Great vocabulary but very disorganized, April 1, 2006
　

I recently bought the BHTW Chinese and honestly, I was disappointed. Let me say that I am a translator/intrepreter for some Western languages, teach languages, including at an Ivy League university - so language-learning is an important part of my life.
Before I start with the specific comments, I just want to say a few words about all-audio courses in general. They are NOT for everyone. People learn in different ways and to learn a language, you generally have to inundate yourself in all ways, through visual AND audio stimuli. If you are very busy and spend a lot of time commuting, this obviously has value but I question how much you are actually retaining and more importantly able to reproduce in a different situation when you just listen. It can take longer when just having the audio stimulus. One review wrote a snide comment about how reading is bad when you drive. Um, first, they say right on the cover it can also be for home use, say on the computer while you are working, laying in bed etc. When I teach my language classes, I tell the students the audio materials are very important but ALWAYS review the text first before just listening. If this is such a nutty idea, why does Language Dimensions offer a script for some of its Spanish courses? Obviously, some people would like this.

The good points: This is the opposite of Pimsleur were they just take 4-5 dialogues and repeat everything a million times, exposing you to very little vocabulary and very few situations. Here you get lots of good vocabulary. Also, they start out CD 1 just the right way, you start building simple sentences - you learn I, you - then some verbs work, eat etc. Then you make sentences "I want to eat", "I have to go" etc. Very good.

The bad points: 1) After CD 1, any real efforts to build sentences in a systematic way stop. Yes, there are some attempts to have structure - changing to different pronouns, negative verbs etc. but these instances often have no rhyme or reason. We often get lists and lists of expressions, with only the occasional question by the English native, "How do you say that?", "Wonderful", "Let's have some fun.." He will ask for the pronunciation of some word he finds interesting but ignore structures etc. which are much more complicated
2) Generally, the focus of the course is focusing on the ENGLISH and translating it to Chinese. Thus, you will get a whole series of things in English that sound alike, "I'm going to".... etc. but in Chinese the structures can be very different, "Wo qu...", other times "Wo dasuan" (I'm planning to), I give to/he gives to, sometimes "wei ta" sometimes "gei ta" - yet no explanation is ever given on why these things are different. You have the male and female speaker translating "I'm afraid" in 2 different ways, no explanation. This becomes a HUGE problem if you want to suddenly apply the Chinese vocabulary. One English sentence can be translated many ways, and it is, and no explanation is given why. It would be better to have a bit less vocabular and a but more instruction on how to use structure. This happens sometimes in the series but there is no rhyme or reason.
3) Not only do they make it oriented to the English words instead of the Chinese words, I am 99% sure that they used their original Spanish course as a basis and just translated everything into Chinese, based on the grammar objectives of the Spanish course. For example, there is a whole section on "indirect object pronouns" - an important issue in Spanish but in Chinese, the output can be very different, involving different ways for saying "to" - wei/gei, different verbs etc. Another section has "time and weather" - Why would they keep putting this together in one phrase in Chinese, I wondered. But in Spanish, the same word, tiempo does double duty. So in Chinese we get "tianqi haishi shijian" or "tianqi huo shijian" (neglecting to mention the important difference between "haishi" and "huo". When you look at it from this perspective, you see how the objectives for translating into Spanish work, but they don't for Chinese. For example, a lot of time is spent negating present tense verbs. In Chinese, for most present tense situations, you just use "bu" in front of the verb, that's it. But so much time is spent on this. Or changing from person to person - the speaker keeps stressing he wants this "formal" - well, if you are talking about tu/usted in Spanish, this is an issue. In Chinese, it's just ni versus nin, the verb form itself never changes for person. Sometimes, they are even sloppy enough to say formal and the Chinese speaker still uses "ni" instead of "nin"!
At another point, the speaker tries to make the Chinese shi/zai constructions into something like Spanish ser/estar. There are similarities but the attempts of the English native to do this is not productive and misleading.
So much time is wasted on this stuff while other stuff, like say particles zhe, guo etc. are ignored. Word order issues in Chinese are ignored. The point is, if you try to reproduce these structures on your own, you will have a lot of problems unless you do it exactly as was said.
4) Part of the problems lies in the fact that, while there is a ton of useful vocabulary, there are many, many things which you are unlikely to say - "Every child is a gift from God", "I never ate there, not even once" - things that are nice to know but it is at the expense of reinforcing sentences that are more standard. Vocab is not reviewed in a consistent way. They will throw in a word like "cai", guess, but never really do anything with it. The stories are just heaped on without any real hope of actively reproducing the vocab - like so-and-so "speaks with a thick accent" - just thrown in. I'd say they do nothing with 50% of the vocab or mention something only once.
5) Fully devoid of any cultural context outside of the language commentary. They mentioned chop sticks once. Beyond that, this could be the Arabic course or French course. No mention of famous sites in China. In their numerous examples, they never ONCE have a Chinese name! Always Bob, Maria etc., never Miss Li or Mr. Wang. So the course is oriented to the English key words and seems also to be based on the original Spanish AND it lacks any real cultural context for China.
6) The English-speaker. His role in this is very strange. As stated above, he will often go for pages reading phrases. Then through in a "wonderful". He will ask about an occasional word or pronunciation but it is worse when he makes his observations about grammar. Many things are just wrong or absurd. He asks the speaker if there is a way to say "I give to him" (Um, what language in the world doesn't have a way to say that?). At one point, he starts referring to the PAST TENSE in Chinese with LE. This is deceptive and incorrect. LE can happen in the present tense too, Wo bing le - but they translate this as "I'm sick", no explanation. At one point, he wants to review the subject pronouns, after 15 minutes of sentences using the subject pronouns. In CD 7, he is surprised to learn that there are no specific object pronouns in Chinese - they are the same as the subject ones - um, wouldn't it be a good idea to talk about that in CD 1? At another point, he says, "Chinese does not distinguish plural" um no, that is not accurate either. There are many cases when you can use "penyoumen" (friends) etc. No one says the person has to be a walking linguistics professor but what he says should be accurate. And, as I said above, he says many structures which sound alike in English but product different structures in Chinese, so this does not help you to reproduce the structures.
7) Attempts are made to address certain subjects, clothes, ordering food etc. Yet there is often no real attempt to speak about a certain topic. You'll get 5-6 sentences on a restaurant and then something completely different. It would be better if they could have more of a topic focus.

In summary: Yes, it has value. If you can learn the many phrases, you can say some very intesting things in Chinese. The problem arises, however, if you try to USE the structures beyond CD 1. You are given very little guidance for a whole mass of vocabulary, English structures that translate into many Chinese structures, vocabulary that many not be suitable for everyday situations. Buy it for the car, but something else for more comprehensive study at home.

Great Course - Multi-Track - 2 Native Speakers, March 24, 2006
　

I tried Pimsleur's Chinese (Mandarin) (Instant Conversation) and returned it because it didn't have multi-tracks, they presented too little vocabulary and the the course was 'rigid'.
I prefer the method in Behind the Wheel Chinese because there are multi-tracks
(very important for in-car language learning), a good memory technique and great original sentence formation exercises that get you speaking Mandarin from the get-go.

Out of the Box Creativity - Very Effective, March 11, 2006
　

As a foreign language professor, I must say that I have experienced my fair share of learning technologies.
I am originally from France and I speak several languages fluently. I have tried everything from the direct method to ALM including TPR (Total Physical Response).
Until recently, Mandarin Chinese was not one of the language I spoke.
Now, in grand part thanks to Behind the Wheel Chinese, I do speak a good deal of conversational Mandarin.
The method is highly effective I believe because it is structure to be simple and yet compounding at the same time.
By 'compounding'' I mean that you can use variations of the sentence structure forms that you learn in different way and thus magnify your communication without having to learn a lot of vocabulary.
This means that even a small fund of vocabulary, say 100 words can give you the ability to express yourself quite effective in a number of situations and even create your own communication quite easily.
I give this wonderful method and course 5 stars. And I am hard to please, believe me.

Fabulous Idea and Wonderfully Implemented, March 1, 2006
　

I actually bought and used a Pimsleur Chinese course and returned it in favor of Behind the Wheel Chinese. And I am so glad I did.
My reasons for loving this course are obvious.
First of all let me say that anyone that says this course doesn't have structure should have his or her head examined.
The structure of this course, beginning with how easily any novice learner can begin creating his/her own sentences is nothing short of amazing.
The idea behind the course is as obvious as it is brilliant.
Make it simple and make it fast. Provide a template from which to create original communication.
The course comes with multi-track CDs which Pimsleur didn't have. This added a lot of needed flexibility to my learning experience.
I agree with the reviewer that stated she loves Mark's down to business interview style.
It cuts through the difficulties of the Chinese language like a hot knife through butter;
totally demystifying what many consider to be one of the most difficult languages on the planet.
Some of the reviews I have read against this product make it obvious that they haven't even used the course, and worse .....
They want to learn to write and read Mandarin while driving their cars.
I hope I never get caught in traffic with them.

Great idea, but not well implemented, February 25, 2006
　

I've been listening to the CDs to and from work over the past three weeks. I'm far from done with them but already have some serious concerns that other purchasers should be aware of.

The basic idea is a fine one ... an English speaker says a word or phrase, and a native Mandarin (Chinese) speaker repeats the word or phrase in Chinese. From individual words and phrases you learn to buildn sentences. The implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

The CD producers seemed to forget some important points. Because you're listening in your car, there is a decent amount of ambient noise. Many people will need to really crank up the sound in order to catch subtle differences in sound and pronounciations. Second, because there are no written materials, there is nothing to use to help you when a word sound is difficult to hear, and the narrators do not clarify what letter sound they are using. Many sounds are very close: B and V and P can also sound alike; so can T and the hard G sound. There are others. But in only one case does the English speaker say "Is that a B, a V, or a P?" In others, I've resorted to finding an on-line English/Chinese dictionary so I could type in the English word and find the Pinyin (English character version) word. Sometimes the Mandarin speaker's rendering of the word sounds different in the first repetition from the second. This makes learning difficult -- you're wondering "Do I say 'kong tzua' or 'tong tzua' or 'gong tzua'?" No way to know without help outside the CD.

Another criticism I have is that the CD is sloppily edited. Again ... all you have to use is a CD. No book, no booklet, nothing in writing to help you. That means the CD better be perfect, and it's far from it. For instance, on CD 2, there is a long series attempting to teach the listener the phrases "I want", "I like", "I can", and "I have to." From time to time, the editing is incorrect, so after having heard that one phrase means "I like", the native speaker is played saying the phrase that we just learned means "I want." The first time this happens it's very confusing. It takes a while to keep listening, replaying, and finally to realize that someone misedited the section. That's frustrating.

Another criticism is that, as the English narrator says, "Repetition is the mother of skills." But there can be very long gaps between the appearance of a word and its use in a sentence. In CD 1, for instance, there is a long list of nouns like book, key, street, house, etc. Some of those words have yet to be used by the middle of CD 3, and I'm sure they'll be forgotten by then. And at the end of each CD, there is a longer segment where we're told we're going to "tell a story" - essentially, have a series of related sentences that give information. But instead of building on what was already taught, the story often introduces new words, verb forms, and phrases, which are now in the middle of much longer sentences, making it difficult with only 2 repetiitions to hear and remember them.

I'm using this series to supplement the Rosetta Stone CD program I have. I also bought McNaughton's Chinese Characters book. Both of those are much higher quality in terms of the quality of the instruction they offer and their organization. "Behind the Wheel Chinese" will give you a few new phrases, and if it's your only way to learn Chinese in a busy schedule, it may be helpful, but it's a flawed product that could have been much better.

Awesome - , February 24, 2006
　

I love the way Mike Frobose lays out the drills - it really cuts to the chase and gets you speaking the language. I would highly recommned this CD pack to anyone that has a commute to work, or that can download it into their MP3 player and listen to it during a workout or on a plane trip.
You might be surprised when you get the product - it practically looks homemade, but it's definitely the best language teaching CD's out there that I've found.