Topic: news The Solo Approach: Chinese Learning Softwares

I had been living in China for years, tried classes, but this did not suit my learning or life styles. I have some tacit knowledge of Chinese and have come back to learning more recently.
To be honest, I found Rosetta Stone very helpful for solo learning. It is not perfect, but what system is. RS is OK for general and social English only. But it is very good for that. RS also uses a lot of pictures, and I am a very visual learner. The Voice recognition is not great, but I have yet to find a program that is strong here. One strength is the ability to toggle between PinYin, HanZi or both together, as the displayed text. For those who have learned the basic Chinese characters, this is useful because they can now practice reading. Reading is a hard skill in Chinese, but essential for building language knowledge in any tongue.
Pimsluer has some business English, but don't be fooled into thinking it will prepare you to do business in China. I think Pimsluer will suit more aural learners. No picture or text.