ChinesePod is increasing the number of lessons we publish each week. We have created a new website and podcast for our advanced lessons, and increased the number of lower level lessons published on ChinesePod.com.
ChinesePod Advanced (zh.chinesepod.com) is designed for learners that have achieved fluency, but want to increase their vocabulary and improve their overall command of Mandarin. All instructions and learning materials on the website are written entirely in simplified Chinese for complete immersion in the language.
The new website and podcast mean that we can increase the number of Advanced level lessons we publish each week – increasing from one or none to three or more per week. The separation of Advanced lessons from the main ChinesePod RSS feed also benefits our lower level learners, as we can add more lower level lessons to the weekly publication schedule.
ChinesePod paid subscribers have access to the learning materials on both chinesepod.com and the new ChinesePod Advanced website zh.chinesepod.com. The podcast RSS feed for ChinesePod Advanced can be found here. Let us know what you think of ChinesePod Advanced. Your comments and suggestions help us improve the service.
Kind Regards,
Matt Park 段伟
Advanced level lessons are not for me (yet) but I welcome this developement. Wow! more lessons for us Newbies, Elementary, etc. students. I’m not sure that I will be able to catch up ever
Marc in Belgium
Matt
I wrote it in Chinese in the first lesson. Here I feel I can write in English. I love the idea of a Advanced Lesson feed only. ( and I am not at that level in speaking or listening) Someday there might be 4 daily feeds to satisfy all levels. 但是 However I think it is a BIG MISTAKE not to include English in the pdf. WHY? Because, Ken rightly so says; learn lexical chunks. I think even for people for whom this lesson is produced could use some assistance in what the nuances expressed may be. And for others (like me) I can extract useful chunks if you make them more readily accessible. As it is I do/will go through each lesson and pull out the chunks but it is much easier if I can then refer back to the printed dialog to see if maybe I am off.
Otherwise yes I think it is great that it is all or almost all Chinese. It forces me to read Chinese webpages. It forces me to write and expose my Chinese grammar which is far worse than my English grammar. I hope others will”kindly” point out the 太大 mistakes. But a printable copy of the dialogue in English is not too much to ask for is it?
Mike in Jubei
I SOOOO need an english translation. And a pinyin translation. I love listening to the advanced level. It’s great to have the lesson completely in Chinese, but I have to have some way of figuring out what they are saying when I get confused. jWe are students, we do get confused. The english translation could be a seperate page, it wouldn’t have to be on the same page, but there has to be a way to “get there from here. “
I’m by no means an authority on the matter, in fact I have pretty much no connection with this project whatsoever, but I would imagine based on what I’ve learned by working here that there will be as many Japanese, Korean, and other non-English speaking users using this advanced site as there will be English users. In fact, once the word gets out beyond this English site, the English speaking segmant may be in the minority. In my opinion, I hope a favorate non-Chinese languge doesn’t emerge and everyone else gets excluded. I think this is what they are going for when they decided not to provide English transcripts. Of course, someone who knows more about the project can correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyone reading my recent posts on the advanced Cpod site can tell that I am torn about whether to have any English or not. On the one hand, immersion certainly has it’s merits, but as Sue says, how does one get from ‘here to there’? In a real-world interaction I can stop the person and ask, I can’t do that to a podcast or a pdf. To be frank, is it a methodology or just easier for the native Chinese-speaking Cpod staff to produce?
The pdf transcript does have some of the vocabulary words with explanations in Chinese. In my post I asked for ’simple Chinese explanations’ in the popups. I know it’s a lot of work. It’s asking the academic staff to build a dictionary. I want explanations as clear, simple and correct as the grammar tag blurbs that John has put together.
I’m sure they’ll be more discussion about this. In the meantime, I want to say thank you. Many of us having been asking for more content, and here it is. I have my plate full this week keeping up with the intermediate, high-intermediate and advanced pods. GREAT!!
And you’ve even added male voices to the dialogues. We notice. THANKS CPOD!!
Latian: To be frank, is it a methodology or just easier for the native Chinese-speaking Cpod staff to produce?
It would not be the first time that a production shortcut was sugar-coated and presented as an “advantage”. .
On the other hand, I’m not quite at the level where I can gripe and in the interim I enjoy listening to the shows. I appreciate the production quality and clarity of the audio (kudos to Aric). Just don’t reduce that quality to save file space or production time — and then try to tell us it’s an “advantage” since more will fit on our iPods.
I’m really delighted about the new advanced site. Indeed I just committed to 6 monthes of premium as a thank you. However, I agree that I would benefit from an English translation of the PDF. Alternatively, if the pdf were available in a format [big 5; GB, utf-8] that I could cut and paste the script I could use wenlin or another dictionary as an aid. Might that be possible?
thanks,
Cynthia
Lantian (and others),
It is a methodology. It’s not actually easier to produce. Allow me to explain.
When you get to the advanced level, having pinyin by your side all the time becomes sort of a crutch and a security blanket. I have found myself reading the pinyin even when the Chinese is really easy simply because it’s right there. This does not help one’s Chinese ability, and advanced learners really should not be relying so heavily on pinyin. I sympathize, because I realize it’s a real struggle (I’ve been there!), but if the podcasts are way too hard with no pinyin, the advanced podcasts may still be a bit beyond your level.
The reason it’s not easier to produce is that we provide definitions in Chinese for the key/most difficult vocabulary items. This may seem like a simple thing, but it is anything but. Learning Chinese in Chinese is an important development in one’s Chinese ability, but the hard part is in writing a definition that is both accurate and at a simpler level than the term itself. We don’t plagiarize, and we couldn’t if we wanted to, because real Chinese dictionary definitions are often more difficult to understand than the terms they define. In order to write good definitions in Chinese, it takes significant effort and discussion on the part of 2-3 native Chinese speakers as well as feedback from me on difficulty level of the resulting definition. Translation, on the other hand, takes one to translate and one to check.
There are a lot of tradeoffs involved here, and we will continue to listen to all feedback. I just hope that our listeners have faith that ChinesePod knows what it’s doing and that we do have our learners’ best interests at heart. We did, after all, just add three new podcasts a week at no additional cost to subscribers, and we didn’t do it by taking shortcuts.
-John
Academic Team
I’ll agree that having only hanzi on advanced transcripts is the proper way to go. If I don’t know a character, I could look it up easily enough. Even if I had the pinyin and wasn’t reading it instead of the characters, it doesn’t do me much good to know the pronounciation but not know the meaning of the unrecognized characters.
I recall the forum discussion on when to learn hanzi seemed to lean towards not learning characters, but at the advanced level it becomes necessary.
Let me underscore the point that the decision to go with an all Chinese format in the advanced is not for reasons of managerial expediency. It has been done completely on the basis of what is best for the learners. (We’re still young and naieve.) John and I have differing viewpoints on this - in fact, much of the team is split on this - and so we are taking it to the collective Big Brain to figure out what you want. So, make your case now. You could influence how this plays out. (In the end I’m sure I’m right, though…)
The other thing about not having pinyin is that if you’re at an advanced level, you should already know how to use a dictionary, either online or hard-copy. If you don’t, it’s a good time to learn, even if it’s difficult. Actually, I wouldn’t mine a intermediate/upper intermediate lesson on dictionaries/looking up characters. Words like radical, components, explaining the characters in your Chinese name, (英雄的英，木上的李 etc.).
Will,
That’s an excellent suggestion. I am making note of it right now. Thanks a lot!
-John
I’m glad that the transcript contains only the hanzi. When the pinyin and English are included right below the hanzi, I have to make an effort to cover them up, otherwise my eyes will be drawn to them. I admit, with the new format I cut and paste sections to a Chinese editor that has mouse over English definitions (NJstar), but I think it’s important for me to first try with just the hanzi.
I don’t think I’m advanced enough to get much from the Chinese to Chinese translations, but I look forward to trying.
The advanced lesson series is for people who are … advanced. While I know some people whose oral skills far outstrip their written skills (I think that’s true in most learners to some degree, but I mean where they can speak fluently but read only a handful of characters), I don’t honestly think that it’s the right way to go about learning a language.
Think about people learning English–shouldn’t they learn to read? If only to read signs at banks and stuff? You might say that “oh, well English has an alphabet and so reading comes naturally” and you’d be right (to a point–spelling is a bear), but just because it’s harder to read Chinese than it is to read English doesn’t make reading Chinese any less important.
Also, as John said, learning Chinese in Chinese is a really big, important step. Not only does it help you mentally break away from English translations (which is important when you have words that have much the same but not totally the same definition as their English equivalent) but it also opens you up to a giant number of resources made for Chinese people to learn about their own language. The best Chinese grammar book I own is totally in Chinese, meant for Chinese learners, because it doesn’t attempt to explain things in relation to English, but rather just explains things the way they are in Chinese.
I agree it’s tough love–going from English and Pinyin to all Chinese is a hard thing to do (I’ve done it… hell, I’m still doing it) but if you really want to learn the language it’s the only way to go. Also, as Rian said, this will make those advanced podcasts available to non-English speakers, which is terrific. After all, why do we learn a foreign language if not to communicate with people from other cultures, which include those learners of the foreign language who come from different cultures themselves.
Okay, first of all — I’m very happy. I’m now struggling to keep up with my sleep, activities, t.v. and LOTs of Cpod casts. I think this is this Cpod Advanced is a real important development and the discussion is I think a ‘re-aligning’ of the paradigm for how Chinese is taught…it will be great to see how it lands up!
Some assumptions/history that inform my comments:
1. Are the custom definitions in the pdf matched to the popups that have definitions? I compared a bunch, but it seems inconsistent. I think it’s really hard to guess which words a student might/might not know. It’s like I’d like a toggle switch, no difinitions, Chinese definitions, more, more, English!
2. I went to a college where the professors said, go ahead, try to cheat! Bring your books, notes, whatever to the test. You’re still gonna have to think. My physics test was take home, sociology was open book and essay, biology was a project, etc. The academic question is, are you guys professors that say we students can have the answers at the back of the book, or not?
3. I have gone thru SO MANY Chinese-produced texts with bad English that is almost worthless, to Chinese for Chinese texts that of course go over my head, and I used to look up words by radical stroke thru a paper dictionary before I got my electronic Pleco software and the advent of all the on-line convertors, translators, so I have a viseral reaction. When I see a book like Po-Ching’s advanced grammar with GOOD Chinese, English and Pinyin I kinda get all happy. I actually find that if the pinyin is on top above the hanzi I can actually not ‘read’ it while reading the hanzi. If it’s underneath, yah–I cheat. I have resorted to a black marker and reading with a piece of paper covering up the pinyin at times.
4. Jenny ’said’ in the podcast that they’re be lots of ‘help’ for us who are ‘getting to’ advanced, what sorts of things are those?
5. I think the requests for ‘pinyin’ are relatively easy to solve, there’s Welin and Adso, Cpod just needs to get the message out to those learners that those tools are available. The reason I asked for more explanations in Chinese and English is that the standard dictionary definitions are terrible, and unless I spend a lot of money for more advanced electronic Chinese-to-English dictionaries, the compound words and idioms just aren’t in the dictionaries I have.
6. Can’t we ‘toggle’ on and off pinyin, English, all-Hanzi in the online examples and expanded sentences?
7. I can’t figure out which side JohnS is on versus Ken, can you share it with us?! By the way, you’re both wrong, I’m right! And actually, for a fact I know we are all wrong, Jenny and Connie are right.
Just for the record despite the fact that I am not actively learning characters yet, I agree with the Chinese only policy on advanced.
1. There are many tools that can help, annotate or lookup up a character, if you don’t know how to use them at advanced level then now is the time to learn.
2. Comparing to computer languanges a significant step in the development of a new language is when a compiler for the language is written in the new language. It seems natural that at some point you should be learning new Chinese in Chinese.
3. I guess that when you reach a certain level the exact meaning of a phrase is best derived from Chinese. The naunces you are struggling to grasp may be ‘inscrutable’ when an attempt is made to translate into English.
4. As mentioned above, why English, why not Korean, or Japanease. Really IF Chinesepod provide tranlations they should internationalised.
do you really want them to expend all that effort, when they could be concentrating on producing more podcasts
BONUS TRACKS -
1. About internationization. I’d have to take a position like S’pore has and say that English is the ‘language of work’. Of course as an English-speaker I would choose English as the lingua franca, but from the posters on the comments at least it seems to be the most common working language for the students from Europe, etc. The discussion about providing ‘definitions’ is an entirely different ball of wax for Korean and Japanese students, they ‘get’ some sort of meaning from the hanzi, although at times it’s off from what they recognize in similar characters in Chinese or Korean. But let’s not forget, in the online dialogue and expansion sentences the popup pinyin is there, and it’s probably enough for them to turn that input into some form of comprehension. I on the other hand, if I don’t recognize a character, the pinyin doesn’t do much either.
2. How about a ‘dumbed’ down (advanced) podcast about the advanced podcast. The second version is like the director’s cut on DVDs (okay, JohnS will have to explain this to all the Chinese staff because almost all the DVDs in China do not have these bonus features), when I turn on the director’s cut version of the podcast, I get more explanations about vocabulary, simple words, etc., etc., and yes, they talk about this all in Chinese) HEY, just think I’m prepping you guys to produce Cpod DVDs! How cool is that…or am I just so Web 1.0 ?
….I know, I know, I just asked for ANOTHER podcast, like mom said, it never hurts to ask. And I listen to mom!! She wears the pants in the house.
BONUS TRACK - An added feature of the ‘bonus’ track is that:
1. It would be MP3, a podcast. I can carry it around way easier than a pdf file. (sorry nobody has given me a video iPod yet!)
2. It would probably have discussion about the chatting too, increasing my exposure to real conversational Chinese
3. It makes for a really nice ‘bridge’ from intermediate to advanced.
4. It is probably impossible to meet everyone’s needs in any one version of a particular podcast, but you can provide other content to deliver ‘on your terms.’
5. NOBODY else has done it, not BLCU, not China, no one. You all would rock the world!
BTW, I see the intermediate shows, which have some English, as already a sort of built-in director’s commentary version. The difference in the advanced show is that it’s all Chinese and uses simpler vocab and more explanations that the ‘let it roll natural pace of the advanced podcast.
BTW 2. My English is degrading, by ‘directors cut’ I mean the bonus track on DVDs where the director, producers, etc., talk about how they make the movie, chatting about specific parts of the movie as the movie rolls in the background. I should have really said ‘director’s commentary’. I didn’t mean a director’s cut where there are bonus scenes or the movie is edited differently.
Okay, last post about this. Yah you could make the bonus track part of the ‘premium’ content. Ugg…I can’t believe I’m reminding you of how to charge us money!
test
One way I have noticed that prevents/helps me to not ‘automatically’ read the pinyin and English has to do with formating and distance. Here’s what works for me, I notice this isn’t the way the Cpod pdfs are formated.
他 tā
He
深信 shēnxìn
firmly believed
理想的人生 xiǎng de rénshēng
an ideal life
必须有爱 bìxū yǒu ài
must have love
必须有美 bìxū yǒu měi
must have beauty
必须有自由 bìxū yǒu zìyóu
must have freedom.
I’m trying alt versions below: What to others think? If it lands up being a moot point in the advanced, it might help elementary and itermediate learners from ‘cheating’ themselves.
他
tā He
深信
shēnxìn firmly believed
理想的人生
xiǎng de rénshēng an ideal life
必须有爱
bìxū yǒu ài must have love
必须有美
bìxū yǒu měi must have beauty
必须有自由
bìxū yǒu zìyóu must have freedom.
tā He
他
shēnxìn firmly believed
深信
xiǎng de rénshēng an ideal life
理想的人生
bìxū yǒu ài must have love
必须有爱
bìxū yǒu měi must have beauty
必须有美
bìxū yǒu zìyóu must have freedom.
必须有自由
Hey Dai! You seem to be the ‘guru’ of hanzi/reading/writing, at least in terms of posters. What’s your opinion?
I’m an advanced learner, and yes I can read Chinese, but still I’d like a little pinyin and English on the advanced site, even on the main interface. I don’t necessarily know all the latest “high tech terminology” in Chinese, so it would help people like me to figure out what I’m even clicking on. Help me out, ya’ll, I’m here in Texas.
Also, my suggestion for advanced lessons would be something to help me comprehend news broadcasts. DW’s website, a German production, has a podcast called “Slowly Spoken News” in German for German language learners. I think “Slowly Spoken News in Chinese” would be a fantastic service from Chinesepod! Maybe just once a week, a sort of “news round-up”, with some grammar and vocabulary help for all that shu mian!
I’m just not a big believer in the “Chinese is hard so it’s good for you to suffer” mentality. I’ve already done my “shi nian han chuang”, and still I have a ways to go. Keep giving us a little “scaffolding”, or “leg up”, please. And I don’t feel embarrassed to ask for that.
Hi Andrea, every now and then when I have the urge to ‘do vocab’ I go take a list of most frequent words and see where I’m at. When I discovered this site, I realized how different the vocab for news is from fiction and daily conversation. I’ve still a ways to go before I’m comfortable in the regular vocab, so I’ve never tackled the news list. Even in the top 100 words for the two lists, the vocab is way different. Any suggestions on going from intermediate to advanced?
Website of Chinese words by frequency
http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese.....m/form.php
Yeah, you are right, Lantian, the vocabulary for broadcast news and newspapers is different (from vernacular Chinese) a lot of times, and so is the grammar. You pretty much have to study it as a separate subject. Studying classical Chinese helps with news Chinese, but mostly only with the grammar. But what makes broadcast news-style Chinese so hard is the rapid delivery. They are talking so fast it makes my head spin. It’s almost like I could get what they are saying if they would just slow it down. That’s why I think Deutsche Welle (DW World) website’s idea is pure genius. “Slowly spoken news” — brilliant!
How to get from intermediate to advanced level, that is a good question. (also, what is your definition of intermediate versus advanced, because it turns out my idea of “advanced” is HSK’s idea of “intermediate”; and my idea of “native speaker with a Master’s degree” is HSK’s idea of “advanced”). I’m a big believer in a sort of “incubation” theory. It takes time for stuff to sort of gel. People get too impatient. But my specific advice would be to read Chinese everyday. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes or so. And read stuff that interests you and has meaning for you. (For example, I like to go to BBC World Service website in Chinese, and print out articles about things that interest me, and get out a dictionary for words I don’t know.)
I believe there’s some theory that you have to work at a 90% comprehension level (I’m not sure on the exact number). In other words, if the material is way too hard for you (10% comprehension level), then you’re wasting your time.
Another thing I find helpful is to buy a TV show series on DVD. You can buy them from Yesasia.com. Make sure you get one with Chinese subtitles. Then be prepared to hit “pause” and read the subtitles and look up lots and lots of words.
And never underestimate the power of flashcards. I still make and use them all the time.
Also, do you have the “New Age Chinese-English Dictionary”? It’s a gigantic Chinese-English dictionary. Very useful.
I feel like a lot of people on this website are in some kind of “race against time” or something. It’s not a race. Second language acquisition takes a lot of time. There’s no shortcut.
Hope these comments have been helpful. I’m no guru or anything. Obviously, I’m still learning. But is seems to me like your Chinese is probably better than mine.
p.s. Once I met a guy who kept making the joke that “learning Chinese is like a disease : there’s no cure, and you never get any better”. I think what he meant is that 1) You become addicted to it (no cure) and 2) You always have a lot more to keep learning; no matter how much you learn, you discover there’s always something new to learn (thus the appearance that you never completely arrive at some point of mastery).
I very much agree with the “Chinese only” approach on the new advanced Chinese pod website and podcast. It gives the listener a choice. As others have pointed out, there are tools out there to help if one absolutely needs to look up an English (Japanese, Korean…) definition. So, those of us who are advanced enough can go “all-Chinese”, or we can fall back on dictionaries, or other tools to help. If Chinesepod were to add English and/or pinyin to the new advanced materials, there would no longer be such a choice.
I also agree that this approach is more sound pedagogically for advanced learners. When I learn new words and phrases, I find that I know them better and can use them more accurately and appropriately if I know how to explain them in Chinese. This approach also has the benefit of constantly reinforcing and reviewing simpler Chinese vocabulary and grammar in pursuit of the more complex.
Personally (on a purely subjective level), I really like the new site being “Chinese-only”. It feels better. It’s classy. It’s smart. It is more “Chinese”.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ho ho ho hehe ha ha haaaaaaa!
hehe
he… hehehe
AAAAAAAAh hahahaha haaaaaaaaaa!!
AuntySue
Is that Australian pinyin?
Yo Ken
I was listening to a bunch of older dialogues as I was walking about Hsinchu today. I think on at least half the ones I listened to I heard you say and Jenny agree, ” its difficult to translate into English…..” Now if you have trouble translating into English and you know what the dialogue was trying to convey imagine what it must be like for us students?
I don’t need pinyin but I have worked through the first two on the all Chinese website. The one on northern guys vs southern guys yea I got the gist of it but there are times when I get lost does the northern guy try to help at home but is hopeless and could lose face or is he just like the guy from the south ? And the one on Korean culture sweeping China I couldn’t figure out if the speakers were postive about it or not.
So All Chinese dialogue– Great. All Chinese comments on the lessons - Great I hope all the people who are way ahead of me will write. Not so much so far . WHY ???? Where are they? But in the pdf file why would it be so contaminated if the dialogue was given in English as well. Give it afterwards. How does that affect those who do not want to see/hear an explanation in English?
Mike in Jubei
Andrea writes: >> I believe there’s some theory that you have to work at a 90% comprehension level
That sounds like a good rule of thumb. A few days ago I received my shipment of three “Chinese readers with 500 characters” which I had searched up and down the Net to find. “Life in Beijing” “Chinese traditions and festivals” and “Chinese myths and legends.” I’d found the “traditions/festivals” volume at the local library and was very impressed. They are like little dumbed-down cultural vignettes but they are written with the enthusiasm of someone trying to communicate a sense of China and not just vocabulary/grammar. In other words, interesting– which you can’t say about many easy readers! Each story appears 3 times– in traditional characters, simplified, and English translation. No pinyin except for the vocabulary list after each story.
Anyway after having sung their praises… I find that in actually reading the stories, I have to look up several words/expressions per paragraph, in addition to the “vocabulary items.” Maybe two dictionary consultations per line. At first I was happy that I understood so many words. The first time I got the book from the library, the “known words” seemed much more rare. But then this morning the unfamiliar words finally began to seem distracting. (Stop, look up radical, look up word, make note of word in margin, take a moment to re-read it, continue.) Even common words put together meant something new– like 为了. Hmm, maybe I’m not up to easy 500 character readings!
However it all seems hopeful! Written Chinese intrigues me. Last week I gathered all my PDF transcripts from all the nooks and corners where they were scattered, and carefully arranged them and lined them up and tapped the edges until they formed a thick neat pile. As big as a doctoral thesis! Many of them I haven’t even begun to read (i.e. the advanced ones). But what a great future resource! I hefted the stack and felt very pleased to have such a substantial and heavy “volume of work” in my hands. I decided that if I were to have them bound, the title would be “Treasury of Chinese Dialogues.”
So maybe I’ll look back through my Treasury of Chinese Dialogues to find something I understand 90% of.
Whoops I totally forgot to comment on the new all-Chinese podcasts. They’re great! (Again, “great future resource” whenever I am more advanced.) I was surprised & happy to see we get the transcripts for free. (Relatively free, anyway, if you already have a basic subscription.) Maybe, remembering the 90% rule, I will hold off on tackling the transcripts. Otherwise I’d be all gung-ho with the dictionary. Like tackling an elephant with a fork maybe. My English voice-teacher friend says that American students tend to overestimate their abilities and what they are capable of. She says she has beginning (American) voice students who come in declaring with great confidence that they want to sing– this or that aria or coloratura passage (which is sort of like a newbie wanting to learn a xiansheng routine). Her English students (she says) seem to be more aware of the levels of progression needed before you reach coloratura ability. I don’t sing but it’s interesting to hear about the different approaches to learning between American and English (European?) voice students. I’m sure there are exceptions, but maybe it’s a bit of a valid stereotype overall. “Americans are taught to believe they can do anything.” (again, her words!) She doesn’t say it with malice, just a sort of factual/amused comment on the sorts of attitudes she has to deal with amongst her many students! Sometimes I bristle at her (and her husband’s) remarks about the abilities of this one or that one (whether singer or in another area)– as if I take it personally, I feel offended to hear someone’s limited boundaries described in a succinct sentence, I want to believe the person can do well, I want to believe the best and that the person can succeed. But I have to admit sometimes, grudgingly, their (British) judgements are more down to earth (about what a person is capable of) than mine (”Go! Fly! Reach the stars! You can do it!”). I took piano with this woman and, honestly, no piano teacher in my entire life had ever told me the reason I never did well at it (even though I loved music and had some talent)– “You play for yourself, not for your audience.” Sorry, hon, you just ain’t a born performer. Please leave the stage. Next, please. I was so angry. But I couldn’t be angry because she just spoke what she saw evident. I wanted her to listen to me and say, “Oh, wow, yippee, how wonderful.” That’s what an American teacher would have said. But it was true. Recitals used to bore me to death. Growing up, I actually didn’t want anyone to hear me play. I never told her that. I tried to play my best but she saw there was no spark of performing. Now I’m glad she told me that and disabused me once and for all of that notion, and now I can actually enjoy listening to other performers play instead of feeling envious.
Gosh I’m getting off on a tangent… back to American/English self-assessment of personal capability… no, before that– back to the advanced Chinese podcasts. OK they are WAY beyond me. So now I will go back and sit down quietly to learn some more elementary vocabulary and dialogues.
Interesting, CatherineNC. I’ve lectured to commerce students in the US, UK, and China. In each context I’ve asked students in the audience to raise their hand if they have an idea and are seriously considering starting their own business someday.
I have a colleague in Scotland (Strathclyde) who’s done the same thing. Can anyone guess what percentages of the students raise their hand in each culture context? (In my experience Chinese really enjoy questions like this one.) I it is related to some interesting differences that CatherineNC has identified inher las post, germane to teaching students from different cultures. I am going to the middle east in September and am very interested to ask the same question!
Patrick
Patrick wrote: >>I’ve lectured to commerce students in the US, UK, and China. In each context I’ve asked students in the audience to raise their hand if they have an idea and are seriously considering starting their own business someday. … Can anyone guess what percentages of the students raise their hand in each culture context?
Maybe close to 100% of Americans!!
One of the saddest notes I ever typed was about a truck driver with a third-grade education. All he had done all his life was drive a truck cross country. He was in his 50’s. One time as he was looking in the engine of the truck, the hood (bonnet) fell on his head and severely injured his neck and upper back. After the acute injury was healed, he tried several times to return to driving but couldn’t endure to sit for any length of time. Physical rehab only helped a bit. He had to undergo assessment for re-trainability. He could barely read and write or do anything on the skills assessment testing. The doctor was at a bit of a loss to find anything he COULD do. She said, “His strong point is that he performs at the third-grade level in arithmetic.” Then later she added, “His weak point is that he performs at the third-grade level in arithmetic.” When asked what he was interested in, the man admitted that it had been his lifelong dream to have his own woodworking business, and he was hoping to be able to pursue that. However he could hardly measure anything, and his manual/fine and gross motor skills were very poor, and he didn’t know how to use simple equipment… to say nothing of not having any “business acumen.” The doctor concluded that his “dream” was not feasible and advised some other retraining. I felt so bad for the guy and always wondered what happened to him, having lost both his real-life job and his dream job at the same time. He obviously wanted to work. But sheesh, if someone who can barely add 2 and 2 dreams of owning his own business, that tells you something about the pervasiveness of the “entrepeneurial drive” in American culture.
Me likey new Hanzi-only site. It forces one to get up off one’s metaphorical hiney and work a little. And there’s always help available in other quarters. And how many Chinese newspapers offer a pinyin version? ‘Course, we’re not talkin’ written Chinese （书面语）here, but until C-Pod does do some written Chinese discussions, it’s good practice. And I need it.
Now that I’ve calmed down a little…
I don’t ever look at the Comments pages for each lesson I work on any more. Before I stopped, I tried to use them to support the early beginners podcasts as I worked through them, learning my first ever dozen words of Chinese. I saw the comments as a place for errata and additional info, and sharing problems misunderstandings and insights with other students at the same level working on the same lesson.
That is not what I found. Hordes of quite advanced students were were there, piddling their hanzi all over the page and discussing advanced grammar and linguistics. Ken had just finished telling us in the podcast that we weren’t going to learn writing, just speaking, so on many levels I had trouble seeing how this was appropriate in the context of the first few lessons. But the clever nice people here quickly pointed out my misatke.
The Comments pages, I was told, were for everybody, and even though I’d only spent two hours in my entire life hearing Mandarin, I was supposed to have enough common sense to distinguish between the hard stuff I needed to know, and the hard stuff that wasn’t relevant. I was encouraged to follow it anyway. True, there was lots of content that only slightly extended the scope of the lesson, but I couldn’t tell that, especially if it was all in Chinese characters. Again, the kind people advised me of my folly.
What I was supposed to do was sit there with a dictionary and look up every word in this casual fellow student chat, until I got it, spending about 30 times as much effort on the chat as it took to learn the lesson, whether it turned out to be something I needed to know or not. It’s good for you, I was reminded. Oh you must have a dictionary, even in the first week, didn’t you know? Can’t see the characters? Reconfigure your computer so you can. Get software that helps you translate. If your computer won’t handle it, buy a better one. Spend most of your time working with dictionaries looking up things that are 90% words you don’t know, if you want to be part of our friendly little group. We all do it, that’s how you learn, and it’s very good for you.
But that’s not what I thought Ken promised me in the first lessons, and it wasn’t fun, it was torture. So what could I do, but choose not to do what’s good for me? Eventually I shut up about it and accepted that in this place self flagellation with a dictionary is part of it, and quietly withdrew from that part of the environment even though it had my label on it.
And now, look here, we hear the shouts of despair coming from the other quarter. Finally the worm turns.
Oh how I’ve waited for this moment. No, I say, make them suffer!
Take it in your stride, it’s what you have to do if you want to become a fine student like me.
HAAA haa haa haaa haaaaaa….
Stop crying guys, buy a decent dictionary, get HanziBar or something, don’t be so lazy, it’s what you have to do to learn, it’s not hard at all, it doesn’t put you off, it makes it more interesting, makes you wake in the morning just dying to be taunted by yet more stuff you can’t fathom, because reading something you already understand half of is fruitless and boring and educationally improper, even I know that now, don’t I. It’s what YOU taught ME. Don’t you remember?
HAAAA haaa hohoho hehe haaaaa…
This has made my day!
Hi AuntySue,
that sounds almost bitter…
Actually I am not bothered by those “I hereby display my Chinese abilities” comments, because I can skip them very efficienty. I neither read them nor do I post Chinese comments myself, because I do not want to ruin my humble Chinese beginner’s skills with mistakes from others nor do I want to plant my mistakes into the memories of others.
What I *do read*, though, are questions (”would you rather write […] or [..].”) and the respecting answers, esp. if they are from the staff. I learned lots from those discussions - because they turn up questions and nuances. In those cases looking up characters and words turns out to be valuable.
Regarding learning characters in general: I have become absolutely convinced that even an absolute novice should start learning characters. I also had the aim once to “just become able to speak and to listen” but then I found that this was a mistake. It made my progress far less efficient. This language rests on homonyms and even Chinese people I often overheard saying things like “Oh you mean FangZi de Fang”…
The problem is that at least for me learning characters is pure and unblemished pain.
Since a year or so I practice reading characters every day and think I might recognize (not write!!) about 2000 of those. Unfortunatelly: Although these might fill 95% of the space you read, usually the rest 5% carry the meaning (and they come from probably 2000 more of those) . So the torture is far from beeing over yet.
On the other hand I am already reaping the first fruits of this - I can learn more independently, words are much easier to remember, because I already understand the parts, and there is a whole new layer of meaning in the language. And there is a new layer of meaning in our appartment as well, as there are so many Chinese products around (picture books and toys for the kids, household equipment, cosmetics, food, tea, and whatever else you can squeeze in the baggage-limit on a flight).
I am also convinced that the characters are the main reasons for so many to stop learning this language. I myself quitted 7 times or so. But once you are addicted you will always come back (-;
Regarding the PDF scripts. I think it is OK not to include Pin Yin and complete translations. For the vocabulary on the other hand it would definitaly be helpful to have direct translations, though, - together with the definitions. I also still look up lots of English-German translations (learned some English here too).
Best regards!
Henning / 海宁
Henning writes: >>nor do I post Chinese comments myself, because I do not want to ruin my humble Chinese beginner’s skills with mistakes from others nor do I want to plant my mistakes into the memories of others.
Henning, I think Ken made a remark about that, some months ago, when there was a question about Lantian’s hanzi… maybe it was even a flame war, one of the few ones we’ve had on Cpod… fueled by a particular individual who for some reason was repeatedly tearing into Lantian’s efforts to write in Chinese. I finally wondered aloud, I mean in writing, if maybe it would be better to wait to start writing until there wouldn’t be mistakes. But then Ken said he supported Lantian’s efforts 100%. I now have to say I agree. The “be totally correct” hypervigilant attitude hinders communication. Mistakes or not, putting what you know into practice is the way to get better. You can always polish up and fix your mistakes later.
When I didn’t know any better, I couldn’t tell if Lantian was making mistakes. Now that I know a little bit, the hanzi typo’s don’t engrave themselves into my memory at all! And the unknown characters are still unknown characters. At least he can get in there and communicate what he wants to communicate. 那我也应该练习写中文!!
I agree with Catherine. Speaking Chinese with my poor vocabulary I can get away with murder. But, when I write Chinese preparing lesson plans for the two little girls I trade Chinese for English, I try very hard to write grammitcally correct (Chinese sentences) Their father helps correct my errors. It only hurts a little bit. Also, I am trying to write on the Advanced site. I am hoping (1) my questions and prayers will be answered and (2) kind folks will gently help with my Chinese.
If I could make a suggestion perhaps in “writing” on the Advanced Site, if I or others are looking for corrections; we say so or have a smily face or something that says we accept help with our Chinese writing. Some may not want the focus on how they write but only answers to what they write.
Even with my massive Western Ego it becomes humongus Humility when I write in Chinese and will accept any and all help.
Mike in Jubei
John said,
This is one area in which I think zhuyin is great. It’s there when you need it, and it saves a great deal of time when looking up words in a dictionary, but it’s so distracting as pinyin is. Since it isn’t composed of Roman characters, it’s very easy to ignore it until encountering a character that you really can’t read.
Looking up characters in a dictionary by radical (or even cutting and pasting them from a website into an online dictionary) is the least rewarding use of study time I know of…
Another thing that might offer the best of both worlds, is to use Adsotrans-style pop-ups. That way, no pronunciation guide or translation would appear until the user chose to look for it.
CHOICE - About the Adsotrans pop-ups. I guess we should get into the nitty gritty to help Cpod figure out what it is we ‘want’. Right now, they do have popups in the online dialogue. What Cpod has choosen to do, however, is turn off the English translation in the popup. The pinyin is there. They have then provided their own custom Chinese translations for select words in the popups. These explanations match the ones in the pdf. One problem, and I’m not sure if it’s just my browser is that the Chinese explanation in the popup is often cut-off or seems incomplete in comparison to the ones in the pdf. The other problem is that often their are words I don’t know, but I guess someone at Cpod thinks I should know at that level, I think it’s pretty tough to guess.
The technical solution if they can produce it, I think would serve everyone, and make learning non-frustrating, but it’s probably not the easiest thing to do. Basically I agree with them that we should do the first few read thrus totally in Chinese, I also like the Chinese only explanations on the new vocab, I ALSO like being able to see the pinyin/English in popups for words that I don’t know, I also would like a literal Chinese-to-English translation, then an idiomatic translation, and if the need is there–translations to other languages besides English.
TECHNICAL SOLUTION - make a toggle switch of some sort, that allows the user “To Learn Chinese on Their Terms”.
If you can’t implement all the variations, maybe start with the ones that are do-able.
PRINT - And since Cpod will eventually become a huge language-learning, cultural and educational media conglomerate borg, the tech fix should also include that legacy-system saving feature/option of ‘Print Version’ like they have for newspaper articles. For those of us who at times would like a printed version that we can take with us to the beach and read over a fresh cocunut juice drink. One printed out version all in Chinese, one with pinyin, and another printed sheet with English. All on re-cycled, organic soy-ink, non-bleached paper of course.
Wow, Lantian, your great suggestions never end. We are listening…
-John
A lot of the things that are being said here about practicalities, apply to newbie lessons as well. And probaby to those in between.
When I try to read the characters, if there’s pinyin anywhere within my field of view, my eyes go there involuntarily.
So, using the PDFs, I can’t ever get the experience of reading the characters. Despite all motivation it’s perceptually impossible to see them.
If a newbie lesson consists of only four simple three-word utterances, why not give three versions of it, spaced out one after another? It’s not like we’re going to lose our place is it
If you want us to have the experience of reading the dialogue in Chinese for those of us who want to do that, it’s not possible from the PDFs that have chinese/pinyin/english interleaved. Physiologically, and perceptively, humans are not equipped to cancel out the more familiar stimulus and really see the unfamiliar. For example a middle of the road learning approach might be to learn to vaguely recognise many of the characters early but not slave over writing them, but you have to be able to keep your naughty eyes on them to do that. If the Chinese isn’t there for me to read, who’s it for then? :-,)
In the advanced level PDFs I looked at, the same formula worked out not as bad because instead of three or four words, each sentence took up a good inch or two of page before the pinyin cut in after some white space. I could really “see” the characters! Of course I couldn’t understand them, but there I could get the wonderful experience of focusing eyes on each character as I heard each sound spoken.
Yeah, someone suggested blacking out the pinyin with a marker pen, but it made an awful mess of my screen.
Aunty Sue wrote: >>When I try to read the characters, if there’s pinyin anywhere within my field of view, my eyes go there involuntarily.
I agree with Aunty Sue, it would be very helpful for hanzi lovers if Chinesepod would separate out the characters from the pinyin. Before printing out a transcript, I cut and paste all the characters into Word, and then below that another section for the pinyin.
I am glad you’ve added some more advanced level stuff, even if it’s a bit beyond me. I have found the best way to gain skill in a language is to work with materials that make you push a little bit, and I scored a level 3 on the listening comprehension section of the HSK (I failed overall) merely by using TV shows with Chinese subtitles from www.yesasia.com when I was only at about the 1,000 character level of Chinese and using a dictionary and the pause button when I felt inspired and watching an episode daily - I’m partial to Carman Lee myself. The only drawback is that I’ve got to slow down with the podcasts because of the dictionary work they require, a tedious fact of life at the intermediate level of learning any language. From what I have gathered from all second language learners struggling to go from intermediate to advanced, even ESL students, is that students typically get stalled at this stage because of the difficulty in bridging that gap, which seems to only be closed by heavy dictionary work or memorizing the HSK dictionary (I’m attempting it and will let you know if that gave me the results I wanted). It’s aggravating to me because it makes my Chinese study so non-portable that I’d practically need to be an octopus to hold all of the materials I need to get the full meaning, so I’ve devised another method in an attempt to work around that: I have taken to highlighting characters I don’t know in telenovels, marking the pages with post-it flags, and promising myself to look up all the words when I’m desk-bound. It has worked somewhat, but I have found the dictionary look-up outpacing my attempt at reading and lots of words not to be found in my best dictionaries….
I want to address the comments made about an English voice teacher saying Americans have too much confidence in their ability to learn. I have to say that may be true about most things, but gauging the reactions to my study of foreign languages over the years, it is a special case where Americans are taught from birth that any language outside of European, Latin alphabet languages are “impossible” and “unnecessary” to learn, so don’t even try unless you want people to be overly impressed with your 350 character level textbook (”Oh, you can read Chinese.” Not really, since 350 characters can’t even get you through a kid’s book.) or get angry and accuse you of pretending to know how to read a foreign language to make them feel stupid! (That kind of commentary has passed since I took the HSK and have an actual score to prove what I know.) The pedagogy of most textbooks in America in these languages is so dumbed-down, most languages using non-standardized intermediate pinyin-like alphabets and no native writing at all, and outside of the university, there seems to be a phobia of non-Latin writing systems, deferred permanently in most cases in the interests of “ease” in learning. No, contrary to the voice teacher’s assessment, I have found where languages are concerned, overconfidence is nowhere present, and I’m constantly aware of how taking out my Chinese book in public might start something at both extremes of reactions.
MP3s for Chinese Definitions
I’ve been a bit busier lately so that means less time in front of the computer. I don’t like printing and carrying around the pdfs, so I had a thought. Could someone just read the definitions for the words in the lesson that you have on the pdfs, yah–it’s another mp3. Hey, put it in the premium, on the extended exercises page.
I’m good at asking for more, more, more!