Good for everyday speaking, October 7, 2002
　

While I agree with the other reviews of the book that this is a very accessible text for learning to speak Chinese, I feel I must mention that it doesn't provide most of the Chinese characters for the words, instead only writing them in pinyin. This is adequate for those who are learning to speak Chinese and want to gain fluency in everyday speaking and grammar use, but I did find it frustrating that I had to look elsewhere for the characters. Additionally, I do feel that it would be easier to learn some vocabulary with the Chinese characters - for example the word for flowers, huar, is given, and the word for garden, huaryuan. Are they related? Is it the same root word? Without the character, there is no way to know.

That criticism aside, I do feel that Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day has been very helpful in learning to speak Chinese. It provides a great deal of everyday vocabulary from around the town and house, and presents it in a fun format. It comes complete with stickers to label everyday objects in your house, for example, which act as a constant reminder as to the Chinese words.

I definately recommend this book, with the addition of a good dictionary for the student interested in learning Chinese characters.

EXCELLENT TOOL FOR BEGINNER STUDENT, December 6, 2005
　

I have to start this review saying that i thought more than 4 times before buy this book.
For me the title was not to atractive (not too serious for a formal chinese student). But i have to say that since i received this book (with other three books to learn chinese), it got my atention.

This book has colorfull pages, beautiful illustrations, lot of useful vocabulary, and an interested way to introduce new chinese word in every text, even in english text.

Teachs you from you own language, make reference between english grammar and chinese grammar.

This book it's not ambitious, doesnt include chinese caracthers, it's focus on speak, and not to read.

With this book you will learn (at least) to say in chinese:
Where is the table? (nar you ....)
This is the chicken (zhe shi yi ge ji).
I want tea, (wo yao cha).
1,2,3,4,5... 1359...(yi, er, san, si, etc)
Red, blue, gray (hongse, lanse, etc)...
This is, that is (zhe shi, na shi).
Today is monday, see you tomorrow (jintian shi xingqi yi, mingtian jian).

Also include stickers with objects in chinese to stick to your table, clock, window, sofa, cat, etc,
At the end you will have a small vocabulary, but believe me, the way will be really funny.

The only lack of this book it's that doesn't include a CD, it's really important to listen the pronunciation, especially if it's purpose of the book.

It's a good tool for beginners, and if you want to start by yourself (and that's a lot if we talk about chinese).

Sincerely,
from the South of the World (Chile)

Carolina

PD: Sorry for my english... i just speak spanish and a little bit of chinese

　

Iceberg, March 2, 2006
　

This is a good introductory book to Mandarin, but by itself it is incomplete. Correct pronunciation of basic sounds is critical to a non-native speaker before jumping too far into the language. Still, I'm a visual hands-on learner and I appreciate the visual association of words with objects as opposed to systems that employ only spoken lessons. What works best for me is a combination of the two. Consequently, an accompanying tape or CD would enhance this book greatly.

Could use: Audio & characters...that being said this can easily be augmented by using Rosetta Stone's online free lessons to get the idea of tones and pronunciations and lots of websites have characters you can look up.

Summary: I love it. I've used other do-it-yourself language books and gotten bored. The colour, "activities" and tips make this book motivating and it is perfect for the raw beginner.
r
Before buying (or reviewing) a language instruction book, you should consider the purpose of the book. This book intends to give you some basic speaking ability in Chinese in a relatively short amount of time, to help you express yourself while traveling, shopping, eating, and doing other typical tourist activities. It does an excellent job of that. If you're looking for more than that, choose a book that better meets your needs.

The book is divided into 24 lessons, with the suggestion you study each one for 10 minutes. That's just 4 hours of study, plus however much time you want to spend practicing. This won't make you fluent, won't teach you to read/write characters, and it won't really help you understand someone speaking Chinese to you, but it will give you the basic speaking skills it aims to provide.

There are flash cards to cut out and practice with, and sticky labels to put on things around your house. The words are written in Pinyin, which is a romanization of Mandarin words based on their pronunciation. Pinyin pronunciation isn't obvious to English readers, so the book includes additional phonetic spelling. For example, it tells you the PinYin word 'jie' is pronounced 'jee-eh'.

There are a number of exercises so you can practice what you've learned, which helps you remember.

If you'd like to build a good foundation of common Chinese words and phrases with a minimal amount of study time, then I think you'll be happy with this book.

2.5 on a scale of 1-5, March 31, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
This book is basically a glorified list of vocabulary words. There are no conversations and very few sentences in the book. It doesn't teach much grammar, and seems to encourage using Chinese words with English sentence structures. If this were my only text, it would be very bad, but I'm finding it useful as a suplemetal text. The labels, pictures, and flash cards are all useful, but only when used in conjunction with a course or other book that actually teaches the language, not just the words.