---
product_id: 1210877
title: "Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning"
price: "NT$4542"
currency: TWD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.tw/products/1210877-living-language-mandarin-chinese-complete-edition-beginner-through-advanced-course
store_origin: TW
region: Taiwan
---

# 9 audio CDs (~7 hours content) 3 comprehensive coursebooks Chinese character writing guide Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning

**Price:** NT$4542
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Summary

> 🚀 Unlock Mandarin Mastery: Speak, Read & Write Like a Pro!

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning
- **How much does it cost?** NT$4542 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tw](https://www.desertcart.tw/products/1210877-living-language-mandarin-chinese-complete-edition-beginner-through-advanced-course)

## Best For

- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Key Features

- • **All-in-One Mastery:** Beginner to advanced in one sleek package—no need to buy separate courses.
- • **Character Confidence:** Unique character writing guide ensures you don’t just recognize but can write Chinese fluently.
- • **On-the-Go Flexibility:** Audio CDs designed for easy ripping and mobile listening—perfect for busy professionals.
- • **Value-Packed & Proven:** Top-rated with 4.6 stars and unbeatable price—why pay more for less?
- • **Multi-Sensory Learning:** Combine reading, listening, and writing for total language immersion.

## Overview

Living Language Mandarin Chinese Complete Edition offers a professionally crafted, self-paced course with 3 detailed books, 9 audio CDs totaling around 7 hours, and a dedicated Chinese character writing guide. Designed for busy learners, it integrates reading, listening, and writing practice, supported by free online resources. Highly rated and cost-effective, it delivers beginner through advanced content in one comprehensive set.

## Description

Complete Mandarin Chinese is a unique multimedia program that takes you beginner to advanced level in one convenient package. At the core of Complete Mandarin Chinese is the Living Language Method™, based on linguistic science, proven techniques, and over 65 years of experience. Our method teaches you the whole language, so you can express yourself, not just recite memorized words or scripts. Millions have learned with Living Language®. Now it’s your turn. • 4 Books: 46 lessons, additional review exercises, culture notes, an extensive glossary, and a grammar summary—plus a complete guide to Chinese characters • 9 Audio CDs*: Vocabulary, dialogues, audio exercises, and more—listen while using the books or use for review on the go • Free Online Learning: Flashcards, games, and interactive quizzes for each lesson at www.livinglanguage.com/languagelab * Access to downloadable audio also available with purchase. To learn more visit livinglanguage.com. The Living Language Method™ Build a Foundation Start speaking Mandarin Chinese immediately using essential words and phrases. Progress with Confidence Build on each lesson as you advance to full sentences, then actual conversations. Retain what You’ve Learned Special recall exercises move your new language from short-term to long-term memory. Achieve Your Goals Don’t just mimic or memorize. Develop practical language skills to speak in any situation.

Review: Maybe even *better* than the alternatives. - If you are the kind of person who is motivated to learn Mandarin Chinese, and you are also the kind of person who learns well on their own, this is going to work very well for you. I haven't been using this very long, so I will drop back in with updates. There are 3 general study books ("Essential", Intermediate, and Advanced) which cover phrasing and grammar with both pinyin and Chinese character representations. There is another book that gives an excellent intro to character writing - so far the best I have seen. The tracks on the 9 CDs (I am guessing about 7 hours of content) correspond to specific sections in the 3 books. The books are well written and well formatted. The packaging is professional and clean. The content is well organized and approachable. The commentary sections are superb. Having the English, pinyin, and Chinese version together is fantastic. At least in the beginning, they stick to easily pronounceable and also very useful phrases. Basic grammar is covered early. Their explanation of tones, and practice, is very good. The lessons are small, so you can pick one and work through the whole thing in one sitting (I am finding you need to repeat a single lesson maybe 5 times). The CDs are tracked to the lesson plan, but it works surprisingly well just to listen without the book. So the first thing you are going to want to do is rip the CDs you are studying. The tracks are much easier to find when they are on your phone. There are 4 lessons per CD, broken up into many tracks. You will probably want to combine all the tracks for each lesson into an MP3 for easy listening in the car. The entire CD can be listened to this way, but I find having the single lessons to be the most convenient form. The sections seem to flow together pretty well, and you can get a lot of repeated listens this way. You *will* want to rip the CDs as MP3s as soon as possible. For learning characters, they kind of throw you into the deep end, but they really cover the material well. It is very much worth the effort to learn the writing, and not at all difficult if you start right away. I recommend you get a phone app that does handwriting recognition on Chinese characters. There appear to be several good ones. The software is great for practice, and you will want to practice writing the characters, not just reading them. The characters are a lot easier to recognize when you can write them from memory. There are a number of good books that give a different, complementary introduction to Chinese writing. I dug up a few, but if you want something that looks kind of like a children's book, check out Chineasy. It's fun. Whatever you do, don't skip the writing! So - to summarize - you will probably want to record the CDs into a format you can more easily use. You will definitely want to check out some of the software packages that help you practice (available free or cheap), especially for writing. And you may find other complementary materials to help you get started if you are stuck. The bottom line is that this is the real deal. If you do the work, you will be able to functionally speak, read, and write Chinese when you are done. I'm convinced of this after the first couple of weeks, and I will check back in as I make progress. Yes, this is only 1/10th the price of Rosetta Stone, and 1/20th the price of Pimsleur. I looked at both of those, and if all three had been the same price and I could only choose one, I would stick with Living Language. I am very impressed at the value. There is no "catch." ... Update 2014-08-14: I'm using a single 20-minute session per day to study (the timer on Android works great for this). My progress isn't fast, but I am hoping the continuous exposure over time will work for my old brain. I am slowly "getting it." It's hard to commit to a lot of time every single day, but I think I can do 20 minutes - and I look forward to it because it really is kind of fun. Once you get into the lessons, they tell you about the games on their website at [URL redacted - don't want to break the rules]. The games on the website are free (you can try without buying), but you really need to be doing the lessons for them to make sense. They really help accelerate your learning, and they are pretty well done! I am still working the 1st lesson at this point, but I have skipped to the back of the book to study pinyin pronunciation, common characters, and common signs (can you tell the men's room from the ladies?). The deeper I go, the more impressed I am. Apparently this whole set was meant to delivered as 3 rather more expensive packages, one for beginner, one for intermediate, and one for advanced. This set is the whole thing in one box. I feel almost guilty for paying this little for something that is clearly worth a whole heck of a lot more. Almost. Update 2014-08-24: I'm augmenting my active 20 minutes of study with passive listening. You must learn the characters and pinyin forms, which is fun but takes work. You also have to be able to hear and repeat the pronunciations correctly. Chinese is not a language for slackers. And you have to sort of do it all at once. You have to read, you have to write, and you have to listen and speak. By the way, Google has an excellent pinyin keyboard on the Android. It is great for entering Chinese characters (phrases) when you don't know what you are doing!
Review: Absolutely amazing value for the equivalent of a full year of college-level Chinese - Absolutely amazing value for a course that is the equivalent of about a full year of college-level Chinese, and pitched at a much more manageable pace and without all the linguistic jargon. I've started and stopped studying Chinese probably a dozen times over as many years, mostly because the language and the instructional materials for it have proved so opaque and impenetrable. I finally broke through with the Living Language program. I did not expect a popular market product like this to be both so serious and so effective. It led me in so gently that I didn't realize how quickly and smoothly I was progressing, and in retrospect, the specific vocabulary and grammar it was teaching me was 100% spot on (HSK levels 1 and 2 are a piece of cake after this program). From absolute zero, the program led me into the thicket of Chinese--both spoken and written--and before I knew it, I was hacking away into the next and the next areas of the jungle. The vocabulary introduced is largely the same as the most popular 1st year college Chinese textbooks, and this program's introduction to characters is better than any of the dozen or so other programs I've tried and/or am now using. In less than a year, I've started emailing and speaking to a Chinese colleague in Chinese, in addition to my main and most daunting goal, doing research in Chinese on modern legal developments. I obviously have a good way to go, but after finishing the Living Language program, I am totally comfortable navigating intermediate-level material, and I am totally confident of the path forward. The next step seems to be picking up with Integrated Chinese Level 2 or the equivalent (IC seems to be the best product available now to get me where I want in terms of grammar and key vocabulary development), but I would recommend that anyone facing the juggernaut of Chinese begin to attack it with the shockingly inexpensive and yet extremely effective Living Language materials.

## Features

- Chinese, Mandarin, Teacher, Training

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,284,655 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #294 in Translation Reference #2,160 in Foreign Dictionaries & Thesauruses #3,576 in Books on CD |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 681 Reviews |

## Images

![Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61e3nrsdV+L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Maybe even *better* than the alternatives.
*by J***H on August 3, 2014*

If you are the kind of person who is motivated to learn Mandarin Chinese, and you are also the kind of person who learns well on their own, this is going to work very well for you. I haven't been using this very long, so I will drop back in with updates. There are 3 general study books ("Essential", Intermediate, and Advanced) which cover phrasing and grammar with both pinyin and Chinese character representations. There is another book that gives an excellent intro to character writing - so far the best I have seen. The tracks on the 9 CDs (I am guessing about 7 hours of content) correspond to specific sections in the 3 books. The books are well written and well formatted. The packaging is professional and clean. The content is well organized and approachable. The commentary sections are superb. Having the English, pinyin, and Chinese version together is fantastic. At least in the beginning, they stick to easily pronounceable and also very useful phrases. Basic grammar is covered early. Their explanation of tones, and practice, is very good. The lessons are small, so you can pick one and work through the whole thing in one sitting (I am finding you need to repeat a single lesson maybe 5 times). The CDs are tracked to the lesson plan, but it works surprisingly well just to listen without the book. So the first thing you are going to want to do is rip the CDs you are studying. The tracks are much easier to find when they are on your phone. There are 4 lessons per CD, broken up into many tracks. You will probably want to combine all the tracks for each lesson into an MP3 for easy listening in the car. The entire CD can be listened to this way, but I find having the single lessons to be the most convenient form. The sections seem to flow together pretty well, and you can get a lot of repeated listens this way. You *will* want to rip the CDs as MP3s as soon as possible. For learning characters, they kind of throw you into the deep end, but they really cover the material well. It is very much worth the effort to learn the writing, and not at all difficult if you start right away. I recommend you get a phone app that does handwriting recognition on Chinese characters. There appear to be several good ones. The software is great for practice, and you will want to practice writing the characters, not just reading them. The characters are a lot easier to recognize when you can write them from memory. There are a number of good books that give a different, complementary introduction to Chinese writing. I dug up a few, but if you want something that looks kind of like a children's book, check out Chineasy. It's fun. Whatever you do, don't skip the writing! So - to summarize - you will probably want to record the CDs into a format you can more easily use. You will definitely want to check out some of the software packages that help you practice (available free or cheap), especially for writing. And you may find other complementary materials to help you get started if you are stuck. The bottom line is that this is the real deal. If you do the work, you will be able to functionally speak, read, and write Chinese when you are done. I'm convinced of this after the first couple of weeks, and I will check back in as I make progress. Yes, this is only 1/10th the price of Rosetta Stone, and 1/20th the price of Pimsleur. I looked at both of those, and if all three had been the same price and I could only choose one, I would stick with Living Language. I am very impressed at the value. There is no "catch." ... Update 2014-08-14: I'm using a single 20-minute session per day to study (the timer on Android works great for this). My progress isn't fast, but I am hoping the continuous exposure over time will work for my old brain. I am slowly "getting it." It's hard to commit to a lot of time every single day, but I think I can do 20 minutes - and I look forward to it because it really is kind of fun. Once you get into the lessons, they tell you about the games on their website at [URL redacted - don't want to break the rules]. The games on the website are free (you can try without buying), but you really need to be doing the lessons for them to make sense. They really help accelerate your learning, and they are pretty well done! I am still working the 1st lesson at this point, but I have skipped to the back of the book to study pinyin pronunciation, common characters, and common signs (can you tell the men's room from the ladies?). The deeper I go, the more impressed I am. Apparently this whole set was meant to delivered as 3 rather more expensive packages, one for beginner, one for intermediate, and one for advanced. This set is the whole thing in one box. I feel almost guilty for paying this little for something that is clearly worth a whole heck of a lot more. Almost. Update 2014-08-24: I'm augmenting my active 20 minutes of study with passive listening. You must learn the characters and pinyin forms, which is fun but takes work. You also have to be able to hear and repeat the pronunciations correctly. Chinese is not a language for slackers. And you have to sort of do it all at once. You have to read, you have to write, and you have to listen and speak. By the way, Google has an excellent pinyin keyboard on the Android. It is great for entering Chinese characters (phrases) when you don't know what you are doing!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Absolutely amazing value for the equivalent of a full year of college-level Chinese
*by J***N on January 26, 2018*

Absolutely amazing value for a course that is the equivalent of about a full year of college-level Chinese, and pitched at a much more manageable pace and without all the linguistic jargon. I've started and stopped studying Chinese probably a dozen times over as many years, mostly because the language and the instructional materials for it have proved so opaque and impenetrable. I finally broke through with the Living Language program. I did not expect a popular market product like this to be both so serious and so effective. It led me in so gently that I didn't realize how quickly and smoothly I was progressing, and in retrospect, the specific vocabulary and grammar it was teaching me was 100% spot on (HSK levels 1 and 2 are a piece of cake after this program). From absolute zero, the program led me into the thicket of Chinese--both spoken and written--and before I knew it, I was hacking away into the next and the next areas of the jungle. The vocabulary introduced is largely the same as the most popular 1st year college Chinese textbooks, and this program's introduction to characters is better than any of the dozen or so other programs I've tried and/or am now using. In less than a year, I've started emailing and speaking to a Chinese colleague in Chinese, in addition to my main and most daunting goal, doing research in Chinese on modern legal developments. I obviously have a good way to go, but after finishing the Living Language program, I am totally comfortable navigating intermediate-level material, and I am totally confident of the path forward. The next step seems to be picking up with Integrated Chinese Level 2 or the equivalent (IC seems to be the best product available now to get me where I want in terms of grammar and key vocabulary development), but I would recommend that anyone facing the juggernaut of Chinese begin to attack it with the shockingly inexpensive and yet extremely effective Living Language materials.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everything you need!
*by A***Y on May 9, 2014*

I almost gave this four stars because 1. it lacks zhuyin entries, 2. there are a few typos/goofs and 3. it lacks enough pinyin learning tools. The overall strength and affordable price of this product make it deserve 4.5 stars without question, so I rounded up. [Update 5/13/14: I had to come back and drop my rating down to a 4 star, which I have never done in my many years of Amazon purchases. The typos with the tone marks are increasing as I progress through the materials. Moreover, the end of chapter 5 quiz has vocabulary and grammar questions which are not introduced until chapters 6 and 7! Boo. I know how easy it is to make this kind of mistake as a classroom teacher, but that is why curriculum designers get paid so much more than teachers do. It is very frustrating for me as a learner when I come across questions that I am unable to answer even after going back and scouring the whole first half of the book! Also, the website seems to have some issues where activities won't load properly on some of the chapters.] I am a language teacher. I teach English to international students at an American university. I've seen more than my share of language learning materials through work and through my hobby of studying foreign languages. The Living Language set is really great! The online resources, CDs and multi-level books are very well designed. My boyfriend is from Taiwan and I'm American. His parents don't speak English, so I'm learning Chinese to be able to communicate with them. Speaking and listening are more of my focus, but I still want to learn to read and write. Having studied Japanese before, I'm pleasantly surprised how much easier reading and writing is in Chinese! This program is helping me to make lots of progress in a short time with minimal stress. Tips to get the most out of this program: If you are a Chinese/Taiwanese drama addict, do one of the online chapter exercises before watching an episode and again just after. If you don't have a premium acct on dramafever (or viki), use the commercial breaks to review vocab. You will know it inside and out if you review it often. Learn the vocab online with the flashcard tool first. That way you won't fall into the pinyin pronunciation trap. Force yourself to be flawless with the tones. If you don't know the tones, you don't know the word! You have to double check the tones because the books have typos where tone marks are missing or even incorrect (sigh). This program (at such an affordable price!) is overall very well designed. A few changes could have made this even better. - Pinyin sucks in general. Zhuyin is about a billion times better. If the publishers had included entries for the vocab in zhuyin as well as pinyin, I would have been in hog heaven. I promised myself I'd look up the zhuyin for each new word, but that hasn't happened. So I'm kinda forced to do the pinyin. - A section on the website with pinyin pronunciation flashcards, esp that includes the tone change rules is sorely needed. This program acts like you can just look at pinyin once and then know it. Ummmm... no. It is the MOST counter-intuitive and basically stupid romanization system ever. You will need to actively fight against what has been ingrained in you for 20+ YEARS of your life to pronounce pinyin correctly. That takes practice. - The website is essential for learning the pronunciation! You can listen to the word while looking at a picture and the hanzi for it. This is great! You can turn pinyin off and on too, which is so helpful for learning what tones a word takes. However, there are some mistakes where you are asked for a vocab item that wasn't learned yet. Also, the fill-in-the-blank exercises can be frustrating because there isn't an allowance to give you the answer when you just can't figure it out. - The book has many typos when it comes to tone marks. I am proud of myself for having caught two already by chapter 4... but it scares me to think I'm studying incorrect information. It is very do-able to learn one of these lessons per day, let's say 5 per week and review on the other 2 days. If you keep up that pace, you WILL be pretty good in Chinese in only a few months.

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*Product available on Desertcart Taiwan*
*Store origin: TW*
*Last updated: 2026-05-25*