From the NYT: ‘Classes in Chinese Grow as the Language Rides a Wave of Popularity’.
Read it all.
Ken
Archive for October, 2005
The End of Language Tapes & CD’s
Published by October 14th, 2005 in On-Demand and Learning Chinese. 8 CommentsNot sure why it didn’t occur to us earlier the effect of what we are doing, but it took the bright insight of one of our users, Gabriel, to wake us up to what we are helping to achieve: destroy the language audio book market.
I have not taken a Chinese language class, but i have […]
‘This is the earliest empirical evidence of noodles ever found’
These noodles are 4,000 years old. There is no longer any doubt. Noodles were invented in China! Read it all.
Ken
Should a lao wai (foreigner) be teaching Chinese, even at this basic level? Is there an upside to this? A downside? What does this discussion tell us about learning Chinese or any language?
We’ve had an interesting collection of emails on this topic. Some people say the lao wai should not be there, while others […]
Why the ChinesePod?
Published by October 13th, 2005 in About the Chinese language and About ChinesePod. 4 CommentsMost foreign students in China will tell you that learning Mandarin is made more difficult by the teaching methods that are commonly used here. Teachers rely on repetition, rote memorization, and endless explanations (rather than interaction), for example. Another problem is the content: often it is highly literary, or based on ancient history, particularly if […]
It seems we’re experiencing some bandwidth problems. Some people have told me they cannot download the lessons at the moment. It’s got to be all that traffic from Yahoo!
It’s the middle of the night here in Shanghai, but let me see what we can do… Hank, are you awake?
Ken
“To strengthen ties with China, speak the language first”
Published by October 11th, 2005 in About the Chinese language. 0 CommentsA friend of mine referred me to this article. It’s titled “To strengthen ties with China, speak the language first”. Once again it’s a few days old, but and it makes some good points.
First off, it says there aren’t enough Americans studying/learning Chinese. Yep. The same is true in Europe and even more so […]
ChinesePod showed up right on the top of the pile in today’s Yahoo! podcast directory. It also got its first review. Do I really have a British accent?
This is pretty cool. In fact, I never thought teaching languages could be so cool.
The buzz that ChinesePod is generating is motivating us to […]
Succeeding in China - It’s All About the Culture
Published by October 9th, 2005 in Doing Business in China. 2 CommentsHere’s a good essay on doing business in China. It’s from the invaluable CBIZ.
Some quotes:
…the Chinese penchant for bureaucratic administration and methods, all thoroughly contradictory - a mountain of office paperwork yet no formal procedures and that intractable desire to avoid “mistakes” and blame. These factors pose major challenges for foreign companies in China. […]
Here is an article from a site called Chinaview. It’s about a week old, but it takes an interesting look at how the Shanghainese people love their dialect. (The term ‘putonghua’ is the Mandarin term for ‘Mandarin’.) It is certainly true that the Shanghainese regard themselves as smarter than the rest and regard […]
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