Mike, Ted, about that method ... it's a French company called Assimil:
link to the product I haveThe idea is you have a book with a set of lessons and the MP3 files to go with it. Unfortunately the book I have is in French, and there are 700 pages so ... I will not Xerox them for you, hehe sorry. They have a version for English speakers, price is below 100USD. The MP3's are voice only, although they use ID3 tags to show the pinyin and French meaning and even a .txt file should the mp3 player be eBook capable (mine shows nothing at all :p will have toshop around in GZ to find one). There is a PC version too but from what I heard, my friend's friend loved the method because he would study 30-60 minutes per day with the book and audio, then just take the mp3's and listen to them when he could ... apparently he spoke in just 6 months.
The book covers pinyin but also the characters ... I am zapping them for the moment as the method allows this, I can always come back later to learn them, my first priority is verbal communication. I'm only at lesson number 2 of 105 but I already doubled my vocabulary (I can order 2 bowls of rice now hehe). What's nice is that you learn in the form of dialogues, and they reverse them so you get to know pronouns, question and other sentence structures all in one lesson.
Ted I might bring it to GZ if I don't find it too heavy, I'll show you what the book is like. Each lesson has the phrases in Pinyin and characters (+ phonetic in French in case your Pinyin is not there), translation, annotation and notes about grammar or particular use of words. The audio is both by male and female which is convenient.
Frank
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