Chinese. Each dialogue builds on the one before, making the progression logical and manageable. It's nice to have a title purely devoted to the spoken word, which with many book-and-tape sets tends to get neglected. Most would agree that spoken ability is the real test of such sets, so although I would not consider this title a "stand alone" course, it is a very useful compliment to book/tape titles. I have been using it in combination with Kan Qian's "Colloquial Chinese", which is also very good. The only real downside to "Mandarin Chinese Conversation" is the incredibly irritating - and lengthy - musical interludes between dialogues (of the "Mystic East" type), and the "baby talk" of the narrator, which is somewhat grating, since most people attempting to learn Mandarin are probably not in primary school.
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