Customer Rating:  
Summary: Premium price for budget production
Comment: Play & Learn CHINESE with Mei Mei, Vol. 6 (Let's Play Games)
We have several hundred dollars' worth of Mandarin language tools at our house, including books, tapes, CDs and videos. The common thread among them all is low production value: poor video and audio, and/or limited effectiveness from a language acquisition perspective. I've learned that it's pretty much a crapshoot when purchasing many items. I think of it as a `faith-based' effort to locate the perfect language support for my adopted daughter and myself. I keep trying, and pull what I can from each item.
The 'Play and Learn' series by Mei Mei Hu, although good in many respects, are generally just a step above the 'home movie' category. Mei Mei has Montessori training and definitely knows kids, and she provides some well-informed language modeling in places, but two things would greatly improve the series and earn this and other Mei Mei videos 4-5 stars:
1. Focus on basic production values. This particular video suffers from audio and video tracks that are out of sync with one another. Like other 'Play and Learn' features, the amateur editing and production detract from work that has the potential to be quite good. Titling is poorly edited and sometimes difficult to read.
2. More Mandarin, less English. Mei Mei clearly understands some aspects of language acquisition, and could create even better tools for parents and kids working on Mandarin. More 'natural language' situations involving day-to-day activities using basic Mandarin, with repetition and context, would be wonderful. Kids interacting with one another and parents/teachers using the 'total physical response' (TPR) model would work well.
That being said, we enjoyed the "Dawei Village" video (#7), but mainly for the glimpse into life for the kids and parents featured, not necessarily for the language component. Narrated exclusively in English, there some Mandarin phrases introduced after different segments. Greater emphasis on natural language here would have been welcome.
The bottom line is that low-budget production values are not worth $20-$25 per 30-minute episode. Mei Mei, please take steps to ensure video and audio that highlight your skills as a teacher, and work to bring more natural language settings with regular kids (as opposed to overly-choreographed and costumed dance numbers) to this field. For those kids who have already mastered basic vocabulary (family, colors, animals, food, transportation, clothing, etc.), more advanced structures would also be welcome in the mix.
Xie-Xie
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