John and I have been discussing a number of ideas on developing the audio lessons. In response I’ve written up a series of guidelines that I hope will help with that development. Here’s part of the first document I prepared. It might be of some interest.
Thus far, we have approached lesson content from the perspective of topic areas. Now I’d like to develop another category: types of discourse. There are two general categories of discourse within which our listening s appear:
1. Participative listening. These are situations where the listener participates directly in conversation through verbal responses, gestures, etc. Normally, the purpose of this kind of listening is to gain information, bond, share feelings, etc. It isn’t possible for our listeners to interact with us directly through the podcasts, of course, but we can illustrate this mode of discourse through examples, enabling the listener to experience it vicariously.
2. Transactional listening. This is where no active participation in the discourse is required of the listener. The purpose is usually to gain information, or for amusement. Our podcasts can mimic any from of transactional listening – they should do so as faithfully as possible through sound effects, auditory character, etc. (Authentic listening activities are another possibility here.)
Types of listening activities:
1. Participative scenarios:
Discussions: formal, family, work, heart-to-hearts,
Social chat: at a party, at the game, in work
Interviews – job, radio, news, etc
Making arrangements: travel, business arrangements
Exchanging views and opinions
Getting professional advice: from a consultant, lawyer, doctor2. Transactional scenarios:
Movies, music, theater
Getting instructions
Announcements
News, weather forecast, sports report, radio announcements
Lectures and speeches
Being tested‘Auditory character’
Conversational exchange is, of course, colloquial. It stops and starts, changing pace and volume, uneven rhythm, etc. It is replete with redundancy, noise, and colloquialisms. In terms of ‘auditory character’ it mis clearly distinguishable from announcements, speeches, and other transactional forms. A prepared speech has a completely different sound. People who have never heard spoken Chinese would be able to tell the difference between the sound of a prepared speech and a colloquial rant, for example
More on listening later.
If you have comments or suggestions for these lists, please feel free.
Ken Carroll
Ken Carroll
Ken,
I think your approach is good and would urge you to pursue this discourse approach. As a user of Cpod for almost a year I have seen the site and the community grow and really enjoy the interaction among the staff and members. I have one suggestion that relates to mandarin listening. Despite having gone through most of the newbie and beginner lessons and mastered most of the vocabulary and characters, I still feel that my listening skills are not good. This is in part due to the fact that aside from Cpod I do not have the opportunity to hear Chinese. Attempts to find local tutors have met with failure and they are expensive.
With rougly 200 lessons completed in the newbie and beginner lesson, we have learned quite a bit of practical vocabulary. I would like to suggest that you develop “listening modules” composed of maybe 5 to 10 minutes of straight Chinese in graduated levels which employ the vocabulary learned to date. This would push us to improve our listening and give us all a real feeling of satisfaction of being able to understand a dialogue or story. Perhaps a transcript and /or translation could be attached as a check. As your podcasts from the early days repeatedly pointed out, “input” is a key factor for language acquisition and having longer and concentrated input would be very benficial. The short dialogues in the lessons are great for content, vocabulary building , pronunciation, etc. but they really do not fill the need for active listening.
30 years ago I studied Japanese at Columbia University. Memorizing dialogues, vocabulary, execises, roll playing, repetition where all important in language acquisition and most of these are duplicated by Cpod, only better. The missing element is the old language lab where we could sit and listen to longer dialogues or stories to test our comprehension. This is missing at Cpod. Maybe “listening modules” would fill this void. Perhaps this ties in with some of the other concepts you are developing such as tutoring and testing.
I have noted comments in the past about the large gap between the beginner and intermediate levels. I think this gap could be bridged by such listening modules.One of my problems aside from not knowing the vocabulary in the higher lessons is that in the intermediate lessons my ears are not tuned into the cadence of the language and the banter. Getting my ears more tuned into listening to Chinese would help greatly.
I heartily agree with Stephen. Short stories at different ability levels given at normal speed would not only be interesting and informative but would also challenge our listening ability. We could play them over several times until we reached 100 percent comprehension before moving on to the next. There could also be a little test at the end for evaluation. Another thing that would be helpful is a set of rapid fire drills for common phrases used in sentences relating everyday things. Things like “Please move to the back of the bus” when spoken rapidly sound like gibberish to the uninitiated unless one has had previous exposure. We might readily understand it if it is spoken slowly like “Please move to the back of the bus” but obviously that is not a real life situation.
I´m sorry. I put spaces between the words in the last “Please move to the back of the bus” but the blog removed them. I think you know what I mean anyway.
Found this interesting article on e-tutoring which references Chinese in addition to a host of other subjects. The company mentioned in the article is going to offer english lesson to chinese.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCAT.....index.html
Can Cpod offer a similar type service for those us who want more tutoring in Chinese with a live person? The technology would seem to be relatively simple.
Stephen gets a big high five from me too. Short stories would also attract more advanced students to the lower level podcasts, and would no doubt help out.
In listening to Mandarin materials via audio (CD, mp3, etc) I prefer more native Mandarin speakers. I find when listening to non-native speakers I can detect small differences. This is true of the New Practical Chinese Reader materials I have as well as the Chinese Pod materials. For example, Lin Na on the New Practical Chinese Reader audio examples is distinguishable, as is Ma Dawei.
I would prefer both male and female native speakers, and the more the merrier.
It would also be interesting to have both Northern and Southern speakers, because most of the instructors I have heard seem to be Southern speakers and seem to say things like Nin2 (you, polite) with a more nasal component to the final N (which they seem to do with a number of other final Ns), which is unlike native English speakers would prefer. I wonder if that is actually how all Chinese speakers say that word (and if so, I would like to eliminate these small differences …).
Ken,
I think you and your team are doing an amazing job. I kinda disagree with Stephen regarding longer pieces. While Newbie and Beginner only offer limited dialogues, from Intermediate onwards things get moving (too fast maybe, but that’s a different question).
From a conversational standpoint, what I appreciate most is the the ‘banter’, which to me is one of the selling points setting ChinesePod apart - it’s just like being with friends or family, following some, getting lost, picking up the thread again. I’m not even interested in the extra transcript, it would undoubtedly give a sense of intellectual completeness, but the reality of everyday conversation is you never have the script. Listining over and over, looking up the odd word just helps me moving forward.
There’s always going to be a level of uncertainty in listening to conversations, my personal goal obviously being to reduce it as much as possible, knowing I’ll never be able to entirely eliminate it.
Those who regularly use a language they learnt as adults know that however functionally fluent you become (in some contexts at least), you’ll always come across situations where you only grasp part of what’s being said - particularly in noisy or multiple conversation environments.
The more exposure you’ve had to accents, speed, voices, styles etc. the better, also in terms of what’s expected in response.
Incidentally, this post focuses on listening, but another, somewhat inseparable goal of those podcasts is language production, acquiring patterns and vocabulary that I can use for active communication. This typically requires less depth but much higher confidence, as uncertainty in pronunciation or structures simply won’t work.
FWIW
I also think the current structure with dialogue + discussion exactly addresses the intertwined production vs listening aspects I mentioned.
Stephen/Bob/Max,
Your suggestions for slightly longer passages is noted. The tutor idea is somethign we have experimented on the teachers’ forum, but it does need more work. I’ll keep you posted on any developments.
Richard,
I approached a number of acting schools last week, to see if they had people who could tell stories and generally add color to the audio. The response was disappointing - they all wanted exorbitant fees up front, even before I knoew if they were good or not. I wanted to test them first and then choose who we would work with. Back to the drawing board. I’ll find a solution.
Yv,
I see what you mean about the banter.
I may not answer every comment, but I assure you, I’m listening.
Ken Carroll