Immersion's Guide Mandarin Phrasebook

Yes, another ad! : )

This is the Phrasebook I used when I was studying in Beijing and found it to be very useful, especially for a person who will be living in Beijing (or China) for a period of time, and this is who the book is written for. 

Other than the usual pronunciation guides, grammar, and basic greeting phrases, what I found most useful about the book is that it also have very useful phrases that you're likely to need in your everyday life in China - things like searching for a home/apartment, negotiating the lease, booking a hotel room, how to make restaurant reservations and order food, applying for a job, etc.

There are also other interesting sections - eg. how to express/reject love, clubbing, emotions, body parts (which came in very useful when needing to go to the doctor's), what to do when you get a visit from the police (you never know, it could happen!). 

All in all, a very useful book. I even used it a few times as a quick reference dictionary. Highly recommended!

Chinese Pod

Image by Free-Stockphotos.com

So I've decided to do some self-studying before I go back to Beijing in February. It's not easy! It's not that I don't have time, but I'm just....lazy! I'm forcing myself to look through my text books that I brought with me (not much luck here), but then I revisited this fantastic website, Chinese Pod. It's giving me a daily dose of pretty useful mandarin. The dialogue topics are fantastic and very useful eg. going to the hairdresser, ordering food, lost mobile phone, etc. The hosts are pretty cool to and give really good explanations. Topics are divided up into newbies, elementary, intermediate and advanced.  The podcasts are free but you have to pay for transcripts and notes. 

What are you waiting for, check it out! Even if you're going to China anyway, it's worth knowing a bit before you come. 

Roadtest

With a bit of time I have left, I've been perusing some discussions relating to living in China and learning mandarin forums. Quite a good forum is Chinese-forums. There's plenty of information there and people can ask questions and get lots of tips on a variety of topics. eg. people's experiences at various language schools, how to find accommodation, discussion on the actual mandarin language itself, etc.

It is on this forum that I found links to various online Chinese Study Tools, which I find very useful. In particular I have roadtested a couple of very cool Chinese-English dictionaries where you can also hear how the word should be pronounced, as well as how to write words. With this there is also a function to translate English names to Chinese names, and even put the names on a chinese painting and print it out - a lot of fun!

There is also a Pinyin Practice site which is very useful for beginners.

Definitely check out the above sites if you are interested in learning mandarin.