Norman Hamer, a newcomer to ChinesePod, asked a question today in a lesson thread that I thought was worth a treating here on the blog.
… Chinesepod conflicts with the Pimsleur method which believes that people should learn orally ONLY to start with. Does anyone have any ideas on the Pod vs. the Pimsleur approach?
I have something to say about the exclusively oral approach: There’s no single way to learn a language. What works for me may not work for you.
I try to avoid dogmatic pronouncements on theory. (I’m tempted to say that I must insist on avoiding dogma!) I don’t think there is any single method that is truly effective for every learner. This is why we emphasize learner choice and learner autonomy on ChinesePod. Learners can be encouraged to find what works best for themselves.
My suggestion to Norman - figure out your own learning proclivities before you embrace exclusively a method that makes these claims. From experience, I can tell you that most adult learners tend to want to see new words as well as hearing them. The adult brain just works that way. (Kids are different.) I also find that learners do and should, adopt eclectic strategies - cherry picking, according to needs and preferences, rather than rigid formula.
As for my own part, I do not accept the claim that you must absolutely, and ONLY start learning a language orally, though I would accept that it could work for some people. (The claim is actually way too loose to rebut properly - when, for example, does ’starting’ a language begin, and when, more problematically, does the ’start’ come to an ‘end’, as it were?)
A second problem. As an English speaker, you can easily develop very inaccurate ideas about the sounds of Chinese if you don’t have a systematic visual representation (hence the existence of pin yin). In the absence of a system, adults tend to create their own representations, mentally spelling out ‘knee how‘ for ‘ni hao‘, for example. But Chinese uses a very limited number of sounds. The difference between ’sh’ sounds, and ‘x’ sounds are important but subtle, and they can radically alter meaning. You need a systematic way to tell the difference.
So, my view is that it really is best to get some form of visual representation down in the early days. This will help avoid the fossilization of crass inaccuracies. It’s also important because later, when you do start with a written form, lest you have to undo the self-styled spelling and re-calibrate. That can be hard.
Perhaps the difference between ChinesePod and pretty much all other approaches, that I know of is that we offer you the choice.
Ken Carroll
This post is well written. It’s rare see such good writing on a company blog. As a business writer, I appreciate this - lots of good points, clearly articulated. Impessive.
I totally agree with you, Ken. As a visual learner, I really like to see what I’m hearing. Maybe not first, and maybe not at the same time, but I want to see a visual representation of the language pretty soon after I am introduced to it.
I know not everyone learns the same way that I do, and that’s fine.
-John
THE WILL - to do it. 意志，从那里出生？
Language acquisition takes time to seed, germinate, grow and flourish. Any method that suits you personally and where you can see it taking you thru a period of time that meets your goal will work.
最重要的事：第一，是不是适合你。第二，什么方法可以根你一起去一段时间。 如果你好好照顾那两个事，肯定一天你能碰到你的目的。
For example, I doubt that a tape （Pimsleur) /DVD/book can carry a person thru a year of study. Only the truly dedicated and compulsive would be able to listen and relisten and learn that static material. There are some of you out there though, I know friends who have watched a DVD 20 times!
如果你能很努力每天听那些碟，可能你也能学到那个输入。不过我觉得一般的人不是那么认真。
Cpod offers a variety of materials and they are trying to build depth, variety and cross-pollination through it all, but I think the most valuable part of it’s ‘method’ is that it’s here day in and day out, lively, fresh and responsive.
Cpod 的方法是什么方法？你们的内容越来越好，不果是不是这个东西是最重要的？对我来说，最重要的是你们每天陪我！
I’ve used Cpod as my main anchor for over a year now, and I still chat up a storm here and look forward to each new day.
btw, I don’t think it’s imperative to always start with speaking. Depending on various goals, time constraints, personal preference, types of feedback, etc., it can vary dramatically from being a benefit to a deterrent.
我不觉得你肯定因该第一先用口语学语信。我们不是小孩子已经长大了，我们会用很多方法！
I started out using Pimsleur, I think it is a very good source to use when you are starting out because of the focus on accurate pronounciation. They are constantly telling you to speak out loud and compare your pronounciation with the speaker, and the soundtrack gives you a gap to speak. I think you need to do this relentlessly to get the pronounciation right, keep listening for differences between how you say it, and how the native speaker says it.
Looking at the pinyin while you are in the early stages of learning is not going to help in making your pronounciation accurate. Although, of course it can remind you of the sounds you heard. I think I have a fairly accurate idea of what each pinyin sounds like now, but I remember even after many months of studying, still discovering that some of the pinyin sounds were not what I had previously understood.
Mike B said:
I disagree. When you first start, you might think that pinyin zhang and jiang or pinyin shu and xu sound the same. If you are looking at pinyin from the beginning, you will be aware that they are spelled differently and thus are not exactly the same sounds. Then you will listen to those syllables more carefully, and eventually will be able to distinguish them. Correctly distinguishing those sounds is the first step on the road to accurately producing them. If you never see the pinyin until much later in the game, the process will take a lot longer.
-John
I totally agree with John. If there had not been Pinyin in the beginning when I started learning Chinese, I would have been totally lost trying to grasp all those “strange” sounds and especially tones. In my experience once you know how to pronounce pinyin correctly, everything (listening, speaking) gets muuuch easier.
It’s interesting, there’s always lots of discussion about tones and the importance of gettting them right, though I often find distinguishing some an/ang or en/eng endings a lot trickier. Tones might be more a producing issue and sounds an understanding issue but they’re both very important in my view.
Yv
Ken-Had you been my high school Spanish teacher I actually may have retained something after 4 years of classes.
I can say the same for all 3 of my kids who struggled with Spanish in high school.
My son, 22, and I learn Chinese with a tudor. Its amazing, we have COMPLETELY different learning styles - and he has half my DNA
.
Keep up the good work.
Well, I’m trying to cut back on the posting, but I can’t resist commenting in this one.
If someone really studies pinyin, and its relationship to the sounds, then it can help. If one word is written with “x” and the other with “sh” then Pinyin alerts you to the fact that there is a difference in sound, even if you don’t hear it at first. Then repeated listening of very slow speech can develop your ability to distinguish the difference. After that, a detailed description of the physical production of the phoneme can help you to figure out how to produce it. Without pinyin or some other method of phonetic transcription, many people may be blissfully unaware that there even is a difference.
However, most people simply aren’t interested enough to do the kind of detailed and meticulous work that the above requires. In that case, a method like Pimsleur, with its slow speech, lots of space, and tiny chunks of new speech gives the learner a chance at an acceptable pronunciation. That is one reason I have recommended it so often to people who have asked me for recommendations as to how to proceed, even though I have some reservations about it. Chinese pod newbie lessons do the same thing I think, and I am now also recommending them.
Although I have never taken a Mandarin class, I have known a number of people who did, as beginners. Without exception, they misused the pinyin system. They seemed to file the word in their heads using ONLY the pinyin, usually without even the tone markings. It seemed to me that, when called upon for a word, they would dredge up the pinyin spelling from their memory bank, and proceed to pronounce it as they would if it were an English word. Such people would do better if they never even saw a pinyin transcription.
Myself, I do just the opposite. Having learned so much material without even looking at the pinyin, I first think of the sound of the word, which tells me what it must be spelled like in pinyin. To keep myself honest, occasionally I will check to see if its spelling in pinyin really does agree with the way I am hearing it.
I once read a rather poignant story of a Chinese translator who considered herself to be Chinas leading expert on the Spanish language. She described how horrified she was to discover, when post-Nixon China opened to the world, that she couldn’t even understand the simplest of spoken Spanish.
(I wrote this thing out before Johns last post. My first paragraph recapitulating his. I’ll leave it in though.)
Goulnik:
I’m not sure if there isn’t some assimilation going on of the nasal sounds in fast speech. So the distinction between the finals “n” and “ng” may become lost in multisyllabic words depending on the initial of the syllable following. Perhaps someone here knows for sure? In any case, this distinction is the one I check most often. It also seems to vary some between dialects.
grrr…I’m sure the language police are going to take me away for my bracketed sentence. Yes, English really is my native language.
I think when learning new things you ideally want to use as many senses as possible, sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, where possible or practical.
PUT UP or shut up: I’m not entirely convinced that one is able to hurdle over natural acquisition with exercises THAT much. By this I mean going from a middle-of-the road learning, repeating, using of pinyin to a force-fed boot camp must pronounce every pinyin’d sound correctly and repeat 1000 times before engaging in any conversation.
My own ear, mouth and mind has developed over time and I would call this development acquisition. Early on I had a very hard time hearing the difference between zhang/jiang in natural conversations. I didn’t have trouble in an isolated sterile environment like a pinyin chart or teacher reciting the sounds in say a word list.
These days they are definitely different sounds in my ear. Especially after my first reception of the emotional laden words “我给你讲!” (Now, let me tell you! wo gei ni jiang3)
I think I want to say this, for a newbie, you should take it for granted you are not hearing everything well AND you are not saying the sounds well. Monitor yourself over time and recheck occasionally over longer intervals. Occasional intensives also drag one out of complacency and plateaus.
Maybe someone can find fewer and more poetic words for what I’m trying to say, ignore the part where a traditional Chinese teacher may say your pronunciation is horrible and torture you with 80 repetitions of ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4, zhang4, jiang3, qiang4, zhan. Nobody makes the new sounds right except maybe for that comedian that can sound like a truck, train, bird and rifle fire.
But keep on tweaking, listen carefully, vocalize to yourself, vocalize out loud, do review things like Cpod’s pinyin chart and JohnPs pronunciation pointers, it’s all natural and the sounds do emerge…unless you ignore them. (Which by the way some people do, which I think is also okay. I’m no accent-cop.)
Hi, Ken, your description of the incorrect internalized “spelling” made from only hearing the words was exactly the experience I had. I signed up for the PDFs solely to get this straightened out (still working on that).
Roger
蓝天说chinesepod每天陪他，我觉得这很重要。因为我们需要适合现在生活方式的学习方法。
I started with a friend who showed me how pinyin worked and drilled basic pronunciation into my head. It worked really well for me, and I’m sure it wouldn’t for some, but I would imagine it would for many.
“When you first start, you might think that pinyin zhang and jiang or pinyin shu and xu sound the same. If you are looking at pinyin from the beginning, you will be aware that they are spelled differently and thus are not exactly the same sounds. Then you will listen to those syllables more carefully, and eventually will be able to distinguish them.” -John
I actually noticed this with many ‘first-time China’ friends who were having a hard time with pronunciation. They didn’t know what pinyin was and were trying to learn using an ‘oral only’ method. To me, it was MUCH clearer because I knew how words were spelled and I listened for the subtle differences.
I’ve noticed this with other languages as well. I don’t remember pronunciation well until I see it on paper. Alas, my brain is no longer a sponge.
I am an elementary student who has drifted up through Newbie and Elementary levels and is now banging on the gate of Intermediate. No matter how hard I knock, however, the dragon guarding the gate doesn’t seem to want to let me in…not yet anyway. I recently went back to look at the Pinyin pronunciation system more carefully and I find that there is a lot more there than I had previously thought and understood. I really am just now starting to appreciate the Pinyin system for what it is, a great innovation, and I suggest that all Elementary students go back and take a second look to make sure that you have it “down” properly. It really seems to be helping.
A few thoughts to fuel the discussion. I think that it’s important to realize that the pinyin system isn’t real - it’s a tool, a construct devised to help teach the Chinese language. A lot of new learners never grasp this concept and assume that the letters used the spell pinyin words are pronounced as they are in English. In this way, pinyin is dangerous - I can’t tell you how many of the students in my class have terrible pronunciation, even those with advanced Chinese skills, because they can’t separate the pinyin system from English. If this isn’t established early on, then incorrect technique will surely be burned in your head.
That being said, I think the two things that really helped me early on were the Pimsleur lessons, and John’s description of correct pronunciation on his Sinosplice site. These two resources made me realize that “I am going to have to teach my mouth how to make these new sounds.” I think the pronunciation guide is a great resource also.
But, back to Ken’s main point. An idea thats been floating around in my head for a while is “you are your environment.” What do I mean by this? Take the human body for example. If the “environment” that you create for yourself is sitting on the couch eating potato chips, your body will respond by establishing equilibrium the environment, i.e. gaining weight and the like. Now, if your environment is running 10 miles a day, your body will respond by losing unnecessary weight, strengthening the muscles it uses, increased lung capacity, etc. What does this have to do with learning Chinese? My point is that I think the mind works the same way. If the “Chinese language learning environment” that you create for yourself is restricted to only listening or only reading or only speaking, then your mind will come to equilibrium under those one-sided conditions. Thus, it seems to me that the most effective way to learn, at any level, would be to replicate the conditions that a native speaker would experience - specifically, make yourself NEED Chinese to get by. I think this is one of the reasons why children are much more effective language learners - they NEED to learn to communicate to survive. That isn’t the case for a non-native speaker of Chinese who already has a language to fall back on.
So I think that trying to decide if ONLY listening or ONLY writing at the early phases of language learning is overly picky. After all, children don’t fret over these matters. They learn what the NEED to learn.
Any type of visual aid to language learning helps reinforce the spoken form. When children learn English in school, they are not limited to “oral only” learning. Teachers rely heavily on “pictures” to cement in memory what is spoken.
Pinyin is one example of a visual depiction. All Chinese language college courses I have attended insist on the learner using pinyin. It serves two functions: (i) as a visual learning aid and (ii) as a phonetic bridge to a non-phonetic system.
Hey Ken,
Thanks for the commment on the portuguese blog I hope to get some good contents over there and I hope the portuguese speakers from Cpod can enjoy.
I think I have something to say about this Chinespod and primleur method too.
I agree that is awesome you leaving to the listeners this freedom to find what works best and I also bet you are totally right in this matter. Its great that we can use tags to find lessons with stuff we want to learn and there are so many other advantages on chinesepod that we cannot really compare the two.
But the more directive aproach of the Primsleur method also helps you to build up vocabulary, specially in the beggining I used to listen a lot to these lessons, but then is becomes very boring and there is no more to it, about 90 lessons and you don´t end up speaking chinese! I can listen to Cpod lessons over and over, there are so many now, and reviewing it is pleseant. I am thinking about dropping my reagular chinese lesson here in Brazil, and staying only with online learning, It has tought me a whole lot more and it is so much fun!
On the other hand, there are some good aspects of the primsleur method that could be incorporated on the Cpod show. The repetition time and questions are a good thing, I realise sometimes you do this on the show, and it takes a lot of time and bandwith on a mp3 file, but it helps. Online education is all about interaction and I thing the repetition time for the listeners is a good way to make us interact a little bit and I would love to have some more of it, not a lot.
Thanks for the blog under chinesepod flag, it is shuch a honor!
Mario
For those of you who have pointed out that Children learn their own language by listening, speaking and writing I can’t help but point out that they have typically been learning the basics and fundamentals of their language for at least four years first (there is plenty of research to suggest mother language adsorbtion starts well before one years of age). Apparently in some Scandanavian countries they do not start with writing until seven years of age and yet still manage to catch up with other European children by the age of eleven in TWO languages.
It took me about six months before I was ready to start properly addressing the writing system in Chinese and I do regret that for one minute. I used pinyin as a phonetic tool right from the beginning and if I learned a European language I would have been happy to start reading much earlier (because I have already mastered a similar system. The pinyin system allowed me to sort out word difference as John describes but it is also a vital interface to software, online dictionaries etc.
I learned English un-hindered by writing until the age of five. I then spent some years learning to write what I could already speak. Only then did I increase my English language knowledge and vocabulary by further reading of much more advanced material (approximately 8 or 9 years old). I have now just started to enter this stage in Chinese now after almost one year (and they say Children learn language faster than adults ;)). No I cannot read Chinese characters well enough to truly enter this phase but I augment my increasing reading abilities with Text to Speech and annotation tools etc. but make sure all the time I am pushing against the edge of my knowledge.
I have to admit that I did not use any character or written stuff apart from a little pinyin for the newbie or elmentary levels of Chinesepod. I have done some text work on the Intermediate but am now happy to be at a point where I can learn from these just by listening again. My written Chinese practice mainly comes from learning jokes, stories etc. text chat and writing/reading emails etc. Soon I hope to start on something more literate.
I increasingly chat in Chinese in the highstreet or over Skype, I do not stress about pronouciation etc. but just remain constantly aware of it. Iwill only worry if it stops getting slowly better over time (still a way to go though) overtime peole seem to understand more of what I say though. I have constantly supplemented my listening with real Chinese via TV films etc.
Thats what I did, it is working for me at least. I tried Pimsleur early on but had to use pinyin with it (it seemed lacking otherwise) and soon got too bored to continue.
Great I can write this up properly, and stick it on my blog somewhere, I should be spending most of my time writing and reading Chinese from now on. Bring on another year and thankyou Chinesepod for being an important part of my learning experiance.
sorry should have said do not regret that for one minute up there
Ken says:
As an English speaker, you can easily develop very inaccurate ideas about the sounds of Chinese if you don’t have a systematic visual representation (hence the existence of pin yin).
Personally, I now think that Pinyin is actually a poor scaffold for that for native English speakers, or indeed any other European speakers. The reasons are two-fold:
1. Pinyin is not consistent.
2. Pinyin uses clusters of letters that native speakers have had years of practice producing synaptic connections to drive the tongue, mouth and throat muscles in certain ways. These associations have become reflexive. It takes a very flexible mind indeed (of course, such minds do exist) to override those reflexes and now produce a subtly different set of sounds associated with the same clusters of letters.
In my opinion, it would have been far better to associate non-used clusters, like say xgz for the various components of Mandarin sylables, or use a system already developed in Taiwan, like Bopomofo, as that signals clearly to the learner that they are dealing with a different kettle of fish and that attention has to be paid to the phonetics.
Ken also says:
But Chinese uses a very limited number of sounds.
In my opinion, this is just not true. It uses a different range of sounds than English speakers use (or even most European speakers do), and makes different distinctions that English speakers do. Examples are the x/sh, j/zh, q/ch sounds, but there are also distinctions made between u (with umlaut) made after x,j,q or n (for nv), etc, u made after b/d/t/etc and u made after zh/sh/ch.
These are all different sounds but we do not make such distinctions in English, just as l and r (not the retroflex r that Mandarin uses) are different sounds that Mandarin (and Cantonese) do not distinguish.
Having said all that, I find the ChinesePod approach useful because it has plenty of conversation-like pieces that I can listen to, and which forces me to try to understand and internalize the sentence structures and so forth. Also, the commentary in the intermediate lessons by the native speaker I have heard so far is very useful, as it too forces me to do more understanding. Finally, the written material helps reinforce the whole lot.
“It takes a very flexible mind indeed (of course, such minds do exist) to override those reflexes and now produce a subtly different set of sounds associated with the same clusters of letters.”
-Chris
I have definitely noticed this with some people, but it really has seemed to be the minority. Many people will initially fumble on things like ‘chi’ and ‘jiu’, but once the exceptions become clear, I think it’s actually quite easy and natural to get over it.
Also, I think it’s an asset that pinyin uses the roman alphabet. I think the familiarity actually helps more than it hurts. (At least in the first few years, and definitely for rapid vocab acquisition.) For example, although Japanese uses syllabary systems alongside borrowed Chinese characters (Kanji), I still thought in Roomaji for a long time because it was convenient. I guesst he issue is whether or not a convenience ‘cheapens’ the process of learning the language or not.
Lantian says:
… endless repitions of ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4
There are several problems here.
1. Learning these sounds in isolation does not help you hear them correctly or produce them correctly in clusters of syllables of different tones. There are so many people in my Chinese II class who have not understood that third tone becomes a half-third tone before another sylable and becomes second tone before another third tone.
2. Native English speakers take a long time to learn how to efficiently distinguish the tones from each other and they often que on the wrong aspects, and thus sound attrocious. This is especially true when they speak slowly trying to get all the tones correct.
Pinyin, like it or not, is the state of the art. I remember back when Wade-Giles was the state of the art (yes, I am THAT oooold). How awful! Then we had Yale. Much better but geared mainly for the American missionary tongue. Pinyin is the next step in the progression. It isn’t a substitution for Chinese. It is just an aid and as an aid it serves fairly well if one studies it a bit and recognizes both the strengths and the weaknesses. I prefer reading the characters but until I learn enough characters, Pinyin is my friendly crutch.
Bob says:
Pinyin, like it or not, is the state of the art. I remember back when Wade-Giles was the state of the art (yes, I am THAT oooold). How awful!
How delightfully contradictory that sounds. Pinyin is the state of the art, much better than all those other state of the art systems it supplanted.
It may be, but it was designed at a time when our knowledge of the flexibility of the human brain was much more limited than it is today.
I was reading through this all ready to talk about bopomofo, when Ken goes and steals my thunder. Oh well, always more to say.
I started with Pinyin and to this day am more comfortable with it than any other system. Still, as soon as I got to Taiwan I saw the merits of bopomofo (zhuyinfuhao-注音符號), and took pains to learn it right away. I have definitely seen it happen with learners, both classmates and myself, that they tend to Anglocize (or Italianocize, Germanocize, etc) the sounds in Pinyin. Whereas with the Taiwanese system you’re forced from the beginning to relate to the new sounds.
Moreover, bopomofo is great for beginners because it can be placed discreetly right next to the Chinese characters as a reference when you get stuck. My son has a bunch of children’s books written this way, and it’s great for his learning, and mine.
On the other hand, I am a big fan of pinyin when it comes to typing Chinese on the computer. Typing out the bopomofo characters is too slow and cumbersome, at least for someone more attuned to roman characters. I was thrilled when I found the pinyin IME after years of picking slowly across my Taiwanese style keyboard.
Joe
I think Ken’s on the money about not adopting learning dogma. In my view, the important thing is to keep your mind enganged on the task at hand - learning Chinese in this case - and you should use all the resources you need to do that. I can see that if you spent all your time reading grammar books instead of listening, your ability with the spoken language would suffer; but it doesn’t follow that doing anything besides listening is actively harmful. As Ken says, an adult needs to see things written down (and keep their own written record) to help get the concepts organized in their minds. It’s just the way we know to work with language.
In any case, some of the Pimsleur courses I’ve done (a few) come with a reading booklet, and they do reading at the ends of the lessons. So are we fighting a straw man here?
Just a quick note on the pinyin bopomofo….At my class the other night, I pronounced it that way but…
…my teacher informed us that the pronunciation has now been revised to “bepemefe”…more in line with the “detenele” consonants…
Pimsleur is, without reading and grammar lessons, not a all-purpose learning method, but i believe, based on my experience, Pimsleur-like exercise is excellent/essential to master language.
To speak language is “automatic response” and unconscious memory and trained brain muscle are indispensable like physical sports, but one easily forget this fact.
Pimsleur-like exercise is a good opportunity to remind above-said importance.
I once tried “shadowing method” to learn Chinese and it was a big break-through for my speaking ability.
So I recommend to try Pimsleur-like exercise no matter what purpose you have.
Yes, I agree with the multi-faceted approach too. I am also a primarily visual learner and so, pinyin was a very logical way to learn the sounds for me. Of course, like any system it requires getting used to the rules and correlating the sounds with the letter strings, but compared to the other romanisation systems, it seems like a doddle(I don’t think I ever “got” bo po mo fo, but that could have been due to the way it was taught). Just to add another dimension, as a visual learner I also found it helpful to learn the characters as well. I remember in my first chinese lesson the teacher wrote the character 是 very large on the board. This has stuck in my mind ever since and I think that the characters can help to reinforce the meaning and also remind the learner that pinyin is not “real” as pointed out previously. As many people have said before, I agree that it is what works best for you, but it may also take a bit of time and patience to work out that something that you didn’t think would work for you actually does.
I’m not going to get into the pinyin argument again. But really if you start learning pretty much ANY foreign language you have to learn to pronounce words differently than you would in your native tongue. If I was learning french would i just assume that words like “les” and “vous” should be pronounced like they would be if they were english words? Absolutely not. I think the pinyin problem stems from travel phrase books that explain sounds like this:
“x should be pronounced as an sh sound in english”
Hi Jeff,
Wow, we really seem to be of one mind on several concepts. About your idea of creating a ‘personal environment’. I also see this as very key, I have called it tweaking ‘ratios’, ie. like how much of what you communicate is in Chinese vs. English. For example, I’ve already spoken in English for a paragraph, I should do as much in Chinese now….
如果我没故意用中文就是太容易用英语。小孩子们就是想用，还是没有别的办法，还有什么都不怕说出来，所以他们能进步很快。
用拼音的时候我还有一个问题，我说‘quan’＆ ‘cai’ 的时候，在我的脑子里很快突然想出来英语的 ‘an’ & ‘ca (cat)’ 的声音。真很难改。如果我用 ‘quen’ & ‘tsai’ 比较容易拼出来。难道我只想 ‘全’＆ ‘菜’ 也比较容易。哪,我的 English asphalt is really sticky and hardened。
Hi Richard,
About ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4 in isolation.
对对对。你说的就是我的意思！
My wife lean over my shoulder reading out loud “zhang4, jiang3, qiang4” It did not flow natural. It was a second delay and one change of a tone.
Oh.. This gets me thinking. I have followed your debate the last 4 weeks and many times been tempted to answer. But because I only have Cpod as an oral and listening experience, and have only used Cpod as my only learning tool, and never have touched any other Chinese learning tools. I feel. I do not know all in and outs.
Yes my wife is fluent in all regards. As a native speaker of both Mandarin and Cantonese, and from childhood, she had Taiwanese that she understand, but now only speak a little. She type pinyin as fast as I can type English or for that matter, my native tongue Swedish.
Why does she hesitate when pronouncing pinyin? Is there a conflict? Does she have to think twice? Where does it leave me?
I think. You do not need to have ether picture, sounds or text type matter to aid you as an adult learner. You do not have to learn colour shapes and function of things. You have already acquired this and can describe this. In an other language. You do not learn equations again. You learn other words for plus and minus, and perhaps how to put them up, in a different ways. To learn this again, you only going to store this at an other place in your brain. With little or none connection to your old knowledge.
I think you have to exchange whole sentences, even if it is a boring and tedious work.
Pronunciation of single words differs in context ( And even in areas) Cpod make me aware of this. Grammar are slowly coming with understanding. Pinyin at this stage will probably only confuse me.
I will eventually sign up again with Cpod to get the pinyin (as phonetics )-Chinese character. But first I will have an understanding and be able to speak reasonably. Unless they find a way to extend the oral bit. I sign up right away.
For now I have to do with my wife’s 8-year-old daughter. Dragging Barbie DVD thou the TV for the 10th time this week. It is great for me. It is about my level
Thanks Ken, Jenny and Cpod for an excellent approach on the oral bit.
Leif Erik,
Right on…! Learning entire phrases to the point where they are available for immediate and automatic response is the way to go. It is not so boring and tedious if you truly have a desire to learn a language well and you want to do it in a reasonable amount of time. The pronunciation is more like a song in phrases than it is in individual words and with practice the “music” starts to flow naturally. I follow Jenny’s pronunciation as precisely as I can and repeat her phrases over and over. I may be the only “Gringo” in Mexico who speaks Mandarin Chinese with a Shanghai accent
All these coments here not one person mentioned actually spending some time in that actual country whose language you are trying to learn, I suggest everyone to go to China at least once a year and see, listen, smell and minge with the culture, otherwise after some time you will loose interest in the subject.
Brent
I am amaze by the amount of dialog a simple comment to Ken has generated. Not only are the Cpod dialogs great, but the Blog dialogs are fantastic. I had gone through about 45 Pimsleur lessons before I started to Cpod. I attempted to do only oral work as that was the Pimsleur method. Pimsleur’s idea is children learn new languages easily because they start orally. However, like some of the people who have contributed to this discussion I am very visual also. In addition, I found some of the dialog on the Pimsleur tapes so unclear I had to look up the words in pinyin to understand what was being said. The Cpod dialogs with Jenny and Ken are much clearer. I still keep working with the Pimsleur tapes, but my main effort is with the Cpod lessons. I have to go along with Bob Mrotek that one needs to sing the phases until they sound like music. I can read Spanish fairly well, but I can’t listen or speak to any degree. Now I am attempting to learn Chinese with real oral ability. I find this is difficult because I don’t have anyone to talk to who can say “what did you say?”, i.e. real feedback. This may be corrected a little because the college here, which I have hounded for over two years, will start a Chinese course for the first time this next week. I hope in this class I can find out if what I am saying can be understood by anyone. Does anyone have any suggestions about getting feedback on their speaking short of going to China?
Lantian, what do you mean by:
如果我没故意用中文就是太容易用英语。
Even my resident Chinese speaker could not understand exactly what was intended.
Richard,
I think Lantian means “He has to force himself to use Chinese, otherwise it is too easy to use English”. (A rough translation from my dictionary).
Oh, man, I’m going to have to step in and defend Wade-Giles again? The system is perfectly fine once you know how to use it correctly — the problem is that the only people who know how to use it correctly are sinologists or linguists. The Yale system of romanization had a lot going for it — I credit it with helping me skip the ‘x’ == ’sh’ stage of pronunciation errors when I was starting, since I had a couple of second-hand Yale textbooks that represented the sound as ’sy.’ And Hanyu Pinyin and the insane Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Bopomofo are all fine as well. The ‘inconsistencies’ that people claim in these systems seem to be just cases of second-language learners attempting to use the pronunciation rules of their first language when reading. The important thing is for learners to recognize that the systems being used are more or less arbitrary.
Leif Erik - I think you’re absolutely right about phrase-based pronunciation. Repeating single syllables or even single words tends to lead to very unnatural speech and tonal reproduction, as does the advice to “sing the tones.” I know a few people who have got a fairly good understanding of Chinese, but sound like they’re about to break out into a rousing aria whenever they try to speak it.
Norman,
Glad you found the thread useful. In fact, we’ve only skimmed the surafce of these issues here. For me, the discussion underscores the need for an eclectic approach. People learn differently and it is necessary to experiment with what works for the individual. (There are many variables.)
There are lots of other discussions that his could open up. One that comes to mind is the issue of comparisons with how kids learn. These are very tricky. The suggestion, for example, that kids learn in an entirely oral manner is actually false. Small kids are as tactual as they are auditory. They also learn from seeing stuff in the environment, so the visual aspect is there, too. In my experience, learners tend towards different perceptual biases; some are strongly auditory, others more visual. But in the end we are for the most part a mix between those (including tactile and kinesthetic). The more we can accommodate the various perceptual preferences, the better. A system that emphasizes one approach might be good for auditory learners (while alienating others) but I would argue that even the strongest auditory learners benefiort from a balance. I believe that multi-sensory is the way to go.
These discussions can (and hopefully will) continue indefinitely over here. I hope that there’s more to ChinesePod than just learning the words of Chinese. As a teacher I want people to learn more about how to learn. The starting point for that is to raise awereness of our own learning styles - a topic I believe we can explore here in the coming months.
Ken Carroll
Because we have the freedom to learn how we please, and some experience here doing so, we have skills to extract useful stuf from the crappiest old books, courses, etc., without being damaged by the bad. At least to some extent. This skill was not available to previous generations of learners, making them more vulnerable and less able to take advantage, with due caution, of any resources that come along.
I agree with Shakespeare: Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking MAKES it so.
Hi Richard and Paul,
Oh oh, somebody’s actually reading my Chinese. One thing I’ve found is that often times Chinese are very bad at understanding Chinese. I’m serious! They are so tuned-in to context that if just presented with words or phrases in isolation they often aren’t able to ‘guess’ at the meaning.
Paul was correct in interpreting what I wanted to say, which was “that if I’m not careful it’s too easy for me to use my English and so I must purposely bring out the Chinese.”
如果我没故意用中文 (就是) 太容易用英语。
The problem with my sentence is my transition (就是), it’s very colloquial， choppy, …and not quite correct, but I’m not really sure how to transition it correctly. Maybe some else out there knows?
Here’s another attempt, maybe a little better written and with a more typical Chinese thought pattern:
用了英语很容易因为英语是我的母语，所以我需要故意说中文。
Ken says:
that kids learn in an entirely oral manner is actually false…
I’m reminded of the joke about the grandma who thought that Oral Sex was talking about sex.
I am inclined to believe that early on it is mostly an aural process driven by brain circuits that create an imperative to learn and use the auditory form of communication (that is produced orally).
Howsomever, they have lots of skills to acquire before they can take part. One of those skills is the very fine co-ordination of the muscles in tongue, mouth, throat and lungs required to produce meaningful utterences. Prior to that, however, the mostly do learn much about their native language aurally, but they begin to understand that they can be an active participant: the communcate and indicate intent, mostly with their parents, by pointing and grunting, smiling, and eye contact.
Richard,
I used the word ‘oral’ because that is what was used in the original context by the chap who posed the question. I believe he was referring to the idea that ‘kids don’t learn from written texts’. In this way I inferred him to mean ‘oral’ as a combination of ‘oral’ and ‘aural’ - the speech around him, what he child hears, etc.
You’ve now now cleared up the potential confusion.
Ken Carroll
Hello,this is Gary
Gary, a native chinese speaker. I currently live in Canada. I think Ken’s way is not bad. actually a student of mine love Ken’s pod so much that I lost my job. joking!
for me I began to understand: listening is important for adult at the current stage. if I choosed to learen english when I was a high school student instead of reciting, I guess things could be better.
btw, To Ken:I have strong interest in teaching chinese or in another word carrying chinese forward. can I have the chance to join you or help you. ( honestly I just feel your partners have strong shanghai guoyu accent and overseas chinese accent. just a little bit…… I can’t clearlydescrib it. can I use 2 words girly-girly and too fashion. That’s true at least for mandrin speaker in beijing like me.
I enjoy ChinesePod. I must check it daily, and I listen to the MP3s several times a day.
Today I had an interesting experience. Our next door neighbours are Chinese and have a little daughter who is almost three.
The mother and daughter were outside playing so we started talking to them. After a while I brought over our black cat to show to the girl. She started to become too vigourous, so the cat ran under our car.
The girl went over to the car and looked around under it, and then stopped at the end and said “uh, oh,” so I asked her: 他在哪兒? and she answered with 他在這裡 … (although I was hoping for a bit more, like 他在汽車下面)
The little girl will probably never remember that conversation but I will remember it for a long time
Of course, the sad thing is that I am reduced to using cats to entice little girls to talk to me
That’s not so bad, Richard. I only get to talk to stray dogs and cockatoos. They always want to talk about food or location, and their tones are terrible, but they don’t drill so they’re never boring.
Hi Richard,
That’s great! Sometimes talking to kids is really engaging, and free from all that clutter of adults thinking about grammar, pronunciation and other baggage. Pretty sure the 他 should be 它 btw. My two shillings as an encumbered adult.
interesting comment from Gary, when my Chinese friend (originally from Zhengzhou) heard a extracts from a few CPod intermediate and zh-advanced dialogues, he also said these people (Jenny, Xiaoxia) are from Taiwan, seriously
Yv
The things I hear om National TV in China corespond quite well with the Cpod I have heard. So maybe the TV staff is Shanghainese or Taiwan
Do not worry….
Brent - I am in China and at least one more I know on this bolg
I am not sure that cockatoos are good companions, given the noise they make, nor are galahs. However, as a kid I had a Major Mitchell, and she was loyal but not very talkative.
Pretty sure the 他 should be 它 btw.
Yes, I thought of that afterwards. Is it universally the case in modern written Chinese that a distinction is made between he/she/it? I had heard that originally written Chinese did not make that distinction and that it was the influence of gendered languages that forced the distinction onto Chinese.
My two shillings as an encumbered adult.
Where I grew up we would have said two bob’s worth, but I have no idea why.
Children are, of course, endearing, and it was important to ensure she had confidence that her attempts to communicate with me were working. Earlier on she had asked me to put the cat down, both in words and gestures. I complied but said nothing, and my wife castigated me for not replying. However, from the child’s point of view her attempt at communicating her desire had had the requested effect.
Communication takes many forms.
The problem with Wade-Giles is how it is (mis)used in Taiwan and in Chinatowns throughout the States (and the world I assume), It’s because of those apostrophes with designate aspirated syllables. They are almost always dropped so even if you know the system, you don’t know if you’re reading ch’ung k’uo or chung kuo, Pei ching or P’ei ch’ing. Also except for the ‘c’ and the ‘x’, pinyin is just a lot more easy to understand for the uninitiated.
因爲說英文對我來説是很自然，所以我一直要給自己壓力用中文說出來。
MP3s and Web 2.0 and all that stuff is good, but I can imagine an improvement …
I imagine a format like MP3 but with marks in the audio stream at strategic points, and perhaps with a heirarchical structure so you can choose different paths through the stream. One of them being straight-line and others skipping one or more segments.
The point of the marks is that we can embed data in the MP3. This data might consist of HTML or whatever, and could be used by an appropriate audio tool to display new info as the stream is playing.
For example, the Chinese characters could be displayed as the speaker is speaking chinese.
Another example is that the marks could be used as resync points. So, where Ken says that they are going to leave space after an utterance so you can practice, these marker points would cause your audio program to stop playing the stream at that point and skip back to the beginning of the example utterance or move on if you are happy. Indeed, a really sophisticated program could record your version and then give you a visual comparison of your utterance compared with the sample utterance (and, say, highlighting the tone shifts when dealing with tonal languages like Chinese, Thai, and so on).
That is, a language lab in a computer …
One final thing. Is there any interest in discussing this? If so, should we have a dedicated area?
Hmmm, it seems like some of this can already be done with the MP3 standard: ID3v2 Chapter Frame Addendum
I did Pimsleur I, II & III and it’s VERY useful! However, it’s not very deep. In those 45 hours you learn about 500 words in very limited situations.
I thought that would make me an “intermediate” - but by CPods standards I am still sub intermediate.
In all fairness one should now remember that Pimsleur is much older and some years ago there was nothing to match them and they were really no. 1 on the market. In retro respect, their lessons are a bit long (30 Minutes) and can be a bit boring. CPod is more lively (it can be argued if that’s good or not), and shorter.
What CPod lacks is a structured approach. Seems that lessons come out randomly and are never interconnected.
Nowadays I would probably prefer CPod, but there is no harm to do both.
Talking about Pinyin, Pinyin is NOT a tool for early learners. Once you have a good pronunciation Pinyin is a good tool. But before that you are bound to mispronounce and get it wrong.
Fox said,
“CPod is more lively (it can be argued if that’s good or not)”
I’d be interested to hear how you would argue how that is not good.
Also, every child in China learns pin yin in school to facilitate pronunciation of the characters. It’s is also used in every university program for foreigners that I know of in China, again to enable pronunciation.It is a de facto tool for early learners because it is used by tens of millions for that purpose.
Ken Carroll
I think Richard Sharpe really hit on something. We are only just starting to use some the new electronic methods to teach languages and many other things efficiently. In ten years from now we will look back at what is being done here and think how poor and simple the Cpod method is. However, right now it is one of the best ways to study Chinese. Pimsleur was, already noted, the hot method in the past.
One thing that Cpod has that classes in formal education does not have is a self-paced structure. The rigid structure of formal education really makes education a joke. People just don’t really learn that way. Professor Fred Keller back in the 70’s pointed this out and it was the rage for a while and then died. With Cpod you have no failure and no negative re-enforcement. This is the way to learn.
I like choice and self directed study. That is what I have been doing. I also like advice on how to direct my studies, and I can decide to follow, or not. I think Cpod is a little too timid to say, “this is how we think works best”.
I also think the Cpod format is weak on language production skills, as opposed to listening and reading skills. I’m not sure how to remedy, given the broadcast format.
Those things said, Cpod is the best source of Chinese input I have found. I think you are great.
马克
Ken,
Uh-oh. I’m surprised after all your earlier comments on the inadequacies of the present regime of teaching Chinese that you would resort to this kind of defense of Pin-yin.
Ken said:
“It’s also used in every university program for foreigners that I know of in China, again to enable pronunciation. It is a de facto tool for early learners because it is used by tens of millions for that purpose.”
If mass education and de facto learning tools makes something right then let’s throw Cpod out the window right now. Yikes, what have you been adding to your coffee lately?
Being unpopular or even going against the grain doesn’t make someone wrong (a la Fox). Moreover, I would maintain that teaching pronunciation by going from symbol to sound is a prescription for failure (see debates on phonemic awareness). Going the opposite way from sound to symbol is, as I understand it from a seminal U.S. government report, a much better prescription for success.
Richard,
Interesting. If I follow you correctly instead of a time based listenng device (where increments forward and backward are divided into seconds) you are proposing a word based device where increments forward and backward are divided by individual words or phrases.
Sounds great. My students would be thrilled. Please add i-pod like functionality.
Michael Butler, pinyin *is* a standard, whether you like it or not, university programs for foreigners, Chinese kids learn it, and so it’s used in dictionaries, textbooks, print, online tools etc. May not be perfect, wasn’t designed to suit the needs of Westerners and neither were the 汉字 but why would they? OK, b-p-m-f- has some advantages, but unless you live in Taiwan I don’t see much point (incidentally, Taiwan came up with its own version of pinyin, so-called 通用拼音 / tongyong pinyin vs mainland’s 汉语拼音 / hanyu pinyin)
As to Yale, Wade-Giles, EFEO and such like, they may have been better suited to the needs of Americans or French scholars, but that’s fighting a rear guard battle in my view, why do people even mention them, why make your life more difficult, take a few days to learn the godamn pinyin system, practice with audio and/or a teacher and get on with it!
Yv
Michael, so learn the sounds that are represented by the pinyin system and go from symbol to sound. As a piece of learning this is trivial compared to the rest of what you are going to have to do. It is also extremely useful.
I don’t think Ken was advocating traditional methods at all just pointing out things like online and desktop dictionaries use pinyin, input methods use pinyin, your mainland Chinese buddies will probably know pinyin and can help you with sounds via pinyin, etc. etc.
If we invent a new system then we lose all of the above it would have to be godlike to make that worthwhile. Besides whose ’sounds’ do we use (American English, English English, Australian English). I don’t see why English speakers get so focused on the fact that the sounds surprise them, you have to learn a few new sounds for your letters if you learn Spanish too. In fact as English is one of the most un-phonetic languages using this alphabet we do not have a leg to stand on.
I have found pinyin fit for purpose how would you represent cong2 in your new system?? sstong tsong2 stsong2 tstong2 , I can’t even imagine.
learning the pinyin sounds is trivial compared to rest of the language and no worse than mapping the new sounds in another European language, it is after that that things get interesting.
Goulnik,
As you mentioned there are other systems than Pinyin. So, I believe we are wise to select the best BEST LEARNING TOOL on a basis other than number of users. This is my point pure and simple.
Please however do not mistake my “questioning” as a dismissal of pinyin. Obviously, it is in wide use and I think it is important for everyone to learn.
The question for me is not whether to learn pinyin but rather when and why. If, as you said there are better tools for English speakers, than the tradeoff for using those systems first and learning pinyin later should be explored.
I am not a pinyin hater. I just look at this stuff as I would look at any tool and attempt to measure it fit to the job at hand. The fact that millions use it does not convince me of its applicability for first time learners. If we used this standard, then the thousands of changes we are going to see in learning over the next ten years would be snuffed out at the start under the weight of convention.
Now, I stand by my original comment. To suggest that a tool is good (or bad) because it is used by hundreds of millions and is the defacto standard is not such a good idea to my mind.
Chris,
“Michael, so learn the sounds that are represented by the pinyin system and go from symbol to sound.”
I’m in complete agreement. The millions of kiddies in school who come to pinyin for the first time do just this. I think Fox’s point is that 2nd language learners need time to integrate the sounds “in their head” before going on to the symbols. It is a thought that has been expressed elsewhere on this blog. Maybe it should be called something like “SINK THE SOUNDS DEEPLY BEFORE TRYING TO LEARN THE SYMBOLS”.
Chris said:
“If we invent a new system then we lose all of the above it would have to be godlike to make that worthwhile. Besides whose ’sounds’ do we use (American English, English English, Australian English).”
Chris I need to respectfully disagree on this subject. Native English speakers are what, 400 million strong. Add 2nd language speakers and you get to one billion perhaps. There is enough mass here to deserve a phonetic system tuned to these speakers.
Maybe French, German and Spanish speakers would deserve their own separately weighed system as well. It is a suggestion. I imagine I’ll get pilloried for offering it but it deserves a moment’s thought.
Again I’m not suggesting replacing Pinyin just adding a tool that makes learning the sounds easier. Think of this like linguistic training wheels for _______ (insert your own language).
Michael,
To make my views clear: I have absolutely no opinion on how good or bad pin yin is, relative to other phonetic systems. I really don’t give it that much thought - any nore than I would the roman alphabet. Pin yin is just there, and it’s a standard that serves a purpose .
Nor does the fact that it is used by millions mean that it is good, per se. Agreed. Again, however, I personally have no strong opinions either way.
Thirdly, I think that accepting pin yin as useful tool does not imply that we have to accept the whole TCSL kit and caboodle. Far from it. There’s a lot wrong and a lot fmissing from TCSL. Pin yin is not the biggest issue there.
Is pin yin good? I don’t know. Does it help learners (including beginners)? Yes, I believe so.
Ken Carroll
Michael, you are right in that the fact millions of people use it doesn’t make it the best …. unless of course it is a communication tool. The attribute that makes it most useful is its universality. Even if Bopomofo is technically better (I don’t know) I personally would be crazy to learn the system because I am painting myself into a narrow corner. It would be a huge gamble to take (maybe ok if I actually lived in Taiwan) particularly if I know I am going to have to learn pinyin eventually as well.
Perhaps to make it clearer from my own experience: you need pinyin right from the start, there is a diminishing return for learning it later on because you need it less. The universality of pinyin is what makes it useful, a bunch of separate systems means that in your own little system you are greatly restricted in the materials and tools you can use. It would be similar (though more drastic) to suggest an alternative spelling for every Spanish word so that I as an English speaker could learn from it. A Chinese person will think you are bonkers if you try using your system with them etc.
Finally some of the sounds are just not in your current language so how do represent them better phonetically?
Currently if you have the English ‘hammer’ every word looks like a nail, if you master the Chinese ’screwdriver’ then Chinese words will look like screws and you have expanded your toolkit.
Apart from its universality pinyin is fairly easy to learn and gives you access to resources such as this http://www.language.berkeley.edu/ss/main.html
The site looks confusing but look around and play with it, it has male and female voices sound games etc. etc.
I’ve studied Chinese using all of the romanization and alphabetic schemes for Mandarin. To my mind, Pinyin is the easiest to use, but only barely. And for me, it beats the hell out of bo po mo fo, zhuyin fuhao, and that wacky system created by Zhou Zhiping at Princeton. And it will probably be the system the Chinese use when they finally start to de-emphasize characters.
Michael says:
Interesting. If I follow you correctly instead of a time based listenng device (where increments forward and backward are divided into seconds) you are proposing a word based device where increments forward and backward are divided by individual words or phrases.
Sounds great. My students would be thrilled. Please add i-pod like functionality.
Well, the intent is that the files are MP3 files (or perhaps OggVorbis or ACC file) so they will play on standard MP3 or whatever players.
However, they have extra info embedded in them that allows more advanced applications to do more interesting things.
The MP3 standards already allow the embedding of tags. The tags might or might not be interspersed with the actual audio stream, but that doesn’t matter, because the tags that I am thinking of could point to the stream they relate to and could call out time positions that they relate to.
This means that someone like ChinesePod could use their existing inventory of content and enhance it for use with a new type of app (either java for delivery via the web or a stand-alone C++ or whatever Windows/Linux etc app) by simply adding tags to their existing content.
Now, today, the adding of those tags will be time consuming, but having content that can play the MP3 content and display characters as each word is read would be an improvement in my mind as it teaches using multiple modalities.
Then, as someone else said, we can add additional features to the applications that play these enhanced MP3 files.
Richard,
Do you have any thoughts on how difficult or easy it would be for a device to “read” embedded tags? I was thinking that each word would be tagged “I am a word” or “I am a word and a verb” or “I am a word, a verb, and I mean ______”.
Guys,
I have no happy memories of learning Bopomofo or Pinyin. I do have happy memories of learning the alphabet. I don’t know why this is so. I suspect it involves the way I was taught these respective systems.
This makes me more ready to consider alternative systems if only as a way of thumbing my nose at the memory of my rather inadequate teachers.
And still, I hold out a faint glimmer of hope for a pedagogic tool that is better than either pinyin or Bopomofo.
Do you have any thoughts on how difficult or easy it would be for a device to “read” embedded tags? I was thinking that each word would be tagged “I am a word” or “I am a word and a verb” or “I am a word, a verb, and I mean ______”.
I have not looked at the code for apps like Helix, but I imagine that they have a library for dealing with the content of an MP3 file.
My current thinking is that you would have a tag for each audio section of the file, perhaps with substructure in the tag, or different sets of tags.
One of the sub-tags or set of tags would contain lexical and gramatical info. That is, dictionary type information associated with time points in the associated audio stream. These would include the utf8 or unicode or whatever character associated with that point in the audio stream, along with any other info, like meaning in a variety of languages, its gramatical function, and so forth. Other info might include resync points for back up purposes and pause points to allow the user to try to pronounce the word.
The harder part will be actually tying it all together into a coherent system. The application will need to be able to play the audio stream, and, as it reaches particular time points in the audio stream, perform the actions required by the tags. Perhaps displaying and highlighting the additional info provided by those time points, or perhaps just pausing.
These time points could also be used to insert space into the stream of words to slow it down. This would be done by using an average of the sound ‘just’ around the space insertion points. That way, the user can slow things down as much as they want …
Ken said on my comment:
>>“CPod is more lively (it can be argued if that’s good or not)”
>I’d be interested to hear how you would argue how that is not good.
Some people may say it can distract. I can see that point. However, there are plenty of boring, and more boring lessons on the web already from plenty of other sources. So stay your course!
Ken also said:
>Is pin yin good? I don’t know.
This Pinyin discussion goes on and on…. Absolutely speaking, for a romanized system, Pinyin is very good. Because Pinyin is very close to the spoken language. Much closer then, let’s say English. Look at words such as knight, two and too, circus and cat. Pinyin is far more logical then that.
And it’s meaningless that there are better systems out there as long as they are not understood. Most Chinese people simply don’t know bopomo or zhuyin (sp?).
And excuse me here:
“Chinesepod conflicts with the Pimsleur method which believes that people should learn orally ONLY to start with. ”
Where is the conflict? Chinesepod also teaches just oral Mandarin. It has also scripts, which I presume many listeners never see. So it’s basically the same, but updated. But no conflict whatsoever.
One big advantage of the i-pod is/was the ease of use of the user interface. I’m trying to thnk how this kind of system would be envisioned from the user’s perspective.
Having all this information available from the start might be confusing. I think you would need to start by displaying a very basic system. As the user became more adept he or she could add more tasks.
Thus the functionality would probably expand from easier to more complex and the menus that would enable such things would expand with the users ability to use the system. Here are some different levels of complexity.
1. I can review phrases. I can program how much time to add between phrases.
2. I can display what I am hearing in English, Pinyin, characters, or Bopomofo on the screen.
3. I can find such and such word and go to that point.
4. The machine can ask me a question about the phrase I just heard.
5. The machine can give me another phrase using this word.
6. The machine can record my voice as I say what I just heard.
7. etc.
Hmm, all in all quite interestng. I still think that the smallest tag would end up being a word with groups of words also being tagged as a coherent phrase. The machine would let you search at the word or phrase level.
In terms of the information display I would use color coded icons that display the information density and diversity as the sound passes by.
My last postng was in direct response to Richard.
Richard
You can not tag MP3. You would need separate single MP3s. That means, you have to cut one MP3 lesson into maybe 50 pcs. or so.
But what you could do, open the lesson with an audio editor (such as cool edit) and edit it as you please (i.e. cutting out stuff you don’t need, the jingles etc.)
Actually I plan to cut out all the English and just listen to the core Mandarin once, without the translation. That’s useful for easier lessons you know already. Or just cut out translations you know.
What is the issue here?
Learn pinyin or get yourself a 40 000 character keyboard, and a good chiropractor. Kids in Chinese schools learn pinyin. It is implemented by the Chinese government, and as such something that is going to stay.
In my somewhat limited experience of learning Chinese about 10 months. I only listening to sentences and try to produce then loud for my self. I feel I advance by the week.
I have found by accident, that a key to my success is. “I do not have the time to sit in front of my computer”. And I had to listen to Cpod over and over again.
At many times I have had the thought –this is not working- and I have to get a text to read. But I have not had the time, so I have persisted. You listen over an over again, the next day it is gone.
To all of you who think you need different input when that happens “you don’t” I FIND MYSELF SAYING SENTENCE I NEVER THOUGHT I HAD. The ones I thought I lost in an old lesson
One interesting thing is. I have been to China 9 times the last 1,5 year and it is first now the last 2 times, I have had any good use of my study. I fact thanks to Cpod I learn faster when I’m not in China.
I MAKE THE FASTEST IMPROVEMENT WHEN BEEN FORCED TO SPEAK OVER THE PHONE.
I suggest all of you, who do not have the opportunity to speak, and interact.
Sign up with Cpod 8 weeks 10 min a day speak with a native. It must be similar to my phone conversation or better. But be aware the first 5 times it is not going to work smoothly.
An other thing I strongly recommend is to learn to recognise numbers. And I mean all numbers 1 to infinity, date, years, percent, and words like before, after, tomorrow. And so on. Drill them down (to listen to them) it is an excellent glue to your understanding of News, TV shows, and when you are out in a store. If you do this you will understand a lot more of what is going on, and can concentrate on sentence in between.
Now then, back to the real quest. Yes I will learn pinyin because I use a computer, but not before I am ready. You cannot avoid picking up a few Chinese characters thou. I have learned 20-30 of them. They are all around you, and do learn the number character. Chinese do not count like we do. If you want to know the price you have to know them.
I am also knocking on the Intermediate door. I would appreciate a show on advanced numbers.
>Learn pinyin or get yourself a 40 000 character keyboard,
English keyboards don’t have 50,000 keys. If you really want ALL characters on the keyboard then you need the 214 radicals.
Keep also in mind that there are 10+ input methods for Chinese. Pinyin knowledge you need only for one.
Fox says:
You can not tag MP3. You would need separate single MP3s. That means, you have to cut one MP3 lesson into maybe 50 pcs. or so.
Are you saying that there is no tagging standard for MP3, or are you saying that you cannot reliably specify where in the playback stream a particular point is?
If the first, then see: APEv2 Tagging. There are a number of tagging schemes.
If you are saying the second, then I will have to think about that.
Richard
What I say is:
I have not seen a MP3 that has a workable tagging. I use Winamp, Cool Edit, and a few more MP3 tools, incl. software to transfer to MiniDisc.
To do that you would also need a compatible player. I, and i guess most, don’t use the PC to listen to. I use MD and my car CD (which can play MP3). Most people use probably some sort of MP3 device.
It should be technically possible, but hasn’t really realized yet.
APEv2 is something completely different. APEv2 is data that is read by the MP3 player and then displayed. That is typically the author and or song title. To use as a sort of subtitle to lessons is not possible.
Fox. You miss the point.
Chiropractor or a Crank. There is only one way, to get in front, if you want to learn. Input..Input..Input. Let your brain do the sorting
I do not see, that an increase in technical devices will do much more. Not on a movable device, until you can direct connect your brain to the net.. It is a dream to rely on technical devices. Of course resent development have eased the way of delivering lessons, but the way it is presented is far more important
>”here is only one way, to get in front, if you want to learn. Input..Input..Input. Let your brain do the sorting
I do not see, that an increase in technical devices will do much more. ”
You raise in interesting point. All these “looking for better” and “not 100% right” just leads to procrastination. Nowadays we prefer to blame the source if we don’t learn quick, rather then ourself.
Leif,
I totally agree that it in normal learning contexts, it is the cognition that counts - machines don’t make input more cognitive.
What they can do, however, is bring all that good, cognitive input to you, and package it in a way that suits your learning needs, when and where you want it. In the future, I believe that much of our learning will be situational: we will learn stuff on a need-to-know basis, by doing stuff and by being able to call up the info we need at that particular time. Arriving in Beijing Airport? Just call up those relevant ChinesePod lessons and listen during the flight, for example. That will help make the learning truly relevant and flexible. It will certainly add a cognitive edge to it.
Ken Carroll
I think what we are talking about here is a tool and no more. The goal of this kind of tool is to aid in the learning process. Not as good as a book (one of our oldest learning tools)- throw it out. Better than the current crop of MP3 players? Please step right up.
As a teacher I can think of a light-year of ways to help my students study with such a useful tool especially if I could inexpensively author materials for playback.
Michael,
What you describe would have to implemented on a computer first. Nobody is likely to invest in it as a standalone device without proof of concept. The I would see it appearing on pocket PCs and Palms etc.
Actually if you invent an XML schema rich enough describe the functionality then you can write a app. the reading in the XML and can use it to extract slices from available mp3 files. Marking up the audio would be fairly labor intensive.
It is one of my pet desires for the future of the CPOD audio archive (mentioned a few times in the past). In theory you could pull relevant words/phrases etc. from the entire archive and re-stich them.
Fox says:
I have not seen a MP3 that has a workable tagging. I use Winamp, Cool Edit, and a few more MP3 tools, incl. software to transfer to MiniDisc.
To do that you would also need a compatible player. I, and i guess most, don’t use the PC to listen to. I use MD and my car CD (which can play MP3). Most people use probably some sort of MP3 device.
I Iam very definitely thinking of a separate player, either a Java app or a C++ app, probably a stand-alone C++ app initially.
The intent is that the MP3s can be played by normal players as they are today, but that the new app can use the embedded tags to do the interesting things I have been talking about.
I imagine that it would be used on PCs, Macs, and perhaps even PDAs and the new breed of phones becoming available …
Now, I have to find some time to start coding, or find someone to work with.
Richard I don’t thing embeding anything in the mp3s would be be sensible.
You just need an app that can play mp3s and read a xml datafile that carries the information. Then slap a user interface over the top.
Java is the most portable platform and people are already doing many of the elements you describe in various ways. Some sites allow you to define urls that allow you to fetch ’slices’ out of podcasts depending on timing information for example.
Starting to embed your own proprietory information into mp3s is going to be a huge pain. Writing an app that can extract timeslices from audio files is relativly trivial because you are bound to find libraries that do it for you already. Then you just have the relatively trivial job of writing something to parse XML that describes the functionality you want the the rest is just text handling in various forms. Also this way you ca