Over the past week we have separated out a new section called the “Vocab Builder”. New additions here:
Addition of a “Wiki” Word Type
We have gotten a lot of feedback that the English definitions for many words are incorrect or just plain awkward. The original dictionary we used was based on the CEDICT project. A while back, we added the “Wildcard” type to help users, with native languages other than English, to add their own personal definitions. Today we are extending this functionality a bit with a new “Wiki” type. This type will start off with the original CEDICT English definition, but will be editable for anyone to update as they see fit. So, if you are not happy with the CEDICT definitions you can just choose to use the community’s wiki definition. In addition, we have added the ability for users to add new words to the glossary (again thanks to adsotrans.com for the inspiration).
Updated Export Function
We have been struggling a bit with ensuring that the export encoding has been correct for all client environments. After a bit of stumbling we think we have a solution. When you export your WordBank now a new HTML page will present your WordBank items properly formatted in both CSV and UTF8 format. Copying this text to a text file on your local machine should get around all encoding issues. We have also added the export of the 2 new types (Wildcard & Wiki) as well.
New Concentration Game
To help drill your saved WordBank items into memory we have added a new Concentration Game. Ten words are randomly selected from your WordBank and displayed face-side down. Choosing two at a time, the game continues until all the cards have been correctly matched. We have also added a leaderboard where the fastest times for completion will be displayed. This list will be reset every month. For those who tested earlier in the week and now see that your scores have been reset, we added a new limitation so that only those with 10 or more words in their WordBank would be eligible, thus limiting any ‘gaming’ of the rankings. In the future, we hope to add more of these types of competitions to get your competitive juices going.
Mobile Flashcards
A while back we were shocked to see busy BlackBerry-bearing professionals here in Shanghai walking around with reams of paper containing all the Chinese vocabulary they were trying to commit to memory. As a result, we are also launching a mobile version of our Flashcard system for mobile devices that support XHTML. The interface is a little rudimentary right now, but it does give you full access to review the terms you saved online when you are out and about away from your laptop or desktop computer. In the future, we will also be looking at a Flash Lite interface for 3G handsets.
Other Notes:
PDF’s
The PDF’s are getting a bit out of hand with all the content in the advanced lessons. On Monday we will be launching a new design and going forward we will just add the Traditional Chinese characters for the Dialogue and not include the Traditional Chinese for the additional vocabulary terms.
Primary RSS Feed
Our RSS feed is getting a bit out of hand as well with more than 150+ items. We will be cutting this down to the latest 10 episodes with 2 introductory files for new users. All the previous episodes can be obtained through the Archive RSS feeds (we have moved this under Podcast Archive now) or from the Bittorrent links (also under the Podcast Archive). The audio files will continue to be freely available.
Weblog Tags
We have been using tags for the podcast entries for a while and now will start using them for the weblog. Hopefully this will help improve navigation. We are also adding in the option to search by month of entry.
Thanks for your continued support.
ChinesePod Tech Team
Excellent. Chinesepod just gets better value every week.
I was looking forward to be able to use the mobile flashcards, I’ve just tried and although it does work, my phone won’t display chinese characters.
I just signed up for a basic subsription and I have to say I was a bit let down. I was attracted to the idea of ’supplementary’ vocabulary, which I thought would be above and beyond the vocab in the lesson. It’s not though. It’s just the same vocabulary from the lesson. So the word ’supplementary’ is a bit misleading, isn’t it?
I’m don’t really care that much because I love Chinesepod and I’m happy to support it. I just think the PDFs could have a little bit more value, like an example sentence using the same vocab item or related vocab or something…. Or maybe you could even give use some vocabulary used in the free talk (that would be fantastic). Or maybe you provide a few conversation questions for us to practice with our friends.
I know it’s not a full subscription but it would be nice to have something beyond what we’ve already heard. With the exception of the advanced classes, I’m able to transcribe the dialogues, so most the PDFs really aren’t that useful for me.
Also, you are right about the PDFs being a bit out of hand, but I don’t think the best way is just to stop using traditional characters for the vocabulary items. I use traditional characters and I like to see them as much as possible!! Perhaps you could have a separate link for a traditional character PDF?? Or perhaps even better would be to have the traditional and the simplified side by side for the vocab, so we can compare. Also, just to reiterate what Bazza said elsewhere, you could condense the vocab into columns so we don’t end up with a huge stack of paper (I like to print mine off).
I use simplified characters myself, but I was also puzzled by the decision to ommit the traditional characters just for the supplementary vocab. What can be the rationale for this? With all the tools out there that convert traditional into simplified and the other way around…it can’t be to save on effort. If the concern is that the PDF’s become too long, what about splitting them up into tradtionale and simplified as I have suggested in an earlier comment. BTW, if you do this, you may even safe on bandwidth as most of us would choose to download either of the two pdf’s but not both.
Kind regards
Marc
One more minor detail: page numbers on the pdfs would be helpful. Thanks!
I’m having a hard time updating my account info, ie. selecting the checkbox, add directly to wordbank. Does your DB need a re-index, compaq, re-org? I tried from three different browsers, so doesn’t seem to be on my end.
Is anyone else getting blank squares in the concentration game? I just played three games and they all had about 3 blanks in them. It’s not easy to match up with blanks.
How do you access podcasts 101 and up (minus the 10 most recent)? On http://www.chinesepod.com/feed.php there’s a feed for episodes 1-100, but I can’t seem to get the rest excluding the 10 recent podcasts?
Love the concentration game! At first I thought the high score table was an unnecessary idea - until I realised I was much slower than everyone else! So I tried harder…
However, now that I am holding the top four slots (sorry Bazza!), I see a few potential issues with it…
1) I tested myself on vocab from a small selection of newbie sessions so perhaps it was easier for me to score higher than others
2) I mainly tested myself on Chinese -> Pinyin (for character recognition) - so perhaps not comparable to Chinese -> English
3) I had quite a few goes so I have quite a large number of entries in the table!
…so, would it perhaps be sensible to have separate score tables according to what you test yourself on; limit a person’s entries to their top 3 results; and (I recognise this as technically more difficult) adjust scoring according to the level or number of words in their wordbank?
This is because I’d quite like to use the high score chart not to see who’s ‘best’ but as a way of gauging and monitoring my progress. I assume other people who, like me, do not have a teacher (other than ChinesePod) might find that useful too…
Yeah because it possible to just use English to English as well, I admit I have used Chinese to Chinese but that is still good for character recognition.
I’m also using traditional characters and find it quite annoying that the simplified dialog comes with the English translation but not the traditional. This way I need to keep on scrolling the pdf file constantly up and down to view the translation. Now, omitting the traditional characters from the vocabulary section does not really make the situation any better.It should not be very difficult to separate the traditional section from the simplified by a page break so that one can print out easily one or the other.
Looking at the highscore table now, it is now quite difficult to get into the top 50 - which might take away the fun for others. Perhaps, if there was an additional column for the language combinations (Chinese->pinyin, Chinese->English, etc…) and each person was only allowed one entry per combination, e.g. their personal best Chinese->pinyin score, then everyone might have a better chance of getting in (for the record, this isn’t a whinge because I’m not good enough: at the time of writing I have the top score).
If the additional language column can’t be done (as perhaps your underlying data-structure can’t support it), then simply one score per person would still be a great improvement: it might feel more like a community thing then. I would also feel less guilty
- in trying to improve upon my own score (and hopefully improve my recognition skills in the process!) I have inevitably taken up a number of slots in the table, which is a little unfair on others… I could stop playing, but the benefit of such games comes through repetition.
Keep up the good work: the concentration game was a great idea. I find that if I feel a bit too tired to do ‘proper’ study, I can at least play this and get some Chinese practice in.
Is anyone getting blanking squares then, maybe it\’s the english translations that are too long to fit in the boxes?
Hi,
It’s great to see some support for traditional characters!
Keep up the good work!
BarryC
Bazza - I haven’t seen blanking squares (maybe my vocab selection doesn’t have long enough english trans to test your theory).
However, I have seen ‘null’ when I tried the wildcard option.
Just to add, in case others find it useful, the way I am using the concentration game is as follows:
First, play Pinyin->English to associate the meaning and the pronounciation (as this is what I bring from the podcasts).
Then play Chinese->Pinyin to associate the character and the pronouciation.
Finally, play Chinese->English to hopefully associate character and meaning.
By doing it in the above order, mentally pronouncing each card, I associate am basically playing snap on the ’sound’ of each card, without the help of pinyin. I am hoping this means I will have learnt something…
You have really done a great job while creating this podcast. I use it every day. You have just changed the format of the PDF transcript and now i cannot use the cut and paste function to get some part of it. Could you help me ?
The new and improved PDF format.
The original PDFs were created in Microsoft Word and did not have the integrity of the current version created in Adobe. The new format has made the PDFs much more portable (PDAs, Computers, Phones), allowed for new design features, and made them much easier to print. Users that are interested in copying the written dialogues are free to do so from within the lyics file of our mp3 files, and from the online dialogues on the website.
As was pointed out in an earlier comment by Jean Yves, we did not realise how the ChinesePod community was using the PDF transcripts. The ability to cut and paste the dialogues makes sense and we will see what we can do to accomodate that with the new design. We will keep you update on our progress. Thanks again for the speedy feedback. We love it. ChinesePod.
Hey Bazaa, I am also getting blank squares on my mobile phone… I actually realized this before trying to send and receive text messages in China… from what I can tell it’s because I’m using a Motorola mobile phone that was manufactured in Germany made to be used in the U.S. with no capabilities to display or type Chinese characters… but I still really like this feature as I can still display Pinyin to English or English to Pinyin… Keep the great work and all the great new features coming ChinesePod!!!
Fai
I had some extra software for my latest phone that let you enter Chinese characters, and it worked pretty well. However doesn’t seem to work as well on my new phone that I’ve recently upgraded to (Nokia 6680). I’ve been trying to find a way to add a Chinese language pack for it, because I think there is a Chinese version of the phone available. But it seems the phone languages are stored in the ROM memory though, which of course they can’t be write to without a Flashing box. Flashing boxes are a bit expensive just to add an extra language though.
Concerning tech improvements I would just advise adding example sentences on the PDFs and during the dialogues. Also why not ask questions concerning the new vocabulary, or how to use one of the sample sentences near the end (to apply by implicating the listener instead of keeping us TOO passive), leaving a 5 second blank, then giving and repeating the answer. I also believe that you should put Jenny’s picture with the mp3s when displaying on the ipod, much more interesting than www.chinesepod.com picture… 我倒
I believe the best strategy is:
questions and answers
1) present dialogue first time
2) present new words introduced
3) dialogue 2nd time
4) translation sentence by sentence
5) dialogue 3rd time
6) interaction in other contexts using new words and idioms
7) examples of uses in daily life
9) and finally maybe a review of the main words used and dialogue (if u have time left…)
PEACE
DAILY CLICKING - I noticed that I like to click on the Cpod tabs to see what’s new, for example I’ll click on Home/Podcast Archive to see if there are new comments, then I click on the Blog tab to look for new posts, afterwards I’ll go to the Forum and other websites. I know I should then click on the Learning Center or Vocab Builder, but what can I say, I’m not the most discplined student.
How about some sort of ‘daily’ content served up within these tabs? It could be an old phrase from one of the dialogue reviews, let’s say a list of five that changes often, more than daily–it’ll give me something to ‘review’ (FRESH-INPUT) and would be especially nice if it had the Flash audio which I would then just click to and listen too. In the Vocabulary Builder tab, maybe a word from my Word Bank, or a word list based on level or my topic of interest.
I hope in your new My Course tab there is something that gets served up daily and even more often than that, AUTOMATICALLY, within that tab. I want to be coddled and spoon fed my Chinese! Thanks.
TELEPHONE - This morning I needed to make a phone call and ask ‘Can you transfer me to such and such dept.’ Not knowing how to say transfer, I figured I’d look for a Cpod lesson to see if it’s been covered. In your newly revamped (maybe the transition is not all in yet) Cpod Archive tab there are the topic words and various filter tabs. It looks like the ’search’ function however has been removed.
Interestingly there are no tagged words on display for either ‘telephone, phone, phoning.” I know there was at least one cast on phoning. But I’m having a lot of trouble finding it……
NEW ARROWS - In the premium review materials you’ve implemented the new Dialogue, Expansion, Grammar, Exercises arrows. I think they take up a little too much screen space, I need to scroll after just the first page display. The .jpg image can be small, sleeker, more sparkly! Jazz it up a bit.
Also, might I suggest something like the below to free up some screen-estate.
————————–Current Version : Six lines————-
Dialogue Transcript
The transcript of the conversation from the podcast can be found below. Roll your mouse over the Chinese characters to view the corresponding pinyin and English definition. Press on the play button to hear the corresponding audio.
Simply click on any word to add it to your Word Bank.
——————–New ‘Streamlined’ Version!: Two lines!——–
The Dialogue transcript and Expansion sentences appear below. Roll, press, click and review each section on your way to better Chinese!
Roll your mouse over the Chinese characters for pinyin and English. Press the play button for audio. Click on any word to add it to your Word Bank.
hah–well…comment box, different from published box. Let’s recount… anyway, you get the idea. The below should work over in the Review Screen.
The Dialogue transcript and Expansion sentences appear below. Roll, press, click and review your way to better Chinese!
Roll your mouse over the Chinese for pinyin & English. Press the play button for audio. Click a word to add to the Word Bank.