Any good Chinese Mandarin language homeschool materials?

Question

I do not know how to speak Chinese. My daughter is beginning her senior year of high school, my son is starting the 3rd grade. Their school does not offer Chinese, which I think is foolish.

I am thinking of setting aside a couple of nights a week where all three of us can learn Chinese together. I am looking for a good program that will assist us in becoming fluent speakers. I am sure that homeschoolers must know of some good programs.

I am sure it will be suggested, but we cannot afford a tutor at this time. We want to pay for one thing now that will take us far.

I am not concerned with written Chinese at this time (will be later, though). I am concerned with spoken fluency, just the way all kids learn to speak before they ever see a school book.

Answer 1

i dont know any places, but u can to to http://chinesepod.com/ and a lil at home from there

at the site, ur able to download the lesson(s) and listen to them on a music player. it also provides vocabulary too

(btw, none of the skls i know offer chinese)

Answer 2

Rosetta Stone would be the way to go! Our library offers it free online (we pay for membership) and we tried out the Chinese one day and my kids (6 and 9) picked up what little we did very quickly.

Answer 3

This is a site to learn Chinese. Free

http://www.melnyks.com/

This is a language exchange. Free

http://mylanguageexchange.com/

A simple list of phrases. Free

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content....

Lots of phrases (about 285). Free

http://www.loquella.com/learn-chinese/

Answer 4

We have looked into some Chinese materials, as we intend to adopt from China in the relatively near future and as part of that preparation we have studied a lot about China-the history, culture, touched on the language.

AsiaForKids.com and ChinaSprout.com has some language materials available, as well as other products that might be of interest to you.

I believe that Muzzy and Rosetta Stone also both have Mandarin Chinese courses.  These are popular programs for learning a secondary language.

If you have a large Chinese Community near you, you might be able to find someone there that is willing to work with you-hearing it "straight from a source" will be a lot more beneficial than learning it from a book and/or CD or DVD.  

I hope this helps!

Answer 5

Rosetta stone

Answer 6

I'm learning Russian at this time with rosetta stone,it really works