Teach Me Tapes is a Minnesota company that for many years has created and distributed workbooks and music for teaching many world languages, including Japanese, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, as well as Spanish and the other workhorse European tongues. In addition, they also produce materials for teaching English as a second language. I had dinner with the owner and manager several years ago at an education-industry convention, where I learned much about the disconnect between social interest in a language-learning product and the actual sales results; plus the investment needed to put a professional product together. (However, I purchased this title at list price this year from my local Lakeshore Learning store.)
This book compiles the company’s two original titles (Teach Me Chinese - A Musical Journey Through the Day, and Teach Me More Chinese - A Musical Journey Through the Year) and includes an hour-long CD with 41 tracks.
The songs include a fair number of classic English-language nursery rhymes such as The Wheels on the Bus, and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. These songs are used for the company’s other language workbooks, too, but of course the songs and translations are unique to each book. So while this does mean the songs are not intended to teach about Chinese culture, it does mean that the content cover a great many common words including:
- family members
- animals
- parts of the body
- daily routines
- clothing
- colors
The songs are primarily sung in Mandarin, without English translation, although a few extended tracks are performed in English. [This is in contrast with the Sara Jordan materials reviewed previously in which every song is half-English-half-Mandarin.] The instrumentation is simple; the music stays in the background so the listener can clearly hear the Mandarin words. Extra care has been taken to accurately present Mandarin tones, too.
My daughter - currently a kindergartner at a Mandarin immersion school - quickly recognized several of these songs the first time I played her the CD. (I’ll take that as an endorsement!)
The accompanying workbook/coloring book has all the song lyrics in Pinyin, with English translations further back; the images and text, however, are all hand-drawn - literally handwritten Chinese characters, Pinyin, and English words. Some characters and words are crammed into the frame of the picture - readability is not consistent. This seems to be a missed opportunity when this twin-title book was compiled. On the other hand, the drawings are of Chinese kids and families (in Western settings and with Western friends) - it would have been easy for a publisher to recycle ethnic-ambiguous artwork from a book for some other language, so these illustrations are a well-thought and appreciated effort.
The primarily-Chinese songs and all-Chinese activity pages make this compilation attractive for immersion settings. The presentation is simple and easy to follow for non-native speakers, though, so it should be considered for home use, too. For preschoolers to second-graders, you’ll get a great deal of play out of the CD, and the activity pages could be kept as good reference materials. The price also makes this a solid value compared to the individual books.
For more media, product, and service reviews about traveling through and learning about Asian culture, please visit http://www.weninchina.com/Reviews/Reviews/Reviews.html
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