Open thread at The ChinesePod Blog with Ken Carroll

Open thread

Published by Ken Carroll January 31st, 2007 in About ChinesePod.

Open thread

It’s been a while since we had an open thread. The floor is yours.

What’s on your mind?

Ken Carroll

56 Responses to “Open thread”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 jonathan Feb 1st, 2007 at 2:17 am

I still miss Video Hot Pot. Any chance you can send out some interns with a camera again? That was great stuff.
2 David HN Feb 1st, 2007 at 2:42 am

Hello there - absolute beginner, just signed up, so forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere… I am a very “visual” learner and have started to learn Zhuyin ㄅㄆㄇㄈ for pronunciation believing this will also help with character writing/learning. Do you have any plans to incorporate Zhuyin into chinesepod as an alternative pronunciation method? Or am I just off my rocker?!
3 Hans-Peter Feb 1st, 2007 at 5:12 am

Zhuyin or Bopomofo is - as far as I know - only in use in Taiwan, where all books for children are annotated with. I wouldn’t recommend it for learning Chinese. Pinyin is much easier to learn and the Chinese romanisation standard in the world. Even in Taiwan you can see now Pinyin romanized signs - 5-10 years ago this was unthinkable (only the horrible Wade-Giles or Yale romanization).
4 Richard Sharpe Feb 1st, 2007 at 5:45 am

Hans-Peter said:

Pinyin is much easier to learn and the Chinese romanisation standard in the world.

Well, while it might be the standard Chinese romanization, the contention that it is much easier to learn is simply your opinion.

I have sat in several classes of 外國人 and seen lots of them have difficulty with Pinyin simply because it is beguiling. They think that the sounds represented by Pinyin are the same as the sounds for similar English/German/French/whatever languages. They are not.

Pinyin is also inconsistent, and even with instruction on how to place your tongue and shape your lips, many people have difficulty re-training their brains to see pinyin and produce the correct sounds.

However, in my view, while Bopomofo has more symbols to learn, the clear advantage is that it is obvious to a language user of a language based around a roman script that you are dealing with a different beast.

Of course, I have never been in a class that contains such learners and used Bopomofo, but I imagine there would be some data from Taiwan.
5 Jason S Feb 1st, 2007 at 6:39 am

I learned with Pinyin and now I kinda want to learn Bopomofo for fun…(hey, it looks pretty sweet)
6 coljac Feb 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am

Sorry Ken, it looks like the Chinese-learner version of Godwin’s Law is in effect - any open thread will eventually degerate into a mention of zhuyin (corollary: Unless it turns into a flame war about the evils of simplified characters first).

I’m having a great time with ChinesePod. I’ve been learning for probably nearly 4 years now, and despite having a Chinese partner for two of those I’d definitely reached one of the plateaus that any learner of a foreign language knows all too well. By daily listening to ChinesePod I can feel a breakthrough is just around the corner. Pedagogically it seems very sound, but the personalities make it fun - the subscription is money well spent. I hope I can visit sometime soon and thank you in person.

One thing I’m curious about is a statistic for ChinesePod listeners - the breakdown by language level. Clearly one would expect it to be weighted towards the newbie end, but what is the actual distribution? Is this known?
7 Fox Feb 1st, 2007 at 10:21 am

>Pinyin is also inconsistent

So? Still better then English or German. I find Pinyin very close to the actual sound.

>They think that the sounds represented by Pinyin are the same as the sounds for similar English/German/French/

It’s irrelevant what people think. It has to be learned. Period.

I even go as far as: Pinyin is not suitable for beginners. Pinyin is very helpful if you know the sounds well.
8 Charles Handel Feb 1st, 2007 at 11:07 am

I’d like to know more about the business of ChinesePod. It seems that you guys do this for the love of it, but you are also very astute businessmen/women. There have been lots of attempts to copy or outdo you in the last year or so, but none of them seem to go anywhere. Look at China-8. It seemes pretty ok to me, but it’s not going anywhere. What is the secret of the Chineepod success? What do you do right that they do wrong?
9 chinesepod Feb 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am

Jonathon, I’d like to do more of that video hotpot but it’s time consuming and requires resources that I think can go elsewhere right now. We will revisit it in the future, however.

David HN, no plans to adopt zhu yin at this time.

Coljac, the listenership and registrations are all heavily weighted towards the newbie level.

Charles, ChinesePod is run by people with experience in the fields of training, software, media, etc. We are all obsessive about what we do and deeply motivated by things other than financial reward (we do want the financial reward, of course, but it is just one part of it). The passion for what we do is essential, but passion alone could not possibly make the dreams come true, as it were. I guess it’s a mixture of the 2 things - passion, plus a lot of business discipline.

I think you’re right that others have not had the traction that ChinesePod has had. It’s very hard for me to sound objective about this (becuase I’m not objective) but I can see in many cases where they may be going wrong. In the case of China 8, perhaps their focus is wrong (perhaps). The honest impression I got when I looked at it, was lots of Ajax and self-love (does that make sense?) But the message of these times is to build communities, rather than building websites. (As I said, these are just my impressions - I’m not doing an analysis here!)

Ken Carroll
10 James Theron Feb 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm

Like many listeners, my main source of Chinese lessons is from traditional university courses and CPod is a supplement. I’m only a basic subscriber, so I don’t check the premium features often. I would probably become a premium if such features would better support outside lessons. This might just involve importing vocab lists, which wasn’t available before. Perhaps CPod can reach some licensing with publishers to have these lists premade.

Seems to me a big part of Chinese Pod’s traction is that it is run like a business instead of a hobby. Many, but not all, seem to be something that someone is developing in their spare time. They can even get a cool site up with some effort, but the staying power and commitment just isn’t there. There are a couple other serious sites I like, but I’ve haven’t seen any as seemingly successful as this one. Keep up the good work.
11 Margaret Feb 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm

It seems to me that a large part of ChinesePod’s success is that it has managed to built a loyal base of supporters (us) who have jumped in with both feet and gotten involved at a lot of levels–including technical, witness the recent Forum salvage job, entirely by volunteers. But equally important is that CPod listens to us and takes us seriously; Ken puts up open threads and asks the ‘Big Brain’ for comments and so on, and I know that he and the team at CPod read everything we post and think about what we say. I don’t know if any other Chinese learning site has managed this particular feat.
12 Eric Grimm Feb 1st, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Today I was reviewing to some of the early Intermediate Lessons and find that they have a pattern that I really appreciate. At my current stage, I am stuck between elementary and intermediate and longing for something that would help me move forward. These early intermediate lessons seem to be just the thing. The dialogs are about the same level as some of the current elementary lessons, but there is a lot more spoken Chinese. In particular, Jenny provides a lot of example sentences that demonstrate the vocab and grammar and give the listener a chance to work with it. I also enjoyed Ken’s Chinese dialog because it is easier to understand. I have to wonder why you have moved away from this so completely. The intermediate lessons are predominantly Chinese and the elementary are virtually all in English. It seems like such an obvious gap, is there any particular reason why you can not add more example sentences to some of the elementary lessons?
13 Mark T. Feb 1st, 2007 at 4:21 pm

I agree with Eric and noticed something similar with the elementary lessons. I have just completed the last half of the elementary lessons and went back to the first half. I noticed that the pattern back then seemed to be to have a short conversation and the end of the podcast in Mandarin, without translation, using the new vocabulary. I found it very helpful.

I’ve yet to make the leap to Intermediate. Whenever I listen to one I get lost very quickly in the unexplained banter. The unexplained banter at the end of the older elementary lessons becomes a good bridge to Intermediate in that you are left to completely figure it out for yourself, but it uses vocabulary you’ve just learned.
14 chinesepod Feb 1st, 2007 at 4:39 pm

James, I guess this is the reality of starting something like this - the need to commit long term.

Margaret, it’d be crazy not to listen. In fact there are some big initiatives coming soon that are based on community feedback. We’re just getting started.

Eric, I got a lot of flak when I did those intermediate lessons. My tones just aren’t that good. It was really quite a virulent reaction from some people. I guess they thought they’d pick up my mistakes - an event that I actually think unlikely. Nonetheless, it was clear that a sizable number of people thought it could happen, so I quit doing that level. I don’t do the example sentences but I can look at the possibility of doing more.

Ken Carroll
15 Mike in Ewshot Feb 1st, 2007 at 6:29 pm

Eric, Mark (and Ken)

I think there are two things here: the gap between elementary and intermediate, and Ken’s tones.

The former has been written about at enormous length in the past, including some small contributions from me - I don’t think that Chinesepod listened very well, and there is still that gap. Personally, I now have less personal interest in the gap, as I am now ok with handling the current level of intermediate lessons although some of the mid ones (early ones with John) are just tooooo much - calligraphy for example! just too much chinese - I hope to go back to them when I am more advanced.

As for the tone issue. I must say that as I improve(!) I am having more sympathy with the view that we should get good tonal examples. I have recently been listening to the early intermediate lessons and am now have to switch off a bit when Ken talks Chinese. Before, I was Ok with it, regarding Ken rather like one would regard a fellow student in a class. I now fear that I will pick up bad habits. The problem may be that I am male(!) and would love to have a Chinese perfect tone role model for my own Chinese (a Male Jenny of course). John does go some way to this of course.

Chinesepod is still doing a great job everyone
16 Jeff 傑夫 Feb 1st, 2007 at 7:39 pm

Ken, I think the tone police are gone now, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that! I would love to hear Ken’s talking a little more freely again and I really did enjoy those early intermediate lessons. Maybe you could let loose a little on the elementary levels?

While we’re dishing out compliments, I just wanted to say that I think John is doing an amazing job too (Jenny is always doing an amazing job, so it seems needless to say!). I was thinking about the other day, and I think one important thing I’ve picked up from the intermediate level is that I’ve improved my ability to ask questions and clarify meaning. This is something that John is very good at.

A lot of the time when I speak Chinese, i find it’s actually about learning issues. I find myself often asking questions, clarifying meaning, or asking somebody to explain something. It’s really quite satisfying to be able to do this in Chinese. In fact, I believe it is extremely important because it empowers us to take control of our own learning and not rely on others to always teach us.

This ‘meta-language’ is particularly important, I think, in bridging the gap from elementary. Sometimes all of this gets lost because in the elementary lessons you explain in English, and then at the intermediate level it’s mostly in Chinese. Also, it’s not really a ‘topic’, so this level of language can’t comfortably be addressed in the topic based approach.

You guys might think about having a series of lessons where one guy (presumably a non-native speaker) is asking questions to his or her Chinese friend.

You could then teach terms like: for example (birushuo) or how to distinguish (zenme qubie) or how do you say ….. ? (…. zenme shuo), how do you pronounce this (zenme nian) ect.. Also, there are Chinese terms for nouns (minzi), adjectives (xingrong), measure words (liangci) that show up in the intermediate banter. Other grammatical terms are useful too — grammar yufa, sentence or phrase juzi, slang ect.

Here’s what some of my Chinese conversations sound like: Is that a very formal term? What’s an easy way to say that? Say that again please. I understand. I’ve got the gist of what your saying. Sorry.. Did i say that right? I’m sorry my pronunciation is terrible. Really, oh thank you.. but actually it’s not very good. Can you write that down for me? How do you spell that in pinyin? Is that the right tone? Which tone is that? (you could have an ele lesson on talking about tones). oh, so that’s a measure word. I see. wow - my grammar is not very good. I need to study more. no no really, it’s not good, but thank you ect…

It’s useful stuff, I think. Anyways, just an idea. Keep up the excellent work Chinesepod!
17 海宁 / Henning Feb 1st, 2007 at 9:45 pm

Ken,
one aspect that I thought a lot about recently is the hidden treasure you call “Glossary”. I started using this more for the zh-lessons - all phrases from the lessons are available in there with translations.
You are already closing in on the 15,000-vocab-mark. That is half the volume of a dictionary - in many cases with audio! If you start interlinking the translations of the Glossary with the definitions of the zh-Glossary, the Expansion, and the lessons in which the terms are used you would come up with a truely outstanding Chinese language resource (maybe later you could even provide further connections - e.g. from Expansion to the Full Grammar guide or from the Dictionary terms to explanations of the involved characters including stroke order and a breakdown of components).

The access to the Glossary chould be made easier, though - especially if it further evolves towards a full-blown dictionary. The search functions are still very rigid and unforgiving and also buried deep down under the surface of the site (Vocab–>Glossary–>Advanced Search). A search field visible on each page would be perfect (visible after login).

Just an idea.

Mike,
I also regard “Calligraphy” as extremely heavy - I think it was one of those shows that led to the introduction of the “Upper Intermediate” level. I think that show would now definately classified as UI…

Jeff,
to pick up on your thoughts: I also thought it would be a nice idea to have introductory lessons for each level - instead of just for the Newbies. A “7 days introduction” to intermediate would be especially useful, explaining the kind of phrases you listed in your post.
18 辉 Feb 1st, 2007 at 9:56 pm

Hi.
Any pharmacists out there?
Sometimes, I hear of people arriving and have to buy medication. I had to buy some Losec Luo3se4ke3 (now I purchase a local brand) much cheaper!
Hmmm.. I wonder…
Sleeping pills-an mian yao…. (not for me!)
Prozac-for depression and heart murmurs.

A list of various prescription medicines would be helpful. Both the brand name, but also what is available in the mainland, since the brand name medicine is SOOO expensive.
Anyways.. wait and see

If anyone knows of any way to find this information, would I ever appreciate it. Thanks.
19 Bob Mrotek Feb 2nd, 2007 at 12:09 am

Mark T. said: “I’ve yet to make the leap to Intermediate. Whenever I listen to one I get lost very quickly in the unexplained banter.”

This struck a chord with me. I have tried to analyze my problem and I find that although I think John and Jenny are doing a great job, I have trouble keeping my place when the banter starts to jump around a bit. I usually print out the transcript first, and read it several times, both the Pinyin and the English, and I look for “friends” that I already know among the characters. Then I print out Connie’s supplementary and enlarge the characters to 24 point Simsun so that I can see clearly what they look like and where they fit into the dialog. Then I listen to the lesson several times. I find that I can follow the dialog without much problem but when the banter drifts away or deviates from the order of the dialog I tend to get lost and find myself casting wildly about trying to find my place. I know that eventually I will overcome this difficulty and that it is always easier to make excuses than to try harder. Nevertheless I personally feel that the gap between elementary and intermediate is, at times, a little too wide for a graceful leap. I know that I will eventually overcome this because I see that people like Henning and Mike have already done it and are now tackling new heights. Lead on brothers…I’m right behind you
20 海宁 / Henning Feb 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 am

Bob,
have you tried working with goulnik’s (Yv’s) Full Transcripts? http://goulnik.com/chinese/

Actually I started transcribing a zh-lesson myself - indeed a very fruitful method for learning that sharpens hearing skills and imprints the vocab deep into the brain. But unfortunatelly also still extremly time-intensive for me.
21 Paul Feb 2nd, 2007 at 12:40 am

I have made the transition from Elementary to Intermediate a while ago. The input at the Elementary level became too easy and I stopped learning new things, which forced me into the next level.

I find that the new input at the Intermediate level is certainly more challenging but not so much as to be impossible to learn…so it is probably structured appropriately.

A “Lower Intermediate” level would certainly be helpful for those stuck in no-mans land between Elementary and Intermediate.
Some of the earlier CPOD Intermediate lessons seem to fit into this…but hopefully Jenny and John will structure a new level (which I think is in progress ?).
22 Bob Mrotek Feb 2nd, 2007 at 12:44 am

Wow! Thanks for the link and the advice Henning and thank you too Yv for your wonderful work. This is a great resource and I think anyone who is trying to make the great leap forward will find your “service to mankind” very helpful. My hat is off to you!
23 Lantian Feb 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 am

Hey Henning, Bob and other leapers,

Don’t forget about my site, the original, the shameless Saturday Show-like promotion, this is not-like-spam comments, with full-transcripts of many of the early elementary and intermediate podcast banter.

Work thru a couple of these and you’ll pick up lots of the conversational transitional sentences that Jenny, Ken and John use over and over. Transcripts by a native-Chinese speaker that captures every unvarnished umm, ah-huh, and tick in Ken and Jenny’s Chinese.

It’s quick, Paypal and downlaod.

Full-transcripts of Cpod banter
http://www.aurbo.com/chinese
24 Richard Sharpe Feb 2nd, 2007 at 2:55 am

I think there are two things here: the gap between elementary and intermediate, and Ken’s tones.

I have come to the conclusion that Ken’s tones serve to emhpasize how not to pronounce your tones. Jenny’s are so clear and concise by comparison that Ken serves an important function there.

I would, however, like a native male speaker. I pretty much jumped into the intermediate level and am having a great deal of fun. I will try to advance to the next level in about six months after I have listened to all of the available intermediate ones.

I try to listen to the lessons every day, usually in the car, and several times (I rotate four at a time on one CD … to help the stuff sink in).
25 Lantian Feb 2nd, 2007 at 3:00 am

RERUNS - Almost new, pre-owned, parked in the garage

After reading some of the comments lately I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have some re-runs of old podcasts,*Bonus Reviews. I know the idea is to make each podcast stand-alone, but it would be sooo nice to have a little bit of guided review.

Here’s my idea. Don’t go back and re-record shows. What I would like is for Ken and Jenny, or John, to sit down and listen to one of the old shows, read thru the comments from listeners. Then do a 8-minute discussion about it.

If the old particular show had a lot of Ken’s ’special’ tones, then maybe have John do the review. If it’s a show that’s a little too academic, make the review have a little bit more banter in Chinese. Maybe some behind-the-scenes tidbits about what Ken really said that had to be edited out! Maybe talk about some comments made in the comment thread.

It’s adding value to the original content, like director comments and special features on DVDs. I think it’s too much to have everyday, but once or twice a week would certainly spice things up. This kind of schedule would help me do more review, which I’m sure most of us don’t do enough of.

It needs to be front and center, very near the front Cpod page listing of daily podcasts, not buried in a tab that I have to go looking for. With a link to the original podcast.

This would also help to keep comment threads alive. I don’t go back often enough to old podcast threads, even though I know if I did I’d learn lots from the comments that I missed reading just after the original publication. After each *Bonus Review podcast I’m sure they’re be a fresh round of comments to the thread.

The *Bonus reviews would help us to do that re-use, re-fresh and re-burn of vocab, phrases and topics that will build up our foundation of core lexis and repertoire. Some banter in Chinese with the vocab, problems that came up, etc.

And if you don’t want to commit and buy the ring, how about just a 5-episode special review series of the tougher elementary lessons. (Hey, I’d actually like the UI, and advanced, but I’m making my best selfless pitch here!)

Maybe have the *Bonus Review section of the podcast in the first 8-minutes of the file and then splice in the original podcast. Yah, that would be nice. Like little review notes that fit snuggly into my iPod.

BigBrain –> help me make it happen, flood Cpod with requests for this!
26 Eric Grimm Feb 2nd, 2007 at 3:16 am

I was curious about how many words I have learned in the newbie and elementary lessons so I wrote some python scripts (with the assistance of another dedicated Chinesepoddie). The scripts allowed us to do some frequency counts on the words so I put together the following tables. The groupings may seem kind of arbitrary, but here is my thinking: words repeated 1 or 2 times are not reinforced in successive lessons, words repeated 3-9 times are reinforced, and those use 10 times or more times are the vocabulary glue (我，你，是，好，了，。。。). Of course, learning this “glue” is the core of the newbie’s task.

From 146 newbie lessons:
618 total words
463 words repeated 1 or 2 times,
121 words repeated 3 to 9 times,
36 repeated 10 or more times

From 85 elementary lessons
729 total words
560 words repeated 1 or 2 times
140 words repeated 3 to 9 times
30 repeated 10 or more times

Combined total vocabulary 1028 words
299 newbie words not in elementary
318 words in both newbie and elementary
410 new words in elementary

It is interesting that all of the elementary words used 4 or more times were introduced in newbie and only 30 new words in elementary were repeated more than 2 times.

I am curious if these statistics are consistent with Chinespod’s own caculations. Just a couple notes: 1) This may be slightly inaccurate because I used the longest-match algorithm for identifying words. 2) I did not count repeats within a lesson, only those repeated in a later lesson.
27 Bob Mrotek Feb 2nd, 2007 at 3:31 am

Lantian,

My shameless answer to your shameless promotion

I think your intermediate transcriptions would be well worth the money if they included Pinyin as well as the characters. That’s my two cents worth…
28 Anne M. Feb 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 am

How long will the full grammar guide still keep “upcoming” or “coming soon”?
29 Lilli Feb 2nd, 2007 at 6:54 am

I would love some additional guidance on writing Chinese characters. Learning to write beautiful handwritten letters is my main goal in learning Mandarin. I practice a lot on my own and from work books, but I would love it if Chinese pod offered some “extra” lessons.

I’d also like some tips about the difference between everyday spoken Mandarin and written Chinese. For example, what are the various ways to address a letter to a friend, a boyfriend, a colleague, etc. What is the proper way to end a business letter or a letter to your future mother-in-law, or your boyfriend, etc…..

Once, I sent a very good friend a letter written in red ink, because that was the only pen I had handy. He was very confused and thought I was terminating our friendship. I had no idea that red-ink in a letter was a no-no.
30 Dai Feb 2nd, 2007 at 7:03 am

Lantian says:
2. February, 2007 at 03:00
RERUNS - Almost new, pre-owned, parked in the garage…

Great idea, 蓝天！
31 Kevin Feb 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am

————
海宁 / Henning says:
one aspect that I thought a lot about recently is the hidden treasure you call “Glossary”. I started using this more for the zh-lessons - all phrases from the lessons are available in there with translations.
————-

I couldn’t agree more, comments along this line of thought are pretty much the only ones I’ve ever made (sorry for not being a more productive member of the cPod community). But - I too use the Glossary a lot, it’s much better than any other “dictionary” I know of with respect to word and short phrase definitions, but I would like it even more if it were integrated with the wealth of info on the site. (Henning offered a few examples, all of which I would appreciate.) I remember in one of the lessons Ken makes a comment about how sometimes he has known words for a long time and not realized that the same the character is used in both and Jenny jokes that, “Ken just has these daily epiphanies”. I really think more searchable, interconnected interface for the glossary and dialogue/expansion sentences could help me (and others) make those same mental connections.

And, Eric Grimm, thanks for doing the word analysis - I’d wondered about those stats…
32 James Theron Feb 2nd, 2007 at 10:58 am

How about a short series of “intro to intermediate” or “bridge the gap” elementary level lessons.

The lesson dialog can be taken directly from an intermediate lesson banter. Something like explaining one sentence or grammer point. Then translated and broken down. This way we could build up some basic vocab used in describing the lesson.
33 Lilli Feb 2nd, 2007 at 11:20 am

Oh, I’m a big fan of the glossary too. I use it all of the time when I’m doing my homework. I would love it if you could add the stroke order for the characters. I know I can find that info on other websites, but since I’m already paying to use the Chinesepod site, it would be nice if all of the information I needed was easily available all on one page.

I’d also like some more grammar drills. Not that I need to know the nitty gritty details of Chinese grammar…. I just want more practice constructing complete sentences.

Oh, one more thing…. the “game” is kind of hokey, but I really love playing it. I’d love some more “fun stuff” like that.
34 Lantian Feb 2nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm

STATS - Eric,

Those stats are such an interesting metric! My gut-feel is that I totally agree with them. I bet if you run it on the advanced podcasts the repetition drops dramatically, which I think is bad. Could you run it on the upper intermediate and advanced shows!?

Newbie:
20% 121/618 The Zone (words repeated 3 to 9 times)
75% 463/618 Background (words repeated 1 or 2 times)
5% 36/618 Locked In (repeated 10 or more times)

From 85 elementary lessons
Elementary:
20% 140/729
76% 560/729
4% 30/729

I think an ‘optimum’ ratio would look more like this:

35% 121/618 The Zone (words repeated 3 to 9 times)
50% 463/618 Background (words repeated 1 or 2 times)
15% 36/618 Locked In (repeated 10 or more times)

I bet if John works with his academic team they could really use that tool to ‘tune’ the shows, a balance between good core repetition and yet shows that are still fresh, lively and captivating!

I think this kind of metric/tool/content is absolutely ground-breaking! You could ‘tune sets for example with different comfort levels that suit a particular learner. For example:

1) a newbie set of 15 lessons with a much higher ratio of repeated words and less unique low frequency words.

2) A get-out-of-that-plateau set of 5 lessons with a much higher ratio of new words, high core vocab, and low 3-9 repetitions.

3) A specialist set with easy, high-repetition dialogue vocab, but also higher-repetition of specialist vocab in the 10 plus repetitions range.

deng deng….

Too bad there’s no way to run it on the banter. Hey Eric, if you want to do it on the full-transcripts that I have, I’ll send them over gratis. It would be pretty darn interesting to see the differences between the scripted dialogs and the spoken banter.

Hi Bob, yah - if I ever bring back my Mac from it’s current stuck in the closet status I might ‘bulk’ up the transcripts. Limping along on a pretty old laptop that can’t handle XP, and recovering from proper-internet deprivation. !
35 mark (马克） Feb 2nd, 2007 at 1:43 pm

I am a little dumbfounded by the latest poll, “What is your biggest obsticle?” None of the answers seem quite right. Time is limitted, but I don’t have “no time”. I have someone to practice with, but would benefit from more time to do so. There’s lots of learning materials available, too many really, but not enough that are appropriate for me at this time, and I don’t have a motivation problem.

I would like more upper level content that has three things:
1. a voice recording
2. a transcript in 简体字
3. an english transcript (to explain those inscrutable phrases I just can’t find in the dictionary or are grammatically beyond me)

But this is just me at my current stage. I feel like I’m just short of being able to understand the average Chinese dialog unrehearsed, and it seems like the cure might be more input that I can study. (I can follow almost all dialogs after I study the above three materials.) I have no idea if this is a general need or not.

starveling for input organism.
36 John Feb 2nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Since I’m responsible for a lot of the issues raised, here are my thoughts:

1. Levels
We have been working at bridging the gap for quite some time, and I do believe it is getting narrower and narrower. The “love story” arc is one of the elements specifically designed to be easier in order to help bridge the gap. Unfortunately, it won’t narrow right away; it’s going to take some time. Because it’s happening gradually and each person’s learning style is different, there’s never going to be a single point when everyone can agree the gap has been bridged.

I do like the idea for “intermediate prep” lessons, and we have plans to do them. This is an idea that came directly from you, our users. Stay tuned for those!

One quick note about progression, though… Newbie is the lowest level, with the simplest grammar patterns and the smallest amount of new vocabulary. Elementary contains much more grammar and vocabulary than Newbie. There is another great leap from Elementary to Intermediate. This is because the more advanced you become in a language, the richer the vocabulary and grammatical structures. If the learner has made the leap from Newbie to Elementary in 6 months, that learner should not expect to make the leap from Elementary to Intermediate in another 6 months. It’s going to take significantly longer. I wonder if some learners might have unrealistic expectations in this regard.

2. Grammar Guide
You’ve been hearing for a while that the full Grammar Guide is “coming soon.” You probably wonder what exactly that means, i.e. is it even started?

Yes, it is not only started, but it is well underway. The problem is that we’re creating a grammar guide to the entire Chinese language. That’s a lot of material to organize and explain. It’ll definitely be done in the first half of this year, but I can’t give any specific dates.
37 Eric Grimm Feb 2nd, 2007 at 2:34 pm

John,

I agree the gap is narrowing, but the pace is glacial. Yet, if you look at the first 10 lessons of intermediate, they plug the gap perfectly. The formula is excellent: nice juicy dialog, one pass through on translation, analysis repleat with full sentence examples, and a little bonus dialog at the end. This is right in between the upper end of elementary and the lower end of intermediate. Please, just answer one question: What is stopping you from adding some full sentence examples in Mandarin to some of the elementary lessons?
38 pharmine Feb 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm

As for forums.

As a relative newcomer to Chinesepod, I feel the current style of forums leave a lot to be desired.

First, there are just too many bulletin boards and too many topic threads. I can’t figure out where to start. Besides, many of the topic threads are left unposted for more than a month. With such detailed subdivisions, it’s not surprising that administration by Bazza and others requies a lot of hard work as it is. This is not convienient, supposing that many viewers including me would like to glance through all the discussions going on, even if they themselves do not participate.

Second, the style of display is user-unfriendly. Every time I visit the forum, I always see “Oldest post first” and I’m forced to change the display into “Newest post first”. Why can’t I save my settings? Also, the fixed number (15, perhaps?) of posts per page is unthinkable. Modern bulletin board systems should have display options like “Recent 100 posts” or “All posts”.

I’m not a techie, but I think it’s better to drastically change the current system some day. What do you think?
39 海宁 / Henning Feb 2nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm

Lantian,
although I like your entrepreneurial spirit, I will not buy your transcripts - it would feel like cheating. Doing transcripts oneself is the golden path to listening comprehension.

John,
right now I am slowly traversing through the nomansland between Intermediate and zh-Advanced. zh still reqires a lot of work, but it is getting better every day. Media is frustrating.

I sometimes think prep lessons for the Media level would be helpful. The written language seems to be a totally different beast that needs some additional explanation.

BTW: Do you consider all levels to be aligned along a logarithmic scale? I.e. is the jump to zh-Advanced twice as hard as the one from Elementry to Intermediate? And what about the jump zh-Advanced to Media?

Grammar guide sounds cool. In the discussion of zh-55 it was even said by 肖霞: “现在我们正在做一个语法指南,大概三月中旬左右就可以使用了。”
But take your time…
40 Bazza 白锐 Feb 2nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm

pharmine, that’s pretty much the same way all phpbb forums are layed out. If you registered you can just show posts since last visit or you can select posts since: 1 hour, 3 days etc.
41 pharmine Feb 2nd, 2007 at 4:24 pm

Bazza, thanks for your kind reply, I will consider registering when I have time to spare.
42 Lantian Feb 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm

Hi Henning,

I have about 10 full transcripts available, there are between 20-100 Cpod lessons in the intermediate to advanced levels. I think looking thru a few transcripts by a native speaker helps to break into the level. There are plenty of other lessons to self-transcribe and work thru. I see them as tools, bridges.

How does one look up words, phrases and patterns that sometimes aren’t even in dictionaries? How does one ‘know’ a phrase that’s never been heard before and is only presented in a one-dimensional audio clip?

As I did the brief English sections on the transcripts, I did notice my reading improved as I had to follow along with the Chinese parts. I also think it would be quite helpful to self-transcribe and then compare to the professional transcript. Or work thru one of Goulik’s and then compare to mine. All various options.

To be fair, I have to say I’m an open-book test kind of person and the only language tests I take are talking to people!
43 guillermo-2 Feb 2nd, 2007 at 8:29 pm

I have seen the bopomofo mentioned above. Certainly pinyin is easier to learn to latin-based languages, but bopomofo is faster to be written in a keyboard. What about to include in the pods. also a text compatible with the CJKOS for the palm devices? it seems to me that there are standards.
44 Bob Mrotek Feb 2nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm

Lantian,
I admire your personality and drive. I think someday you are going to be a rich man and you will need a multi lingual chauffeur. Please pencil me in for that spot. In the meantime I hope you never run out of gas
45 goulnik (郭力毅) Feb 2nd, 2007 at 11:53 pm

I can only agree with 海宁 / Henning that transcribing lessons is a very time-consumming. Transcribing one’s own language would too, unless you’re expert at speed-typing, speakers sometime talk over each other, there’s laughter, the occasional mumbling… Getting it ready for public viewing also requires the extra time to make sure there aren’t too many holes / mistakes, even though mine still have too many.
But I also think it sharpens hearing skills, very useful to distinguish subtle pronunciation differences (pinyin), and obviously the many repetitions help ‘imprint the vocab deep into the brain’, mixing audio with characters. It also brings up additional vocabulary / structures which might get unnoticed during casual listening, even when repeated.
Yv
46 Steven Feb 4th, 2007 at 11:16 am

Hey just want to mention a few other learning chinese sites,
china8, it looks good, but lacks in content,
It dosent compare to chinesepod.

Today i found a new english friend, he has a tattoo of his name 汤姆
On his belly, he dosent know any Chinese, and gave me of kudos for learning.

improvements i could suggest.

More content on Mobile Devices, eg pdfs in jpeg format, that would suit 99% of todays Phones.
Flash lite or Java apps.
Another Problem is, Chinese character Support,
i recomend using a auto png app.
even pinin don’t work well on my phones

所有最佳对所有史蒂文
47 coljac Feb 4th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

Howdy y’all,

Rereading the thread and following on from ragging on Ken’s tones - a sport that I enjoy as much as the next man - has anyone ever commented that the Chinese speakers in the show have Shanghainese accents? My partner (a Beijinger) gave me to understand that the lessons are performed in the equivalent of a heavy southern drawl. I don’t detect that, though I do notice a bit of Xianshen’ (先生）, ke nen’ (可能) and even from Ken, senme sihou (什么时候). I don’t see any problem - if all you ever heard was a pure beijing accent you’d be pretty handicapped once you got to China - but has anyone else said this is an issue?
48 Ken Carroll Feb 4th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

Coljac,

I can asure you that Jenny’s accent is not the equivalent of a heavy southern drawl. (That’s quite an insult, actually, but I won’t take it to heart!) She does not speak with a Beijing accent, as your friend from Beijing does, but she is is an educated, standard speaker of the language. In other words she speak the way that 98% of the educated population of China speaks.

Ken Carroll
49 Fu Da-Wei Feb 4th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

HEY KEN … !!!

Found an article on “General Tso’s Chicken you might wanna read. I recall a discussion in one of the CPOD lessons where (I think) Aric brought it up — and neither you nor any of the native Chinese had ever heard of this wildly popular dish. That struck me as odd, but I ultimately concluded that it was simply a western dish — maybe from some Asian immigrant community — that most of us just assumed was authentic Chinese cuisine.

Turns out — it IS authentic, but it only dates back to the 1950’s. Read the link for it’s fascinating story. As an added bonus, there is a recipe at the end of the article.
50 Ken Carroll Feb 4th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

FDW,

Fascinating article. I had never heard of it until Aric mentioned it. I think the author may be wrong that it is known around the world - it seems to be really on in North America that it is known??? So, where am I going to get some here in China?

Ken Carroll
51 coljac Feb 4th, 2007 at 7:34 pm

Hi Ken,

Eek - I was mortified to read what I wrote was insulting. Of course, I was exaggerating (in reality I was told there was a detectible southern accent). My partner’s parents are Shanghainese, so naturally we both enjoy listening to you guys.

I’ve never seen General Tso’s Chicken in Australia - I was also under the impression this was a North American thing.
52 Bob Hsiang Feb 5th, 2007 at 12:53 am

Hello from the Bay Area - just a short comment on “detectable southern accent” or Shanghainese inflections. Jenny’s Chinese, which is really an amazing gift, brings me back home. In many ways, her style of language is completely familiar. For 17 years, I lived in NYC at home with my parents who spoke pure Shanghainese or in my mother’s case, Wuxi dialect - however most of the family friends could handle Mandarin as well. I was one of those ABC’s (American-born Chinese) who understood Chinese but always replied in English. Growing up I was well aware of the different styles of Mandarin but I always recognize Shanghai and Taiwan mandarin a bit better. (my own homegrown bias). Since my father sang Chinese opera - jing xi and kunqu, he had to learn several dialects in order to intrepet the arias properly. Now if I could only learm more Shanghainese…

Actually Chinesepod has really changed my life, don’t leave home without it, as they say. I am doing something I dismissed as almost impossible. Slowly, after four months, phrases and vocabulary are beginning to feel more natural.

Bob
53 mark (马克） Feb 5th, 2007 at 2:45 am

Any chance of someday getting English translations of the zh transcripts? I’d be more than happy to pay premium for this.

(My problem is that as I study Chinese more, the amount of input that I can study increases, I’ve pretty much caught up with all of the UI and I lessons on the English site. And there is this big pool of input waiting on zh site, but its hard to validate that I understand it correctly or get help with set phrases that aren’t in the dictionary, etc.)

BTW my impression is that Jenny’s accent is more 标准 than a lot of Beijingers’. This also seems to be true of the Mandarin sound tracks for movies made in 香港, but that’s a different topic. Jenny ennunciates very clearly and is a real treat to listen to. I’ve never met anyone with her teaching ability in person.

I am wondering a bit about “Authentic Spanish fresh from our studios in Shanghai”. It seems like Mexico City or Barcelona would be more credible. Are you thinking of a branch office somewhere?
54 Richard Sharpe Feb 5th, 2007 at 3:58 am

Bob Hsiang says:

Hello from the Bay Area -

Then you will be familiar with this song by Journey:

When the lights go down in the city
And the sun shines on the bay
I want to be there in my city
Ooh, ooh
55 coljac Feb 5th, 2007 at 7:57 am

Actually, as far as the accent goes, I’ve found that a lot of material has Beijing speakers doing the dialog. If a learner copies this faithfully, it can raise a smile amongst Chinese - as far as I’ve gathered, hearing a foreigner use all the retroflex ‘儿’s sounds funny. That’s why I like to hear a more standard accent like Jenny’s.

Does this sound right? Given that my Chinese raises smiles for many other reasons, I could be way off.
56 Bob Hsiang Feb 5th, 2007 at 12:24 pm

Hi Richard - I believe I left my heart in Shanghai last year! and yes, great songs from San Fran indeed - “…….Wear some flowers in your hair”, “We build this city on rock ‘n roll”, the ghosts of Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, et al., all revisit these Haight Ashbury streets from time to time, I’m sure.

btw, Shanghai is S.F.’s sister city for what it’s worth…

Open thread

56 Responses to “Open thread”

Leave a Reply

Search

Latest

ChinesePod Blogs

Learn Chinese Websites

Comments

Category

Months