菜鸟 (càiniǎo) is the ChinesePod name given to the “Newbie” lessons. But what does it mean? Well, it means just that… “newbie.”
The word 菜鸟 is made up of the characters 菜 (cài), meaning “vegetable” or “dish,” and 鸟 (niǎo), meaning “bird.” This doesn’t seem to make much sense. That’s because the word came from 闽南话 […]
Author Archive for John Pasden
What is 菜鸟?
Published by December 11th, 2006 in Uncategorized and About the Chinese language. 7 CommentsStudy as a Journey
Published by November 28th, 2006 in Uncategorized and Learning Chinese. 29 CommentsAs more and more people begin studying Chinese, plucky entrepreneurs rush to meet the demand. Just do a search for “learn Chinese” on Google and you’ll see what I’m talking about. “Rapidly learn Chinese,” one ad says. “Master Chinese, and fast,” proclaims another. “Learn in 10 days,” they promise.
The truth about learning Chinese should not […]
Happy Chinese Video
Published by November 24th, 2006 in Pedagogy, Learning Chinese and Language. 43 CommentsMany of you have heard about Linese.com, a website created by the Chinese to help foreigners understand Chinese culture and learn Chinese. One of the best features of the site is its extensive collection of CCTV videos, all available for download (MP3, MP4, and WMV formats). The main archive of video material is divided into […]
Happy Thanksgiving to all you American poddies out there. I hope you are enjoying the holiday with your loved ones.
I thought I’d tell a little Thanksgiving story recounted to me by your favorite host, Jenny. She told me the first time she had a proper Thanksgiving dinner, she had never had stuffing before and had […]
A while back we decided to add a Sunday lesson, giving our listeners 6 days of new lessons every week, plus the Saturday show. This move was greeted with moderate rejoicing, then it was back to business as usual.
Over the past few months, we’ve looked carefully at how this has impacted things. The advantage is […]
After an alpha test run of the ChinesePod Listening Test, we received some great user feedback. The suggestions we have implemented include:
some adjustments in the statements so that the vocabulary is not over-specific
all audio was re-recorded, smoothing out the overly slow, awkward pauses in the lower levels
after you click on “yes” or “no” and move […]
Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills
Published by October 29th, 2006 in Pedagogy, Learning Chinese, Community and Pronunciation. 18 CommentsSinosplice has a new feature: Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills. Users who have found that website’s content useful in the past should probably give it a look.
A while back, Ken did a series of posts on pronunciation. It became clear that the CPod poddies wanted more help. Ever since, we have been paying more attention […]
Level-spanning Listeners
Published by October 13th, 2006 in Learning Chinese, About ChinesePod and User Feedback. 24 CommentsRecently we casually put up a poll question about how many levels users regularly listen to. The results surprised us. Here is the original question and the results:
How many different levels of podcasts do you regularly listen to? (choose from Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Advanced)
One: 17% (83)
Two: 36% (179)
Three: 27% (137)
Four: 9% (47)
Five: 11% […]
ChinesePod is developing a listening test. The goal is to help new users determine what ChinesePod difficulty level best suits their needs. We have put together an alpha version which is loosely based on the computer-adaptive testing model.
Anyway, the point is: please try out the new Listening Test and let us know what you think […]
Tag Clouds: what are they good for?
Published by September 20th, 2006 in About ChinesePod and User Feedback. 26 CommentsA while back ChinesePod started tagging every podcast lesson with three types of tags: topic tags, function tags, and grammar tags. These are all very useful ways of classifying the information in each podcast, and we intend to continue to develop the system.
When you go into the Lesson Archive, you immediately see a tag cloud […]
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