This week I’d like to do some trouble-shooting on ChinesePod.com. I want to know what our learners think about usability on the site. I feel we need to offer more guidance to our learners in parts, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on where that might be. Where do you think we could improve ChinesePod.com in terms of usability? What are the problems you encounter? Where could instructions be clearer?
I’d really appreciate your feedback. I’ll do my best to respond and give you what you need. We want to develop ChinesePod according to your needs.
about the websites usability, i find i come here mostly for the weblog updates and the wiki. The podcasts i get directly from itunes. I think it would be nice if the weblog was on the mainpage, since we dont actually need to see every podcast listed on the main page. Just the newest release i think would be fine. Then the rest of the mainpage could be used for something intresting.
I think what makes this podcast so great, is jenny zhu and ken carrolls personalities. listening to their stories, little jokes, life experiences, and china itself. Makes learning the language even more motivating.
Hi Ken,
Xin nian guo de hao ma? I have to admit, between Christmas, New Year, and Lunar New Year I am quite holiday’d out. I tell you it’s not easy celebrating all the time! And I truely didn’t realize Chinese New Year was such an extended festive time. Overseas it’s a one-day affair and Jan 1st new year was usually only a 1-3 day break!
Anyway, I’ll slowly get myself back up to speed. Acutally I’ve found the new site a bit less ‘clickable’ than the original. I realize though that there is a lot more there though. To be honest I haven’t spent enough time in front of the computer to properly get accustomed to things, so you can take that for what it’s worth, not enough user time vs. is the site less useable.
These days I go on errands or to the gym each day and I take my MP3 player with one or two new lessons and lessons which I want to review. I typically find that after two intermediate lessons and some scanning through 1-3 elementary lessons over the course of about 1-2 hours I have enough new material to digest.
I should then at some other point in the day sit down and use the website for another hour or two, but haven’t seemed to find that ‘time’. I would like to see myself clicking thru the day’s grammar points and dialogue, but find myself wandering thru the blog, wiki and general surfing and catching up on emails.
After downloading the day’s MP3 I typically will scroll thru the comments, and it’s very helpful when there are additional points/remarks from Jenny there. Then the ‘net’ takes me away to other pages. It seems only a click or two away to get over to the Learning Center and the dialogue, but that ‘click’ seems for me quite ephemeral. **Maybe a clickable link** in the comments section to some specific answers or questions raised that takes one to the learning center would encourage it’s use.
**OK** I have just done my own useability test, because heck, you guys have the links to the Review Exercises, Dialogue, etc right there??? What I do is this, I read the day’s lesson synpet ’summary’ which is always entertaining, then I click on the comments, then I forget about the review exercises, dialogue, etc., and wander off. (please keep in mind you are getting feedback from an easily distracted person!) So…if you add those same links to the bottom and top of the ‘comments’ pages, I think I may click them more often.
Lunch time, ohh…it’s only 9. Well, anytime is a good time to eat. Cya later.
I haven’t listened to a lot of the more recent episodes,m so maybe this has been fixed, but one of the reasons I stopped listening is that I don’t think you have enough synthesis exercises. I initially learned Chinese by working through all three levels of the Pimsleur series. Now I’m in a more traditional class and I’m way ahead of most other students, especially when it comes to oral skills. I think this is because of Pimsleur.
One other student in the class is close to my level, and he also used Pimsleur. Another friend who, like me, has a Chinese spouse, has been doing more traditional study. His reading is good, but his speaking is rather slow - he overpronounces the tones and he artificially breaks up the words. I’m sure he will eventually get better (he already speaks German and English fluently), but I suspect he would do better than I if he also did oral training with Pimsleur.
Pimsleur uses a listen, repeat, synthesize approach that also uses overlapping to really burn the phrases into your brain.
Example:
1. Listen and repeat - “Wo shi meiguoren.”
2. Later they ask you in English to say, “I am American,” then pause 5 seconds while the you attempt to say “Wo shi meiguoren.”
3. Repeate the correct answer back to the student
4. Synthesis - now they ask you to say “I am Chinese” (somewhere between 1 & 2 they taught “Zhongguoren”)
The result is that each sentence alternates reinforcing something you may have learned a few lessons ago with stretching yourself to try something new. In other words, every other sentence is relatively hard, the others relatively easy.
Pimsleur lessons are ~30 minutes long and really should be listened to all the way through to get the full effect. It would be great to have something in the 10-15 minute range that took a similar approach.
IMO you guys could have a really terrific service if you adopted Pimsleur’s approach, and I would sign up for a year’s worth of bi- or tri-weekly lessons (15 minutes each) on the spot. For comparison, you can usually find Pimsleur on eBay for $100 or so. That gets you 32 30-minute lessons.
Oh how I wish I could keep up. I was supposed to do so during Chinese New Year ( I am an American living in Taiwan) but I had to go to Japan on business and too much sake ruined my plans. I was pleasantly surprised to see traditional Chinese Characters recently added. Thank you.
For me I find the newbie lessons too easy but ok usefull, (maybe I spend a total of 25 minutes) the intermediate lessons a real challenge to follow without seeing the text. If I cheat and read the text which I able to do, then the audio I can follow. But I try not to do this. (maybe I have to spend 1 hr) The elementary is just about ok for me to follow without seeing the text. (maybe spend 30 minutes) I like the intermediate because that is the goal NOW to be able to say I am at the intermediate level.
So question 1 how long or how many lessons do you feel to progress to intermediate or will intermediate become tougher with time. In a tradional school you move up a grade with time or success. So in a traditional school you move from elementary to the BEGINNING of the intermediate. Here maybe the next level (intermediate) is a moving target. Yes? That’s ok I do know if I go to the archives and re listen to an early intermediate is is easier now to follow. But I am sure part of this is recall.
Not a question but request I would like to see more elementary or even advance elementary or sub-advanced intermediate and less newbie. Thats for me.
Perhaps you know your audience better. I paid up for a year partly to force me to get a return on my investment and because it was one very good way to say thank you for an excellent method to improve my chinese.
I have to say that for a native spanish Chinesepod.com is an excellent tool for learning chinese. I’ve been studying chinese using the CDs course from Auralog (do you know it?), but i felt that I need something more and this is what I’ve discovered with ChinesePod. What to do for improving the site? Ok, let me suggest some things: 1) Include some kind of test in order a student could evaluate when it is supposed to be ready for next grade. 2) A program or schedule for us to know what’s going on the next days or weeks, themes you are planning to teach, etc 3) Perhaps it is a little bit soon, keeping in mind you started on September (Am i wrong?) but in a near future you may include some way for students to download summaries or compendiums of lessons given in the past.
My two cents! And “saludos” (greetings - wèn hòu) from Spain.
Antonio.
I’m going through podcasts 18-20 right now. I have been downloading all the podcasts, but I only started listening them recently (I’m a procrastinator). I find the archive a bit tedious to navigate. For example, to grab a pdf of an earlier podcast, I may go through several mouse clicks to get to it. I would like to see some kind of “Table of Contents” or something that will list more of the podcasts on a single page without me having to do a lot of scrolling or clicking on “previous” or “next.” Something that lists just the date of the podcast and the title with a link that takes it to a page that shows the full information (difficulty level, summary, etc.).
I like the new website style. I found it clearer and easier to use.
I always start with the weblog, it is just like getting my newspaper…
I download the lessons through ITunes. I first listen to it and then get on the site. I print the transcript and listen again.
Sometimes new vocabulary is being used in the audio and you cannot find it back on the site. That is very annoying!!! I do not know how to write it and the tones?
I like Antonio’s proposal about a kind of test (maybe every 10 lessons). It will be very helpful for the ones who do not live in China and cannot practice what they have learned. It can be used as a motivation tool.
I notice that lessons beginner 1 to 27 do not have any audio button in the wordbank (it is not a “flash” problem since the audio button appears on lesson 27!). how can this be solved? does anyone have that problem too?
The grammar lessons are interesting, but I am with Audio 23 and I practice Grammar 3 and I discovered that vocabulary is being used which we never studied before. It is very important to give the info about the relevant lessons. Okay you can always consider that it is always good to learn new words, but when you are in a grammar lesson, you want to stick to the grammar.
I also agree that you have to click a lot of time to get your info.
I might get very picky now, because to tell you the truth I really enjoy your site and the podcasts… and it works (according to my Chinese friends). Thanks for reading my complaints…
So far I haven’t said anything, but I’m learning so much from these comments. Please keep them coming. They are smart and insightful and helpful.
We will meet here on Thurdsay to look at tackling as many of them as we can.
Is Chinesepod easy to use? Actually, we’re the worst people to give input, you should watch a few of us using the site and/or downloading the mp3s. How much ‘useability’ testing has CPod actually done? You could go thru formal scripts, videotape, or just carefully sit, notepad in hand, behind someone using your site for a while. It’s always an eye-opener. We users never use things the right way!
Also, I feel very inefficient in how I go about purusing the blog, Wiki,learning center, downloading the mp3s. I know some of my issues would be resolved if I had an iPod vs the mp3 player I used. But also I know I’m not up to speed on good blog readers, RSS, etc. More FAQs, maybe even a FAQ area where users could post their troubles and solutions, over the long-term this will reduce the support necessary from your site, and also make the site a good knowledge bank that we can all draw on.
One-click Save to WordBank
Would be nice if I could set a personal preference for the word bank. When I click to save a word, it automatically goes into the word bank and I’m left at my original text. Currently I click to save a word, then click again to Save it to Word Bank, then hit the back button twice on my browser to go back to the dialogue I was reading.
I am really enjoying myself. I have the basic subscription I was wondering if you archive the buzzwords podcast as well as the news podcast that are availabe on Sunday(EST)? Or do I have to upgrade my subscription.
Thanks guys
Todd Wynn
what i think would make chinesepod great. two words.
VIDEO. PODCASTS.
my mind explodes..
You produce the dialoge transcript as PDF, and send them to me as an email. I’d prefer to have the dialogue as plain email text. I suppose this might be a problem for others who don’t have fonts intalled?
I find the PDF font for Chinese text seems a bit fuzzy, reading it on the computer. Besides, I always copy the text to a Chinese editor where I can get mouse over definitions and add my own notes.
David, I’ve just recently started an FAQ on the wiki. Feel free to add to it.
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ
I think it would be helpful if there was a link to the dialogue after adding an individual word to the word bank, or if the add word process used a popup window so you didn’t lost your place. As a firefox user I usually middle-click on links to open them in a new tab, but that doesn’t work when click on characters.
Also it would nice to have some more options in the word bank area, like some fun ways to make use of your word bank. I find flashcards rather boring and tend not to make that much use out of my word bank. It would also to be nice to be able to search your wordbank in the same way as the glossary.
Almost forgot, the option to pause the dialogue audio would be good as well, this would be useful on long passages.
WordBank: MP3 conversion, something really new
OK, if your techies can actually start to build an audio library, or import it from somewhere, wouldn’t it be FABULOUS if I could have my wordbank converted to a MP3 sound file with all the words spoken. The Chinese word, then the English word. A world of options would open up if you had this kind of ‘bank’ of words and their audios.
Wordbank: ability to save phrases and audio clips to a bank
This shouldn’t be to hard—a doable I think. You’ve put a lot of time into the audio clips that come along with the dialogues, why not leverage them more.
I’ve just started my trail subscription today, but here’s what I’ve noticed so far.
1. In my browser (Safari, yes I use a Mac), the flashcards don’t show the entire definition in English. It gets cut off. Slightly annoying.
2. I agree with David — one click add to Word Bank.
3. The flashcard export function is non-functional. It exports, but does not keep anything resembling characters or pinyin.
4. (for the web guru) Is there a way to make the flashcards keep track of your accuracy, and show words that you know well less frequently? Non-web flashcard programs do this.
5. (also for the web guru) I agree with Bazza, flashcards don’t stay interesting. Could you add options for matching games, like “Memory”? In my ideal dream ChinesePod website, there would even be vocabulary games that you could play with other students, like a Chinese word version of “go fish” or “set”, using the word bank words that they have in common.
Also, I wanted to let you know that for the most part, I really like the site, especially the blogs, the Wiki and the dialogue and word pages with audio. The PodCasts are really good — very clear and my Chinese husband has stopped laughing at my pronounciation.
I started with Pimseleur as well. I got through the first two and half the third then I just couldn’t keep going. I found it to be so entirely boring. It’s pretty much exactly the same as the Japanese ones except the replaced the dialogues with Chinese. Sometimes they’ll review one thing to the point that it becomes ridiculous, or they talk about the most useless things like going to the Beijing Opera or asking a colleague to fax something - especially in level III. I guess I did learn a lot from it, but I find Chinese Pod is so much funner and refreshing. Also, sometimes in the Pimsleur I really didn’t know what word they were using. Was it sha or xia or jiao or zhao? The thing that is great about here is that you get the transcripts too.
Oh, I second the video blogs. That would rock!
Hi Ken,
One immediate comment I have is that the mp3 downloads are crappy slow for local listeners in Shanghai.
I’ve tried from home and office connections and the best download’s speeds i’m getting are around 6-7kb a sec.
Looks like you’re serving them from the Washington DC, USA. I know the clientele is global, but what about thoughts for us locals in .cn land
I can provide a local Shanghai mirror if you’re interested on one of our servers here.
Other options might be to provide torrents of the mp3 files - so the more people that download - the faster it gets.
iTunes sucks somewhat from China I’ve found.
Let me know.
Lawrence (小杜）/ www.shanghaiguide.com
I’m back on the subject of pricing. I tried the basic service for a week. A daily pdf isn’t worth even $5 a month to me. Why? Because so many PDFs are free that it feels wrong to pay for something so simple. I love the podcasts and think they are a great loss-leader. (In the US, a supermarket will advertise some product at a very low price, often lower than what the market paid wholesale for it. I.e. they take a loss when anyone buys that product. But how many people go to the supermarket to buy, say, toilet paper and walk out with just the TP? On your way to the checkstand, you notice a new flavor of ice cream or remember you’re out of soap. And you spend a lot more than the supermarket loses in toilet paper sales. I.e. the cheap product leads you into the store and then they think they have you hooked.)
Anyway, your podcasts are the perfect loss-leader. I come here every day to download the current offering. And I’d love to pay a nominal sum for learning materials, but they have to be ingenious or extraordinarily useful. How about supplementing the free podcast with another that runs you through, say, Pimsleur-style exercises. (I first studied Chinese in the Seventies. Very soon after that, I got my hands on the US Navy’s (???) Chinese learning course, which is way out of date but relies on repetition, drill, repetition and drill. For example, you not only say you are a Chinese or American person, you also say you’re a Russian and a Spaniard and a French person and… You get well and truly sick of that sentence, but whatever it is, you’ll never forget it.
I haven’t had a chance to see the premium learning tools, but they would have to be fabulous (useful, good-looking, culturally as well as linguistically informative–i.e. substantial in all meanings of the word–in order to be worth your price.
Sandra
I thought they were in Shanghai?
Add a comments section to Learning Center
Hi Ken, I have to admit I have only just recently gotten up my study habits to start utilizing the Learning Center. Today, after posting a response to Denis, I realized something. Although I throughly enjoy posting and browsing thru the comments, blog and wiki, and I think they are all key motivators for my studies, I think the one place that is missing a comments section is the learning center and so I tend to not gravitate towards it. And this is actually what you want More of right?
I myself find it tough to see a ‘grammar’/language question response from Jenny in the comments, then I have to look for the podcast it looks too, then I wish it was collated in the Wiki, etc., all the while I am in places ‘other’ than the learning center. I find that the Comments section for the podcast summaries are much easier to browse thru than the blog itself. I think the ‘blog’ is rather a infrastructure set up for daily readings as you were, not like the structures for Forums, and ‘learning threads’
I would suggest adding a ‘Comments’ ability for each dialogue in the Learning Center where one can post more specific usuage/grammar/language queries, and where we could get teacher responses. This instead of in the Podcast Summary comments which have a mis-mash of general feedback.
On a slightly more macro issue, is having just ‘one’ native-language teacher/Jenny providing usuage/grammar/language questions enough for the student base that you have? Part of a ‘good’ classroom is having the ability to pose questions to the teachers, getting a response, having teachers get to know students. I know that down the line it will be nice to pair and/or have the ability to Skype, link up learners with native-speakers, but that would be further down the road right?
For a very incremental cost you could add another native-Chinese teacher, who could even work from home with a internet connection, (pls make sure they are as witty, fun, knowledgable, and engaging online as is Jenny). Plus then what a kicker you would have for someone to sign up for the learning center “Get access to an interactive-online forum for your specific language questions in the Learning Center with your Premium subscription.”
,,,btw, right at the bottom of the dialogue section, like the comments in your podcast summaries, not another separate area to distract me from reviewing!
d
Speed of Servers for those in China
Regarding Lawrences offer to mirror your site, take him up on it!!! Although the internet is global, China is different, just ask Hank! I don’t have quite the same issues as Lawrence anymore since I upgraded my home broadband, but I am paying for the ‘BEST’ speed available and it is still slow for me to connect to most non-China sites, I regretably re-realized this when I was in North America over the holidays and going—mannn your broadband is fast. Check you if you don’t have the same issue with EPod, though that might be on the Asian/new zealand trunk of the internet and not cause the same issues.
Dialogue Section comments function/space
Upon reflection and lunch, I really like this idea! I think if you add it, and it should be a very low level of effort task for your IT folks, it would reap huge returns. I think even only putting the caveat that this comments section is just for language-specific, lesson-specific comments will get you plenty of students helping each other out, you could beta some Chinese candidates to be the official facilitator, have guest input from Jenny and yourself, and really crank up the speed of learning for us Cpoders out here! Heck, take a google-like approach and put out the ‘beta’, it should be like three-clicks of the website template to make it happen! Hurry up, let’s go! Yah–I had coffee with my lunch.
I use I-Tunes & Safari…have that problem already mentioned with the Vocabulary tag not visible about halfway down the dialogue.
Love the reading practice & audio clips!
I use I-Tunes & Safari…have that problem already mentioned with the Vocabulary tag not visible about halfway down the dialogue.
Love the reading practice & audio clips!
Englishpod is offline, but i’m going to assume Ken still serves his content from media.libsyn.com (which according to my cursory look is in Washington DC).
I’m serious about offering space -
I have an IT Company here in Shanghai, and amongst other things such as:
IT Support for home and office, network installations, website design, we do hosting.
Blatant plug - ( http://www.computersolutions.cn)
We run our own unix servers, and its not a problem technically to help you out (just have to keep an eye on bandwidth usage).
I can also assist with the ICP licencing stuff if you need (its a requirement for hosting in China now), or just host the mp3’s locally, or even help you setup .torrents for the mp3’s so that you can serve them from your site with minimal bandwidth usage.
Let me know.
My email is Lawrence at computersolutions dot cn
Ken - I’ve been here since the DD’s days from 95 onwards (http://www.ddsclub.com for the more recent KTV stuff) - if you saw me, you’d know me…
I remember Kai En in Wuyi lu…, thats been a while.
Getting old in Shanghai haha
Lawrence (小杜）/ www.shanghaiguide.com
Hi,
I have been considering subscribing to the premium services, but I find that I don’t quite have the time to sit down in front of the computer to do the exercises. The Podcast format is best (of couser it was “invented” for people on the move). I think the pricing is reasonable, but if one has no time to sit in front of a computer, then it is a waste. I do wish that in addition to the podcast there and additional portable component (a “premium podcast”) to your premium service. Not sure if piracy is a concern, but there no easy solutions to protect the portable content (there are a bunch of incompatible and non0interoperable DRM technologies available). In any case, I think ChinesePod (even the podcast portion alone) is the best: voices are cristal clear, personalities are charming and topics are current and entertaining. Keep up the good work.
Voting
Why not add voting to your summaries page. It may help you guage which script formats people like the most. Ie. like feedback on Ebay users.
Mobile Review
1. Can the dialogue audios be put into a followup ‘review’ podcast. Maybe you could work the business model of premium subscribers get it right away and the archive, while those with holes in their blue suede shoes can get them delayed and only the five-most recent.
2. Can you put the vocab match up review exercise into some sort of podcast games/review cast?
Hi! I think ChinsesePod is great!
I have a suggestion to make: I have a video ipod. If i press the middle button several times while I play a Chinesepod podcast on it, an English text will appear describing the podcast (I think it is the same text as the one that appears on the Chinesepod home page). Now, it would be simply wonderful if this text was, instead of an English description, a full Chinese transcript of the podcast! That way, I could sit on the bus and listen to a podcast and read the transcript, without having to bother to print the transcript on paper and bring it with me!
I understand that this is not possible for the free podcast since you charge money for the PDF transcript, but perhaps you could have a separate podcast for subscribers?
I listen to Chinesepod.com about 45 minutes a day and I’m starting to feel like I know Ken and Jenny. I would like to have pictures on the website so I can know what the people I am listening to look like.
Have you seen the Wiki? Some photos there.
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki.....=Main_Page
On RSS feeds: is it possible to get an RSS feed for ALL the different postings and comments and threads? Or is that already there, and I’m just missing it? It’s just that it’s a bit annoying to keep adding RSS feeds for every little thread that begins.
Like others here, I’m using Safari and the mouse-over definitions become invisible after moving a few lines into the transcripts. I can avoid this problem by using Firefox, but I’d prefer to stick with Safari.
A point on the podcasts: I think A LITTLE more grammar explanation would be nice… for example, instead of just saying “yi jian” (一間) means “one”, clarify that Chinese uses counting words, and there’s tons of them, but you don’t need to worry TOO much because “ge” (個) is usually understandable; when “Although… but…” came up, the need for BOTH (unlike in English) was mentioned almost as an aside, but I suspect a lot of new-to-Chinese listeners missed that point. (I’m a few weeks behind listening to the podcasts, so perhaps these points have already been addressed.)
Love the service–keep up the good work!
I have to say — your Chinese dictionary (glossary) is very good and easy to use. If I pay for premium service after my free trial, it will be to have access to that dictionary. I have one request — just a time saver, really. For multi-character words, it would be nice to have links to the individual characters from the word’s page.
Also, I just spent about 2 hours copying and pasting my word bank into iFlash. I would definitely pay for iFlash files, or ones that import into iFlash. Your export feature for the Word Bank doesn’t work because it turns pinyin and characters to gibberish. Also, as a side note, I am using iFlash instead of your word bank because 1) your flash cards don’t work on my Mac 2) iFlash has algorithms that allow cards that you know (by self-marking them as known) to show up with reducing frequency the more you “know” them, so they are less boring than standard flash cards 3) iFlash can port to my iPod, so I can do my flashcards while I’m sitting around in waiting rooms or on the subway.
Thanks for all your hard work!
I have been an irregular listener of chinesepod I think its great as I get more regular will provide more feedback. Thanks to Ken and Jenny…
iFlash is great. Highly recommend it for Mac users.
A further suggestion: I’m repeating someone in another thread here: during the podcast, it’d be nice to hear things spoken “at normal speed” (or pretty close). Normally you repeat things three times; make one of those “normal/ fast”, or add a fourth repetition. Why? The other day I was going over one of the podcasts with a Chinese friend, and she pointed out that when I’m repeating after the podcast, at slow deliberate podcast speed, my pronunciation has a lot of problems. However, when I use the same sentence in a conversation with her, at normal conversation speed, my pronunciation is fine. Apparently my conversation pronunciation is ok, but my “think carefully about it pronunciation” isn’t very good at all.
I have to say that there have been some incredibly useful suggestions here. Rather talk (or write) about them here, I think it’s better for the ChinesePod team to push on with using the ideas. I’ve already taken lots of ideas for lessons, themes, and grammar/structures from this thread. Meanwhile Hank Horkoff and the tech team are busy embedding these ideas into the ‘plumbing’, as he calls it. You will be hearing fromn them with feedback on this later in the week.
I don’t see any end point for ChinesePod - just constant improvement, based on your feedback. I believe we are the first ever to build a language program on that basis. For you, I hope it means relevance.
After years of writng and producing instructional books, it blows me away that the learners can now determine what they want in a program. I just love that idea. (That’s why I got involved in this project.) Imagine where that could take us, one year from now.
Greetings,
I’m in the 1 wk trial on ChinesePod. The most positive things are that I can listen to it any time, go at my own speed, find the dialogue & vocab on the website, and Ken is very upbeat. Ken has a good, clear voice. I love to listen to Jenny’s voice. I think that the Newbie podcasts should have a 10 minute segment of Jenny and her best friend talking about anything….boys, politics, art, marriage, ideas for a podcast…just to hear the sound of a mandarin conversation.
Also, I’d love to hear some of these sounds that Jenny makes in isolation. When I listen to the dialogues and then check the transcript, it takes me quite a while to realize what word is being written because the english phonetic alphabet only approximates most of the mandarin sounds.
It takes me a while to find my dialogue on the website. I haven’t yet figured my way around the website.
In the meantime, I’ve progressed to chapters 2 & 3. I’m quite pleased. I’ve decided that when I get past lesson 6 I’ll look for a mandarin speaker.
Thanks for all your work.
Hi Brandy, about iFlash on an iPod:
Do you think the iFlash is portable to a Nano? Would the cards still be readable?
Hi Ken, if you guys could step back and re-look at my question and how it would ‘thread’ thru your website, do I go to the Wiki, email Brandy? keep the dialogue going here?
Also, Brandy seems to have found a way to make the learning ‘more portable’, which I LOVE, anything to make your website and learning-center ‘portable’
is gonna be new and on the frontier-edge! Let me brainstorm a little:
Making Cpod More Portable
1. exporting Word Bank to iFlash on an iPod
2. sending a Daily Word from ones personal Word Bank to ones email automatically-daily
3. sending a Daily Word plus a related exercise, audio clip to one’s email automtically-daily
3. make Flashplayer Dialogue audios exportable to mp3, have a link at the end which is a collection of all the dialogue audio
4. make phrases save-able to a Phrase Bank
5. make Learning Center exercises exportable to iPods, email, allow one to set personal preferences on push-schedule
6. make WordBank take dates-saved/reviewed words into a personal online Learning Center calendar and exportable to YahooCalendar, etc.
7. select a tool to allow one to see in the Learning Center one’s own posts and followups from the Comments, Wiki and Weblog–and ‘push’ this to an email
8. export something to my phone
9. export something to my brain
10. time for lunch…..
Learning Center: Navigation
When using the learning center, if I am able to see the left-navigation buttons for Podcast Review, and Grammar Review, I don’t see the Word Bank tab very intuitively as in the upper right hand tag space. As it seems there is some ‘learning’ available from the Word Bank and Glossary Tab, why not have them show up as selections in the left-hand Learning Center Navigation Pane: Podcast Review, Grammar Review, Word Bank, Glossary.
I also only recently realized/noticed/read the description for the neat word catagory engine you have where the category text size increases with the amount of words in it, seems a fun way to learn, will try it now. I think many others are completely ‘unaware’ of this fun tool, hence it has ‘no useability’.
Hi Shawn: About Cpod’s location and servers.
About Cpod’s location and servers. I think you were interested in some of our comments about servers. Yes, Jenny and Ken are in Shanghai and produce the shows there, but the servers (I and Lawrence guess) are not podcasting from a China-based server. If they were–the speeds would be pretty slow for those NOT in China. The internet is global…but not completely.
Grammar Review/lots of improvement needed
I’m a bit hesitant to post this comment, but hopefully it can be taken as some ’sincere’ feedback to help improve on your quality. I am a bit disappointed that the Grammar and Review Exercise sections are not developing as quickly/in-tandem with the quality of the podcasts. The grammar bank is very sparse and only covers newbie material. There is very little expansion on the multimedia part of it. Unfortunately, although I think the narrator’s English is quite good–her definite Chinese accent makes it a bit less ‘listenable’ than I would feel optimal.
The review Exercises are also quite limited, just 2-3 pages. I think if there were more expansion excercises, they would be something I could come back to later to really consolidate things. Right now I just flip thru it rather quickly and that’s it. I think although it has a text-pane for user feedback/comment, it has not drawn many to comment or provide input. It seems too buried and far away from the comments or blog sections.
That said, I think the concept and multi-media part of it is very elegant and sophisticated. Additionally the linking to other materials is also quite impressive. Some wittier comments in the grammar review narration would make it more engaging, rather than a high-techie re-do of traditional ‘boring’ grammar/review methods. Just need more meat & bones behind the content development. Lastly, although the multimedia/tech is good, I think it makes it ‘locked down’ and hard for users to be creative with figuring out ways to make it more portable and to suit their own equipment/needs.
Regarding the PDF transcripts…
I have printed out most of them now and I noticed that you started with only simplified characters, then you added the traditional characters, which is ok because I understand that some people have a need for this. But as someone said before, having both just one after the other, was a bit confusing. Now I see that since a week or so you stil make the two versions but completely separated. The problem for me is that each pdf is longer now and as there is no page break between the simplified version and the traditional one, I have to print the whole lot. An obvious solution would be to ad a page brake an even repeat the title. Then I could print out the first part, someone in Taiwan only the second part or both. Separate PDF’s would even be better, but then you would have to adapt the website too (2 links needed).
Regards
Marc
Yes, a page break would be good. So for example for a 4 pages document, if you want to use the simplified version you only need to print out the pages 1+2, for traditional you print out pages 3+4.
Before Chinesepod I used to listen to Pimsleur. I like their approach, English phrase first, then a break and then twice in Chinese. One could have this sort of functionality in addition to the regular program. That would help to review useful phrases, vocabulary etc.
I mostly use Chinesepod on my commute. I walk to the train station listening to the mp3, then review the pdf in the train. I’m not going to be able to use much of the premium content since it requires to be online. If the premium content would be somewhat downloadable, in a PDA sort of thing, that would make it more attractive for me.
I keep on trying to find good study techniques. I find following exercise useful: I listen to the dialog sentence by sentence and try to write it down on paper. For every character I include the tone mark. Then I check against the transcript to see if I got the characters and tones correct. Similar to this one could have some sort of interactive “guess the tones” game on Chinesepod.
Andreas
I agree that there is a need for downloadable ‘repetition’ exercises. It could be the same sentences that where used in the lessons, with perhaps the sample sentences thrown in and some exercises to review basic skills. I think that all the material is already there to start this off. It is only a matter to rearrange it and to make sure that there are adequate pauses so that one has the time to repeat the sentences and the words. There would be added value in these files, so they could go into the learning center and be part of the subscription.
Regards
Another suggestion to make chinesepod even easier to use.
I find the number of lessons that are already there overwhelming and I am going through those one by one starting from the beginning. But that is perhaps not the best way to ‘catch up’. So what I suggest is to provide different trails for new users. Trails could map out a path for new users so that they can very quickly reach their particular goal. There would be an absolute beginners trail pointing to lessons with basic vocab, the lessons about tones, etc. Some trails could be about certain subjects, like food, visiting China, travelling, technology, the cabs series, etc.
These trails could be part of the learning center and therefore subscription based. The added value would be that it would help us to make sense of the growing number of lessons. (Think about the day when there will be several hundreds of podcasts to choose from…)
Also, at the start of a lesson Ken could indicate what possible prerequisites for the lesson could be. So in stead of saying ‘We have covered most of the words in previous lessons’, he might say ‘You may want to review lessons A10, A11 and A22 before you tackle this lesson because most of the words in this dialogue have been …”
Regards
Marc
Response to David (sorry this is a few days later… I have a grant due)
Hi David,
The iFlash website says that they support regular and photo iPods, so I’d guess they aren’t ready for the Nano quite yet.
Here’s the site: http://www.loopware.com/iflash/
On the regular iPod you just enable the disk option in iTunes, copy the file on, and away you go. Easy as pie.
You could try it (they have a free trial), or email the company and ask them about it. It looks like iFlash is their only product at the moment.
Also, though I haven’t used it yet, iFlash also supports audio files, so it’s really ideal for language learning.
Oh, I almost forgot! The XML export option lets me import the Word Bank into Word properly, where I can then save it into a format that iFlash can read. It’s still a bit clunky, but far better than the copy-paste method. Thanks Tech Guys!!
And my next request is to be able to do a search for a Chinese character in the lessons themselves. I’ve had at least one word in my word bank that I have no idea what lesson it came from! (It was 再 and I still don’t know what lesson that was from…)
Also, audio files for each vocabulary item.
Hi Brandy,
再 (zai4) figures in lesson 25 “sightseeing”.
Now is your word bank updated!
I would like having the option to select which level I want to receive. Now, iTunes downloads lots of different levels ,which is kind of bemusing
Any chance you could just make everything free and then get a ton of subscribers signed up and a lot more hits, then make cash with advertising?
About iFlash on an Nano/iPod
Thanks Brandy…..ok…I was all set to buy the new 1GB nano in black…now I have to go back to that frustrattttting dilemma of iPod or Nano…Can I just have both?
To Cpod: I tried to look up ‘youzhu’ in the glossary, but got tired after hitting the next 20 ..the next 20…and only got to the ‘ya’s…maybe I don’t know how to use it right. Also, although there are ‘extra’ words above and beyond the words in the casts…there are a BUNCH of low frequency words that could be expunged.
It’s raining here today, “下雨亭大的’ xia yu ting da de It’s really raining a lot. I’m not sure the characters are right, but the sounds are–as I was evesdropping on someone else’s cellie.
David your comment on 14th is great. Now I am not sure whether i should continue using those materials to teach… I am a bit tired of correcting on each lesson, and even correcting the tones on pdfs! I think maybe I should come up with my own podcast, which I would surely do with some grammar ( sorry I can’t get rid of it 职业病 haha ) according to their levels. I don’t know… or Cpod team have to solve those problems soon… even at cost of replanning some previous newbie lessons…. 8-|
I have started to download the newbie podcasts and some of the lessons when I open them are not complete (ie. only 14 seconds - lesson 3). Is this only because these are the free lessons (and if I paid the downloads are different/more complete)?
I understand that this is mainly for spoken Chinese but I like the idea of having a test/quiz to figure out where you should be or if you retained the information. I also like the idea of set ‘paths’ from Marc but perhaps it could be where you could buy a selected ‘path’ (15 or 30 lessons, etc) to explore with transcripts, vocab, games, etc. The subscription to the selected ‘path’ would be in leiu of the subscription service for the month/year (it is just too expensive for students like myself) for the goal you wish to achieve for those out there not exactly looking for fluency right away but ie. travel, short business activities in China, communicating with Chinese relatives, first semester Chinese language study in university (something I would buy for a moderate price). There could also be ‘paths’ for the subscription service as well. Just starting out I too agree that when Ken says “we talked about this in a previous lesson” sometimes I don’t know which lesson. I don’t think he needs to state that in the lesson, but perhaps have it listed on the website/transcript notes on the sound file to reference.
overall, I enjoy both Jenny and Ken and have introduced your site to many at my university.
Pia
Tecnológico de Monterrey - Monterrey, México
David — I use iFlash on my iPod, but it’s not flashy. It uses the Notes or Contacts section and is basically a well-spaced text file that you scroll down to find each card “side”. I’m not sure that particular function is worth rethinking your Nano/iPod options overly much. (This is because Apple has restricted the development of applications that run on the iPod, btw.)
CPod — adding to my wish list - export Word Bank to iPod Notes file (or Contacts file). It’s just a well formatted text file. If you’d like my iFlash exported file as a sample, feel free to email me. (even better — add a notation about what lesson the vocabulary is from, and then you can scroll through your vocab as you’re listening to the Podcast! I think I’ll go add that to my iFlash cards.)
dominique — Thank you!!
Pia — the podcasts should be complete when you download them. The subscription is for PDF and website access. It sounds like your file is not downloading completely. Have you tried downloading with Torrent, iTunes or Juice?
(See Getting Started… http://www.chinesepod.com/where_get_started.php)
Also…
David said “To Cpod: I tried to look up ‘youzhu’ in the glossary, but got tired after hitting the next 20 ..the next 20…and only got to the ‘ya’s…maybe I don’t know how to use it right. Also, although there are ‘extra’ words above and beyond the words in the casts…there are a BUNCH of low frequency words that could be expunged.”
My response…
NOOOO! Make a better search engine, but don’t get rid of my precious words!
I agree that the pinyin search engine could use a LOT of help though. One of my coworkers taught me 极了 ji2 le, exceedingly. I can find the word searching by character, and by English, but not by pinyin
On the PDF print outs, you should do a better job of documentating them…such as include the level of the lesson and the release date. This way, when they are printed out, one can sort them better.
For anyone that came into CPod after it’s inception, and wants to print out the individual PDF’s…it’s very difficult to sort them in the three categories of BASIC, ELEMENTARY and IMMEDIATE. I know you folks state four levels…but I’ve not seen any level above Immediate. Besides, I don’t think the Immediate lessons should really be classified as Elementary. I’m glad that CPod has elminated the original music ghetto jingo’s that they used in the first few months of the lessons, and also eliminated the stereotypical GONG. However, for anyone coming to ChinesePod for the first time, the opening jingo and closing gong is still there. That music was somewhat non-professional and whimsical, something that was non-essential for Chinese lessons coming out of China and definitely there because someone on the staff thought it was cute.
I found out about Chinesepod one week ago, and I have to say I love it. It is a great resource. I’m working through the first months of lessons, trying to reach the most recent episode asap. (A lot of work, since there’s so much there already!)
My suggestion for improvement: when you click on the File Information of a Chinesepod episode in iTunes, the dialogue transcript turns up in the lyrics tab. However, for some reason I don’t quite understand, unlike lyrics of songs, the lyrics are not viewable on the iPod. Instead of the lyrics, the file comments are shown (a description of the lesson). Having the characters and dialogue transcript viewable on iPods (videos and nanos, older ones don’t display lyrics) would make the lessons complete and perfect.
Re: the opening jingle and gong, I like them. Haven’t yet reached the lessons where it was abandoned though.
Hi! Good morning everyone! 早上好！
1. Brandy: About ‘expunging’ words from the dictionary. Hmm…I was thinking that a dictionary of JUST Cpod words would be really usefull in that one could see what words one ‘knew’ vs. ‘didn’t know’ after listening to the lessons. As a compromise, maybe they could make a TOGGLE preference to show CPod words vs. all! I also was thinking expunge words b/c I figured all the other dictionaries out there were probably better. I still go to my Oxford dictionary on my PalmOS device b/c I can write in characters slowly for lookup.
2. iFlash. Hmmm. If we’re really just talking porting around ‘text’ files… I was hoping for some flashcard-type program to make me smart…guess all the other failed attempts may be telling me something. Nano…you are reaching out to me, I hear your call.
3. Barry: The intro. I think you’re too into Bay Area culture, way too PC; what’s wrong with ‘getto’, it means place of abode and don’t forget Chinatown is a type of ‘getto.’ I could argue/agree with you on the intro., but it’s fun, it didn’t bother many people, and yahh–it reflected someone’s tastes, but that’s all cool. I would rather see Cpod spending time on other stuff than reworking the original intro-clips, I don’t think they lost anyone cause of them. Beat/mix was catchy and fun. I didn’t see a quality issue here. Fun is not contradictory to professional, yah? You stuck in Arizona now?…that sure ain’t like SFO…
4. Cpod: Extra audio clips. I think you probably went back and/forth a bit about referring to old lessons and materials vs. making each podcast standalone. I think your recent end-clip of how to ask for cellphone numbers has really ’stuck’ that phrase in my head. Maybe you could mix in some others, it’s good advertising, and it is a good ‘memorization’ device when spaced in with a lag time to burn it into long-term memory.
5. Cpod/Edith: Comments on pdfs/iPod use. I think you should probably get together some people to put together some end-to-end user scenario testing. What is this? Quite simple actually, but the devil is in the details isn’t it. Get a person to mimic real user scenarios and document it, noting specifically the transition points and how fluid/easy/convenient they are. For example, a typical user probably is running a browser on a WinXP box with either a MP3 player or iPOD. Follow how they would go thru your flash-intro tutorial and note all the clicks/saving/transfer files/renaming/button pushing they have to do. ***You could then easily (if there aren’t technical hurdles) work out the problems people are having with how things appear in the iPOD. I would think there is a lot of improvement and ‘extra value’ to be gained in making it work really well with the iPOD. And remember, if you need a user new to an iPOD, I could certainly fly up to Shanghai and be a guinue pig!
6. Brandy: One-click to the Word Bank. Hey did you see, they added that as a personal preference. Whoooo-hah! Great!!
7. Cpod: Bit-Torrent PDFs. Want to do that?!
8. Cpod: I am craving extras now, extra DOWNLOADABLE review pdfs, extra fun audio clips, extra embedded-in-lesson audio clips, a real ‘advanced lesson’…我饿了！
9. I just figured I might as well try to make it to ‘ten’. I like japanese101, but their English host speaks to hurridly–I’m kinda laid back, and their download speeds are the pits. They have a long way to go towards being as ‘pro’ as you guys.
10. See the Wiki, there’s new stuff there, and it gets more and more interesting as one oneself uses it! I started a ‘grammar notes’ section. 大家一起学好学高, 每天替补！
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki.....Verb_Tango
CPod: I like David’s idea of setting a toggled dictionary, to see only lesson words vs. the whole dictionary.
David: if you know of any other online Mandarin dictionary that can successfully give you ji le for exceedingly, or zhi si for deadly, [searching in English or pinyin] please let me know. Tossing words at me has become the new Chinese sport in my office. CPod’s dictionary has been the only one to help me with this so far. And enjoy the Nano.
iFlash: is a very cool flashcard program on the Mac. Useful but not as pretty on the iPod (it does space things out so that you can’t see the answer until you scroll down). It’s all Apple’s fault, and I’ve emailed them about it, not that they listen to me.
Tech Guys — Thank you for everything — sorting Word Bank, one-click add to Word Bank, planned export to iFlash, you’re doing a great job!
CPod/Barry — also not a fan of the original opener (mostly because it was loud, not because I thought it too unprofessional), but I don’t think that it will drive anyone away, or that it needs to be replaced on the old episodes. If anything, that would create some confusion for the old users when how-ever-many old episodes suddenly showed up duplicated on their iTunes or MP3 client.
Barry/PDFs — if you need to sort by PDF, look at the filename. There is a section in the middle of the filename with an “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” or “E” followed by the number. “A” is novice, “B” is beginner and “C” is intermediate (D and E are buzzwords & news), and the number is the lesson number for the level. Ken posted something about the 4 levels… where was that post? If I remember correctly, there is an advanced/upper intermediate level in the works. So, what I do is to have an “A” folder, a “B” folder and a “C” folder, and then if you sort by filename you’re also sorting by lesson number.
CPod — I want to request a way to search the blog & wiki, so that I can find Ken’s (or my fellow Podster’s) many useful comments with ease.
CPod/PDFs — it might be nice for new users to be able to batch download the PDF files. It took me ages to do it by hand. Can you torrent PDFs?
Thoughts on the Intermediate level, as a Novice/Beginner.
I just listened to my first Intermediate level lesson (which was marked as Beginner’s Lesson #6, North and South, just FYI Tech Guys) and thought I’d record my experience for Ken and Crew.
The first thing that crossed my mind, as I picked out a word here and a phrase there, and feeling some non-comprehension panic, was something a Japanese postdoc in our office admitted to me one day (after first coming to America) — that he would nod to say “I understand” if he understood 10% of the English words in a conversation. I immediately thought, that’s about what I’m understanding here.
After that brief moment of panic, I decided that I’d just listen passively on this one, and see how it went. Well, there was a lot of word repetition, which was very helpful. (A lot of beautiful things, for example.) A lot of the banter was beyond my vocabulary level, but I did enjoy listening to the rhythm of the language.
I might enjoy a lesson here and there in the beginner’s section, where Jenny speaks only Chinese throughout the lesson, but Ken answers in Chinese and English, as a transition. Basically treat Jenny’s comments as Intermediate level, and Ken’s as Beginner level. You do that to some extent in the beginner’s section, and I never have any panic, because I know that Ken will give me some context in a moment if I didn’t catch the whole phrase that Jenny said.
Hi Brandy! About a good online dictionary.
Here’ya go! I found ‘em both. 极了 致死 Click on the various synonms…how do I spell that?… Anyway here it is! MDBG’s Dictionary.
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/c.....;wdqdefm=0
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/
谢谢 David!
你有帮助极了! You’re the best! (你最好?) And appreciate the effort I went through to write that in characters, since 我不看书汉字. 一点都不会.
I love the show. I listen to it everyday through ITunes. I also listen to the EnglishPod because it is a great exercise. 谢谢Ken 和Jenny!!