Steve Williams does a very clear job of explaining how to use ChinesePod in this tutorial. These suggestions are practical and allow you to maximize the service.
Within this, I think there also remains a great deal of flexibility in how ChinesePod can be used. I’d be interested to hear from you about how, when, and where you use ChinesePod and how you combine the podcasts with the online activities. From what I’ve seen our learners have been very creative in this context. Do you have any usage suggestions that you find partcularly helpful? What works for you? I think those kinds of insights would be good to share with other learners.
This is my first visit to ChinesePod, and WOW, yes, what a pretty site! I listened to a newbie lesson on invitation to dinner, made flashcards, discovered that the english on everyone of the cards translates to “null” (which is probably a first use bug), but otherwise is very cool. Also, I love the larger size hover-display, as my eyesight isn’t 20-20 any more (as I’m in the “over 41″ crowd.) Is there a phonetic option on the flash-cards, so I can hear it too? Anyway, I wrote a flashcard system myself once, for a lark, and put in the vocabulary for the main textbooks, big5 encoded. Research indicated that flashcard systems that provide feedback can be significantly faster and more fun to use, long term. I tracked milliseconds until the user clicked for the answer, and then a left or right click if they were correct or wrong. People vary, but tend to like about 90% satisfaction, so “random” meant keep my success rate at about 90% or higher, but, within that, when I can get words right within 2 seconds consistently, move them into the “I know this one” pile. The real trick is to give positive feedback on the “plateau crossing” problem - it seems endless. Anyone want to talk about how to score and give positive feedback on how much progress people are making at training their neural net (brain) each day, and what music helps?
Daily Mix-Playlist and Online Review
I started to listen to Cpod a couple months after you kicked off, but since then with holidays and such, I hadn’t been able to listen to all the casts. I’ve gone thru all the casts now. For the last week or at the beginning of each day I put about 5 random casts and the latest one and re-listen. I find I ‘hear’ new things, or I now ‘recognize’ words that were before new to me. Hence I know I am ‘learning’ the words. This has come w/o much pain as in writing a word down 20 times.
As I now recognize/understand more of what is said in each cast I am able to ‘listen’ to some of the stuff I didn’t get on the first go around. For today, Ken’s breakdown of she is ‘considerate’ was quite helpful.
Also, as I’ve heard the casts already I now am going to the Learning Center to focus more on the Chinese characters of the lessons, and have started to contribute more to the Wiki to ‘produce’ and lock in what I’m studying.
I have just a standard-MP3 player, so I would be interested to hear all the cool ways people are using iPod functions to ‘review’ and get efficient. For example, another Cpoder has gotten iFlash onto her iPod…it’s sounding like another toy for me to get soon…..but that Nano is so slick…..iShopping is tough!
I started listening to ChinesePod nearly a month ago and I’ve never used anything that worked nearly as well as ChinesePod. I have used countless tapes and books and learned more in one day of ChinesePod than a year of the other ones. I think for me, it’s the ability to retain what you’ve learned that makes ChinesePod so special! Even my uncle gives me kudos on what I have learned (he lived in Taiwan for 2 years) and he was someone who used to tell me that Chinese was way to difficult to learn.
I listen to ChinesePod on my pocketpc while I am on the road for work and it works very well. After 1 or 2 times of listening to the podcast, I go home that night, read the PDF version of it to refine what I learned. Then I add the new words to blank index cards and try to test myself with them before I go to bed. The next day I do the next lesson, and so on.
After about a month of this learning process, I went down to ChinaTown in Las Vegas (I live about an hour north of it) and tried out what I learned. Imagine my suprise when not only was I able to speak quite a bit, but was able to understand more of what they were saying than I ever had previously! My uncle has eaten his words.
Sometime in the next year, I hope to make a trip to China itself. And all because the Podcasts unlocked that door. Thanks so much and keep up the great work!
My toy next month will be a Palm TX PDA. I am hoping by adding the Pleco dictionary, I will have my complete Chinese Learning Center in my pocket. How so? I should be able to
(1) Download and Listen to Chinesepod
(2) Download the PDF files and carry them along
(3) Make word lists, flashcards…….
(4) With the handwriting recognition software as I walk the streets of Taiwan and occasionally Mainland China write down characters I do not know and have the Pleco soft figure it out for me so I may learn these new characters
Bazza are you envious ?
Now my question. Has anyone does this or know of any potential problems?
Thanks from Jubie Taiwan
I use a simeler style to David but with one difference. I actually quickly sit down and cut out the just chinese element for my revison. This forces me to concentrate more as I know i don’t have the fall back of just waiting to hear the english. So if i don’t remeber the word i end up pausing and thinking about it. when i get home at night if there was more than a couple of words i don’t remeber i will listen to the full pod again. Other wise i just look them up and pop them into ZDT as flash cards.
I’ve been listening to the Pod for about 10 days now after having studied with a private tutor in Shanghai for the last 3 months. I am currently going through the newbie lessons in chronological order. I am familiar with most of the stuff in the early lessons, so it is basically like a review right now. Although I find each lesson adds one or two new things.
What I do is just listen to the episode the first time. Then I listen again and write out the main dialogue in pinyin, English, and characters (hanzi). I use www.zhongwen.com (sorry to plug another site) to look up the hanzi. As the newbie lessons keep building on each other, the repetition of words makes it easy to remember. I find I am now remembering the proper tones a lot better than before, and in just one week I recognize so many more hanzi when walking down the street (my previous lessons had mostly focussed on spoken Chinese, little emphasis on the hanzi). I find that the act of writing makes me retain the information much, much better than simply reading it.
My computer is set up to play a podcast early every morning, and will repeat it until I get up and hit the stop button.
Now I can stay in bed a little longer without feeling guilty.