Product Details
Ana Leung
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.
This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries.)
Format: Color
Rated: Unrated
Studio: Language Tree
DVD Release Date: September 2, 2003
Run Time: 25
ASIN: B0000D8DJJ
Average Customer Review:
Based on 11 reviews.
Editorial Reviews
Description
Language Tree introduces a breakthrough method for
children to learn Mandarin Chinese. Billy and Benboo: The Monsters and the
Magic Wand, teaches conversational Mandarin Chinese to children using an
entertaining video storybook format that captures your childĄ¯s attention and
imagination from start to finish. While your child follows the adventures of
Billy and his cute shih-tzu dog Benboo, he or she will be learning useful
phrases and vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese. This fun video depicts and
celebrates the Chinese American culture of today. Fun, danceable songs
reinforce new phrases.
The video is accompanied with a support booklet with vocabulary drills
and the script in English, Chinese, and pinyin so parents can follow along
and get involved in the teaching process. Every Language Tree video embeds
our unique Multi-Cognition Approach™, developed by a cognitive scientist
from Stanford University, which stresses three proven learning techniques:
1) repetition, 2) deep thinking, and 3) information clustering. The net
result is that your child will be able to learn more phrases, more quickly,
and better retain what was taught.
Spotlight Reviews
(What's this?)
3 of 4 people found the
following review helpful:
Learning a new language can be easy and fun!, March 24, 2004
I watched both the level 1 and level 2 videos with my American-born
elementry school nephew and pre-school niece.
The video was appealing to them because it's like a cartoon video. The
scenes in the video are very visual and focused, it's directly related to
the dialog, so it's very easy for children to understand what the video is
teaching.
The music and songs in the video are also great! I love the tunes, they
are very catchy. The children learned it really fast, and soon they are
singing along.
I also like the fact that the song lyrics are made up of phrases from the
teaching material, and repeat itself over and over. This helps the children
to learn through repeatition.
My nephew and niece are both attending private after school program to
learn Chinese. I saw far more progress after watching the videos for few
weeks, than they going to 1-1/2 years of language school. Plus if I watch
the video with the kids, I know exactly what was taught in the video, it's
much easier for me to start practcing with them. As oppose to going to the
language school, which I have no idea what they are teaching, therefore it's
hard for me to start a conversation in Chinese with them.
Also the materials from the video are related to things we would normally
encounter in real life, so there are many occasions to take the opportunity
to practice the vocabularies.
Lastly, the story of all the videos are centered around Billy and BenBoo,
the two main characters, and their family, so you'll be familiar with the
characters after the first video, and easy to move on to the next. I
especially love the adorable dog Ben Boo, he's so playful and brings so much
energy!
Thanks Language Tree for making learning so much fun!!! I can't wait to
see the next video!
1 of 2 people found the
following review helpful:
Learning a new language can be easy and fun!, March 24, 2004
I watched both the level 1 and level 2 videos with my American-born
elementry school nephew and pre-school niece.
The video was appealing to them because it's like a cartoon video. The
scenes in the video are very visual and focused, it's directly related to
the dialog, so it's very easy for children to understand what the video is
teaching.
The music and songs in the video are also great! I love the tunes, they
are very catchy. The children learned it really fast, and soon they are
singing along.
I also like the fact that the song lyrics are made up of phrases from the
teaching material, and repeat itself over and over. This helps the children
to learn through repeatition.
My nephew and niece are both attending private after school program to
learn Chinese. I saw far more progress after watching the videos for few
weeks, than they going to 1-1/2 years of language school. Plus if I watch
the video with the kids, I know exactly what was taught in the video, it's
much easier for me to start practcing with them. As oppose to going to the
language school, which I have no idea what they are teaching, therefore it's
hard for me to start a conversation in Chinese with them.
Also the materials from the video are related to things we would normally
encounter in real life, so there are many occasions to take the opportunity
to practice the vocabularies.
Lastly, the story of all the videos are centered around Billy and BenBoo,
the two main characters, and their family, so you'll be familiar with the
characters after the first video, and easy to move on to the next. I
especially love the adorable dog Ben Boo, he's so playful and brings so much
energy!
Thanks Language Tree for making learning so much fun!!! I can't wait to
see the next video!
All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
Fun and Creative, September 2, 2004
| |
| Reviewer: |
|
Cheryl (Seattle, WA) |
|
I've been looking for home tools to help my son learn Mandarin. While we
have many videos, books and audio tapes, we were pleasantly surprised by
Language Tree's Beginner Level 2 video. Most tools are worthwhile, but this
one really stands apart in that the learning aspect is much more enjoyable.
The pace is excellent, the characters are bright and adorable and by
embedding the lessons within a story it is much more interesting to watch.
My son also found the booklet to be very useful. At times he would be too
caught up in the story and skip the review section. The nice thing is later
on he tends to refer back to the booklet frequently or simply tune into the
review portions of the video.
2 of 2 people found the
following review helpful:
Very Helpful, May 27, 2004
I bought the video to supplement my studies with a private tutor. I love
the video and it's such a nice change of pace from my dull text books. I
have found it to be very helpful especially with proper pronunication of key
words and phrases. Even my tutor has mentioned a noticeable difference in my
conversational abilities.
This video is a definite two thumbs up!
4 of 8 people found the
following review helpful:
Full of errors. Actors speak too fast., May 23, 2004
I suppose the reviewers here know nothing about Chinese, and therefore
are unaware of the many glaring and inexcusable errors in the accompanying
booklet. The errors are in the TONES of the words. Just a few examples: XI
HUAN (LIKE) is written as two FORTH TONES, where it should be one THIRD and
one FORTH tone. SHAN (HILL) is written with a SECOND tone, where it should
be a FIRST tone. And so on, with many errors. The result is that you simply
cannot trust what you are reading to be correct. If you learn a word with
the wrong TONE, you are learning a completely different word.
An analogy would be trying to learn to solve math problems with a book
where some of the answers are wrong. You would have to check all the answers
with an outside source.
Secondly, while the children in the video speak at a decent speed, the
adults rattle away much too fast. This is supposed to be a LEARNING
experience. Is it too much to ask for the characters to speak slower than
normal speed? Sometimes you can't even make out all the words the adults
speak. SLOW DOWN! I'M TRYING TO LEARN! Jeeze.
Overall though, I find these children's programs to be useful for
learning Chinese even though I'm an adult. But it burns me up that they
could be MUCH MUCH better if the maker had better attention to detail and
common sense.
Well done and professional, January 29, 2004
| |
| Reviewer: |
|
Fred (Indianapolis, Indiana United States) |
|
The Language Tree video is well done and professional. The pacing was
easy to follow and I appreciated the non-stereotypical approach used for
teaching Mandarin Chinese. |
