Learn Chinese with Billy and Benboo, Beg. Level 1 Vol. 1

Director: Ana Leung
Studio: Language Tree
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
Research shows that children who learn foreign languages at an early age receive life-long benefits:

- Near-native fluency
- Better overall performance in school
- Greater career possibilities

Introduce your child to one of the most useful languages of the future - Mandarin Chinese. Learn Chinese with Billy and Benboo Vol. 1 teaches Mandarin Chinese to children in a fun and accessible manner. Filled with colorful images and modern sing-along songs, this video is sure to engage your child from start to finish. Billy and his cute Shih Tzu dog, Benboo will teach children (and parents) useful phrases and vocabulary words appropriate for everyday situations: meeting and greeting, bathing, eating, and much more. To help develop correct pronunciation, this video also explains pinyin tones in a truly unique and enjoyable way.

* Perfect for beginner students with no previous exposure to Mandarin Chinese.

* Narrated in English with dialogue spoken by native speakers from Mainland China. * Co-developed by a Stanford University Cognitive Scientist and an instructor of Chinese at UC Berkeley.

* Includes six complete lessons with phrase/vocabulary review and songs to reinforce the lessons.

Description

Research shows that children who learn foreign languages at an early age receive life-long benefits:

- Near-native fluency
- Better overall performance in school
- Greater career possibilities

* Perfect for beginner students with no previous exposure to Mandarin Chinese.

* Narrated in English with dialogue spoken by native speakers from Mainland China. * Co-developed by a Stanford University Cognitive Scientist and an instructor of Chinese at UC Berkeley.

* Includes six complete lessons with phrase/vocabulary review and songs to reinforce the lessons.

* Accompanied with a support booklet in English, Chinese, and pinyin so parents can follow along and get involved in the teaching process

Customer Reviews:

Good for a beginner.......2005-07-13

I have a pen pal in China named Lin. We exchange a lot of email. Lin is coming to the U.S. with her family and we plan on meeting. I wanted to learn some basic phrases for when we get together. I'm having a lot of fun with the video and I'm excited to use what I've learned with her once we meet. I found the Language Tree video easy to follow.

Easy to Follow Chinese Learning .......2005-07-05

Chinese is undoubtedly a useful language for children to learn (probably the most useful in the coming years). However, it is also difficult to learn because of the different tones for words - the same syllable pronounced with a different tone would have a different meaning. Learn Chinese with Billy and Benboo tackles this difficult topic in a very creative and easy-to-follow manner using simple sounds that are already familiar to children. Overall, I found the DVD made learning Chinese accessible to non-native families. Both my adopted Chinese daughters and I were able to follow the simple words and phrases quite easily.

Poor pedagogy, worse animation .......2005-06-21

The video has a two major defects:
1. Bad pedagogy--the new chinese words are presented to children in sentences, instead of word-by-word or in phrases. So a child hears long strings of sound (which I guess they are just supposed to memorize!) with few clues about what each word means--or even where one word ends and another begins.
2. Poor animation (animation, of course, is always less effective than seeing a native speaker's mouth as you hear them pronounce--but the cartoons could have been used to capture children's attention: they don't.).
We purchased this video at the same time as the first Learn Chinese with Jade! video and found that to be an excellent introduction.

Olympics 2008.......2005-03-28

Our family is planning a trip to China to attend the olympics in 2008 so it is my goal to learn mandarin before our trip. Learn Chinese with Billy and Benboo has really helped me get started on learning mandarin I would recommend this learning tool to everyone!!!!!

Really Cool.......2005-03-25

I've been studing China for a school project so I decided to try and learn the language. This video makes learning really fun, the songs I love to play over and over. They have a great beat and stick with you. I'm now able to say several phrases and plan to use them in my oral presentation to the class.

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