Teach Your Children Mandarin … They’re Going to Need It

Thomas Fried­man’s lat­est opin­ion piece in the New York Times starts like this:

After attend­ing the spec­tac­u­lar clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Bei­jing Olympics and feel­ing the vibra­tions from hun­dreds of Chi­nese drum­mers pul­sat­ing in my own chest, I was tempt­ed to con­clude two things: “Holy mack­er­el, the ener­gy com­ing out of this coun­try is unri­valed.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teach­ing your kids Man­darin.”

There’s prob­a­bly a good deal of truth to his last point. So to keep your kids (or your­self) com­pet­i­tive in the glob­al mar­ket­place, we’re high­light­ing a series of free Man­darin pod­casts, all of which can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. And, as a quick aside, I should note that Roset­ta Stone is cur­rent­ly run­ning a sale (through the end of August) that will let you get 10% off their audio prod­ucts, which includes instruc­tion in Man­darin and many oth­er lan­guages. (Click here for more info)

• Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users..
• Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
• Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
• Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
• iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
  • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
  • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the PDF that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
• World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

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