Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation (3CDs + Guide) (Teach Yourself Conversation Packs)

List Price: $18.95 Discount Price: $11.29

Customer Reviews:

Lose the English and the music. [Posted on 2006-10-29]
This CD offers clear and copious listening practice to comfortably paced conversations between Hindi speakers. I give it only three stars because the amount of spoken English and music on the CD becomes a distraction after repeated listenings.

The whole first band contains information, introduction, and instructions read aloud in English. Although it can be skipped over, it is not necessary to have it on the CD in the first place because most people can read that information in the accompanying booklet.

After that, each individual conversation is preceded by arpeggios and bursts of music, then by a description of the setting read aloud in English. These cannot be skipped over and must be listened to repeatedly.

I think that the music should be eliminated and the setting information should be given in the booklet so that these do not have to be heard multiple times. In this way, a listener could experience continual immersion in the target language without distraction.

Other than the two drawbacks, the quality of the CD is excellent.

Great supplement to other self-teaching books [Posted on 2007-06-23]
Anything written by Rupert Snell is a best bet. His other books in the Teach Yourself series are wonderful, especially the Beginners Hindi. I agree with the other reviewer that the repeated music between sections becomes quite annoying, but this is true for the entire new conversation cd series. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic addition to your Hindi learning materials.
It is also important to note that the booklets only use Romanized writing, so don't expect the "real" Devanagari script. The series is meant primarily for auditory comprehension, but it would have been nice to see the words in the original writing system.

Great for the traveler [Posted on 2007-11-29]
If you're traveling to India for two weeks to two months, then this is the course for you! The conversations teach you what you need to know to meet people, eat, drink, and shop. I agree with the other reviewers that the music and English get redundant after repeated listening, but they're necessary if you want to learn in your car or some other place where juggling a book is inconvenient. Also, there is less and less English translating as you get farther into the dialogues. A little more meat to the book(grammar review, gender patterns for nouns and adjectives, glossary, etc.) would have been nice. Use this with "Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi" and you'll really be communicatin'!

Excellent resource, but not on its own [Posted on 2008-04-05]
This is fantastic. I already know all of the grammar covered in it, but it is great for revision. I listen to it during my daily commute and on my evening walk. It is enjoyable because it follows a loose storyline, and has touches of humour as it goes along.

The way the first two CD's work, is that there will be a conversation given, with a track explaining vocabulary, grammar, etc. There are opportunities to join the conversations sometimes. It is not a "total immersion" program, like Pimsleuer. But I think it is better for it. Because it gives explanations, the grammar can progress much more than it does on 10 CD's of the Pimsleuer method.

It teaches grammar as it goes along, covering the major tenses, in aap and tum forms, nouns and adjectives, as well as postpositions and how they change nouns and adjectives. The major gaps I noticed are that it doesn't cover "tu" forms, and it doesn't have subjunctive verbs. But it can't have everything!

One great feature is that it has sections covering aspects of pronunciation as it goes along. Very helpful for refining how you speak.

The final CD has conversations for listening practice, without much help as to meaning. It is useful for learning to understand the gist of things without knowing all the details.

Other reviewers have complained about the amount of English, but the point of this course is that you don't actually need to use the booklet. I think it balances everything quite nicely.

One warning, it moves relatively quickly, and unless you are really good with picking up languages, you will need to use a textbook as well, both in order to understand the whole course, and to go beyond the course.

All in all, it is a wonderful supplement to any textbook, but most people will not be able to use it alone.

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