Muzzy language users...

[Hot Lava Mama]

What do you think about their programs? Are they worth the money? They have a new Chinese language program. Has anyone seen that one?

Thanks
Hot Lava Mama

[Kuovonne]

Hi,

I was able to preview Muzzy Chinese I by checking it out of the library. I highly recommend that you have a chance to view it before forking over $200 dollars for it.

Some thoughts:

Some people might object to the characters or storyline. (A monster from outer space visits a kingdom, a gardener is in love with a princess, and runs off with her, a creepy creature is also in love with the princess and makes duplicate copies of her, a person repeatedly throws food at someone else, etc.) I personally didn't mind the story and my daughter liked watching it while we had it checked out, but YMMV.

The audio isn't as clear as it ought to be for a language learning video.
The speech is fairly quick and it's really, really hard to hear tones.

It includes a surprisingly large amount of vocabulary, which is nice. However, there is no direct grammar instruction. You can watch with subtitles in English, pin yin, or characters. The English and pinyin subtitles are very useful if you can read fluently.

The book has the text in Chinese Characters, but not in pinyin. I thought that was a major oversight that really limited its usefulness.

It includes goes through the English alphabet and vowels, but *not* the pinyin ones.

Bottom line: If it weren't so expensive, I think that it would make a nice supplement to some other curriculum if you don't object to the content and your kids like it.