Following my earlier post about Failing to Learn Chinese and all the excellent feedback, the creator of a system called Grasp Chinese contacted me. They offer 10 free lessons online, but have been kind enough to give me access to the full 40 module course. Here’s the first in a series of brief reviews of different Chinese learning methods.
Grasp Chinese
The Good
It’s clean, easy to follow and fun to use.
The lessons are immediately practical, following the journey of a visitor from the moment he arrives at the airport, through a typical but logical progression of situations such as a taxi ride, hotels and meals. Later modules cover useful topics beyond the needs of holidaymakers, such as buying a phone or booking restaurants.
Each lesson starts with a slideshow that introduces you to new words and phrases. Here the Chinese is broken up and translated literally, as well as figuratively (i.e. Ni hâo translates to You Good, which is said in the same way as Hello). This thoroughly appeals to me and has helped understanding considerably.
One of the listening lessons from GraspChinese.com, in which the literal meaning of taxi is explained.
One of my initial bugbears with some other systems was hearing words (chūzū chē), thinking I understood them(to rent out car, which I would assume to mean car rental), then being told they’re not quite what I interpreted them as (taxi), with no explanation. This system makes a point of explaining the entymology of words, which coming from a science-heavy education I really appreciate.
Occasionally this preference breaks down, such as finding out that hotel (jiǔdiàn) translates literally as alcohol shop. Then it feels like I’m learning Chinese to Pidgin English, which is fine, as long as I’m told it’s Pidgin English, which I then have to decipher rather than a direct translation.
Where it really comes together is the listening module. After watching a slideshow, you’re asked to listen to segments again and it becomes apparent that you’re rapidly learning to string together phrases. The slide show might break down “He is late” and “The hotel is over there” and you can immediately understand someone saying “He is over there”.
This is also where the tones are practiced, such as questions revolving around the difference between nǎlǐ and nàlǐ.
Later modules also have Image Exercises, where you match an image to a sound clip. These are often quite easy, but good reminders of the previously learnt vocabulary. Unlike Rosetta Stone, the images are not so frustratingly ambiguous.
The Bad
There’s actually very little that can’t be fixed:
Their server is a little slow at times, which can be distracting.
Personally I’d rather the ‘View all scores’ was more of a progress indicator. Instead of a complete history of all my test attempts, I’d be happy with just a list of all the modules and my best score to date, so I could see where to go back and try for 100% again.
I’ll be honest, it’s quite tempting to open the phrasebook page in another tab and cheat…perhaps this could only appear after the lesson is completed. Alternatively, I could get some willpower…
There’s no speaking in the basic package and no mention of Chinese characters yet (but I’m only up to lesson 17). Also the phrasebooks stop containing full sentences after the first ten lessons, presumably because you’re supposed know them already, but I’d quite like them there as a reminder.
Conclusion
Grasp Chinese would be an excellent place for a learner to start with Mandarin, because it makes it so quick and simple, yet yields real and immediately useful results.
I’d definitely suggest showing the free lessons to a beginner as it really does encourage you. Lessons One and Two draw you in. Lesson Three has a sharp jump in difficulty (with the nǎlǐ/nàlǐ tones), but it’s worth it as by Lesson Four I was already stringing together or adapting previous examples to make useful phrases.
I’m still only half way through, but most importantly I’m enjoying it and willingly go back on a daily basis. As mentioned earlier, it’s definitely a beginner course, but my listening has improved to the point where I can now understand a lot more people around me. There’s no speaking in the standard package, but for an additional cost it’s possible to get 24 one-to-one lessons by Skype. Despite the lack of speaking module, I have found myself using full sentences more often, rather than the previous pointing and saying Zhège/Nàge, so I’m generally pleased so far.
Next up: Intensive Mandarin Courses.
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I have recently become a big fan of GraspChinese.com. There is little to dislike about this site and lots to admire. I’ve been trying various methods of learning Mandarin over the past two years (in-person classes, online classes, books, CDs and DVDs etc) and none of it has “stuck”. it’s all been hard work with little reward. When I finally found GraspChinese it was amazing how different the experience was. I have learned more in the last few weeks than I learned with any other method. I know I’m probably going to sound like an employee of GraspChinese or a stockholder or something, but please believe me I am not affiliated. I’m just a very happy customer who is blown away by how easy they make it to learn.