Spoken Chinese only on Chinesepod?

My (learning his-)story is probably quite the opposite from Clay's: I couldn't write a thing (my handwriting is abysmal anyway ;-) , but I'm good at Arabic and Stenography), but understanding was extremely easy for me. After just two month of (diligent) learning, I was able to understand most of the conversations of the Chinese people sitting next to me in university. (They didn't like me eavesdropping though....)

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What would you need to become a "polished writer" for (apart from the sense of achievement)? The student should be able to read (and if you read a lot and memorize the characters writing comes naturally; as soon as I'd grasped the basics of grammar, I taught myself German virtually only via books) all kinds of texts (from signs to literature, all in good time), understand spoken language (and here ChinesePod is very useful. I can't stress the importance of listening to fluent, rapid conversation enough. You should always include a quick, natural recording, even for elementaries , normal speech is much faster and "toneless" then what you dub "close to natural" - consistently, not merely in a few of them), and write clear sentences.

That's just my opinion, and of course, you might feel differently about it.

emmess, That's an excellent question, and one that's probably beyond my meager Chinese skills. I think, generally speaking, if you wrote a sentence as presented in the transcript, it would be proper in the sense that is easily understood. However, all languages differ in how they are written versus spoken (e.g. smiled v. grinned) and, per my understanding, Chinese differs more than most. Thus, I believe its fair to say that to become a polished writer (something I'm definitely not) requires additional resources.

I'm interested very much in both verbal and written Chinese. However, for my needs currently, the verbal is more important, and the written can come in time.

I do find it beneficial to follow along on the transcripts to see what characters are used in the speech.

Now, here's my ignorance. Does the point of this thread mean that if you wrote what was in the transcripts it would be improperly written Chinese?

Rich and Mikeewinshot, it sounds like we essentially agree. You'll get no argument from me on the worth of learning the characters, especially handwriting them; for me, personally, it is the most difficult, yet most rewarding part of learning Chinese.

That said, to stick with the post subject, ChinesePod's role? Excellent primary sourcefor oral Chinese, useful secondary source for writing/reading, especially for picking up useful vocabulary terms.

Tvan, I understand your point on DàLù， but I would think that remembering the tones right, for me anyway, is knowing what character you are saying. To me character pop into mind when I say them, not the pinyin. I see Chinese from all the building blocks, which are also so cool, not just down to radicals but even the different angeled strokes (sometimes remembering the tone based on the first or last stroke, going down or up, if it fits)... but that is even more advanced. I think it helps in understanding in remembering and understanding the meaning of new words if you know the characters of the words you can already speak, like DàLù de Lù, but I think "Shi" words are the best example. Again, one can get by with just memorizing how to say it with out the individual characters or the meanings like western languages, but does help to know what character you are saying to look up the character as Mikeinewshot pointed out.

tvan

I didn't mean that you can't just learn the sounds without the characters - of course you can. It's just that I think it helps a lot when you are learning the language as adults to see the patterns, which you can only do if you know the characters. The lego or jigsaw puzzle pieces start to fit together into a pretty logical whole ...

Mikeinewshot, first, I agree with you and others that understanding characters opens up dimensions of language comprehension unavailable to oral-only learners. However, I think your post makes the opposite point. If you used the word DàLù conversationally for years and everybody understood you, what's the argument for the necessity of knowing characters as a prerequisite or corollary for speech?

I would also like to challenge John (tentatively!) when he writes "You know how long the human race existed, talking happily, without writing, right?"

As far as I understand it, Mandarin is a 'lowest common denominator' of many dialects that existed in the past. And indeed that is the reason for so few sounds. So it is a relatively recent phenomenon and and has not existed as long as the human race. So many Chinese that I have observed will sketch out a character with their fingers to get meaning over. The simplest example is when they say ten (十) and cross there fingers to show what they mean.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the particular issue with spoken mandarin of multiple meaning for one sound. I would say that for this reason understanding the written characters gives a huge boost to learning to speak, which doesnt have a parallel in other languages that I am aware of.

For example, someone who does not know any writing will surely confuse all the shi sounds, all the zhi and ji sounds. Just one recent example I came across - the word for the mainland 'da4 lu4' I assumed was 大路 until I noticed that it was 大陆。 I had to look up 陆 which was a new character for me and realised that there was a wealth of meaning I had missed.

Getting to know the connotations/meanings of each character must help grasping the spoken language.

Hmm... I just finally came across this thread. Am I the user who claimed that Chinesepod only focuses on Listening and Speaking?? :-) I believe around the time of this thread's start I posted something like that. It was in response to someone wanting to learn how to write, that is not READ, but WRITE.

Of course on ChinesePod one can get a heavy dose of Chinese characters from the beginning, but don't find it all that necessary to have to be able to know how to write them. Are we equating TYPING characters on a computer to WRITING them by hand? Most people who type on the computer don't need to know the strokes, just type the pinyin and pick the correct character which is more in the reading arena than the writing. So how does Advanced and Media depend on writing?

After all my time on CPod it has never been crucial to know how to type a character, just recongize them. If you want to really see when one needs to be able to write them, get a masters in Chinese. Here in an actual classroom is where one depends on learning how to write, as even in the first semester my classmates who never studied Chinese before had to start taking assessment tests every Monday in which all answers must be written in Chinese characters... pen, paper and no electronic dictionaries or any dictionaries for that matter.

So, in short, ChinesePod, or anything online I would think, doesn't focus on teaching writing, or the stroke order and radicals, but there are some out there. I made my comment without doubt in what I was saying because back when I was making up stories on how to remember how to write characters (my character breakdowns), Jenny made the comment to me over coffee that they were cool, but something far from CPod's scope of Chinese learning.

Johnb:

I think in some way your post kind of proved my point a little bit. Because of you, now I know three new words:

1- 况且 (previously I would only use 而且）

２－　他人，(Before, I only knew of 别人，& 人家）

３－　踊跃

This is why I advocate writing so much.

But you're absolutely right, if I come accross as insulting then who's going to be eager to converse with me?

calkins:

You're right, no one wants to take advice from a "Mister Know It All", if I'm coming accross that way I sincerely apologize.

I'm honestly not trying to project an air of superiority, nor intentionally trying to talk down to anyone here. Obviously we have Poddies here of all different levels and degrees of interest in the language. As my old professor always told me he learned in his years of teaching that only a very miniscule percentage of people are willing to go beyond the basics. The fact that there are many people here interested in going beyond that point, (like Taipan) wanting to become fluent in the language but not interested in learning reading and writing is still absolutely wonderful! I am extremely pleased that there are so many people with a dedication to this language that goes beyone just learning a few phrases.

I'll say again, I'm very grateful that Chinesepod exists and has such a large and vibrant commuity of learners, we can all share our ideas and learn from one another.

Xiaohu, I'm just saying that before you make a general comment about others, think about it first. Whether you mean to or not, your posts have a tendency of projecting superiority in a way that belittles others.

I believe you have a lot of insight to offer us here, and I think we can learn a lot from you. But nobody wants to learn from a "know it all." I know you are just speaking your mind, and I think we all appreciate your candidness - just try to show CPod and your fellow poddies a little more respect and credit.

I'm not trying to call you out here (I'm certainly far from perfect)...I'm just saying this may be one of the reasons you're not getting the replies you're looking for.

First of all, I don't think Chinesepod controls these message boards. If you are able and would like to post in hanzi, please continue to do so. Like many who started as newbies, it takes a while to get your skills up to the level to be able to read the hanzi. I'm just getting to the point where I don't skip the hanzi, but actually try to read it now, even though it takes a great deal of effort on my part to do so. Maybe in a few more months I'll feel confident enough to post in hanzi. I'm not there yet. Some of you are way ahead of the curve and I congratulate you. But don't write the rest of us off yet. And don't think that we don't appreciate your efforts. I'm not sure what some of you mean, but I feel I am learning to read and write with Chinesepod. But there are just so many hours in a day and I'm dancing as fast as I can. Please be patient with the rest of us. We'll get better. We'll post in hanzi one day. It will happen, but it takes time. Some students may read and write well but are afraid to speak, others speak well and are afraid to write. It's all Chinese, so what difference does it make. One thing I like about Chinesepod is that there is not one way to the goal, there is only your way. Each one of us will find our own way. But the support of other students who can relate to your frustrations make it easier and a lot more fun.

Interesting thread and to some degree you are all right. I think Henning summed it best and this is about where I would land on the subject. Xiaohu, I have seen the staff answer many questions posed in hanzi. Your communication shortcomings have nothing to do with hanzi but more to do with your understanding of people. Keep your questions short, to the point, free of rambling and other agendas, and I bet you get an answer. In fact, i have seen them answer you so I dont know how you can accuse the entire staff of ignoring you. You tend to go a little too far when trying to make a point.

bbjt, the idea of a ChinesePad is good, but I don't see how a writing-PracticePlan could ever be cheaper than a conversation one. Phone charges aren't the issue, it's the time it takes for individual counseling.

I am sure you could have it tailored it towards writing under the current system if you asked.

Marcel,

This idea of writing-practice-plan or "ChinesePad" is great. Count me in if it's on the market under 10 USD/month !

But I don't think it's one of the objective of Praxis which is more spoken language oriented.

Long and interesting discussion. To sum it up, I think that the original questions has been answered.

Chinese Pod is indeed focusing on the spoken language.

There are no plans for more serious support of the written language.

That is probably a good decision. I agree that reading is easy to learn on your own, not in the sense that it is easy to do (it's actually very difficult..:) but in the sense that it is easy to get the necessary tools from other sources than CPod. And we do. For instance, we are reading a novella in Chinese on 88groups.

But writing is an other matter. It is not so easy to get qualified feedback on what you write in Chinese. This is also reflected in some of the posts above.

Perhaps there is a market to fill for CPod there? Some form of support for learning to write Chinese? I am sure that some of us would pay for it.

Calkins:

I'm not tying to take digs at anyone or belittle anyone. Please don't misunderstand.

I think you took what I said about Clay the wrong way, I was saying that maybe at first reading and writing were easier than speaking but most likely after he had more opportunities to use his spoken Chinese, that the spoken Chinese then surpassed his written Chinese.

The bottom line is that everyone learns how to speak at least one language but there are people out there who are fluent their native language but also illiterate in it. Literacy can be such a tremendous help to perfecting your spoken language.

When I first joined this site, I had very high hopes of using the message boards as a learning tool. The Cpod community is fille with really wonderful people like Azerdocmom, Auntie68, Taipan, Henning, Goulniky, Greg Mcgrath, Auntiesue, Changye, Johnb, Bazza, (Lantian...although it's been a long time since we've heard from him) among many, many others who keep this community vibrant and I really wanted to post as much in Hanzi as possible to learn from the community of others as passionate about this language as I am.

What I found out after joining, is that posting in Hanzi is not only not poromoted by the Chinesepod staff...but actually discouraged.

The reason I say this is because when I first joined I posted a lot on the upper intermediate and advanced forums in Chinese..I'd post MANY, MANY questions about the lessons and never receive an answer from the staff...I thought, "Okay...my messages keep getting lost in the shuffle".

Later on I started asking Jenny questions directly by posting this way;

"Jennyzhu": Then the body of my question...

But never received answers back, yet she would post answers on the same board back to many other users...as long as they posted in ENGLISH!

After some time went by I thought it was just that she was busy and didn't have time to post responses to everyone so I started asking questions of Connie...who also never responded. Every now and again they would post responses back to other users who asked questions in Chinese...but only if they were very short (and as you have seen my messages are never short...).

Gradually I came to realize the staff here just doesn't want the boards littered with too many post in Chinese, I suppose to make them as readable as possible to the masses.

It's perfectly okay if Chinesepod doesn't want to focus on reading and writing but why in the world discourage it?

The reason I'm a bit up in arms here is that when I or others post suggesting more resources to help us in reading and writing there seems to be a great resistance to it, I get posts back essentially saying "We don't need that here"...which is quite baffling to me

Now I'm going to go on record again by saying that I love Chinesepod. I very much support this site.

The main reasons I joined in the firstplace was

A- To get transcripts (which I could have gotten by purchasing the cheaper program than the one I purchased)

B- (Most impotantly) To support what they do here!

There are other Chinesepod clone sites out there I could join, but none that are as well done as this one!

This site has the best content, the best talent and the best model of them all...so the things I'm suggesting are things I hope my favorite website will include to make the learning process more complete.

PS

Clayroup:

I'm honestly not tying to take digs at you. :)

You guys advocating writing - do you have a vision of how it would actually work to learn Chinese writing via distance learning? I am trying to figure out how that could be done effectively. Wouldn't you need need someone to look at how you make your practice characters, including stroke order and shape?

I can type and text Chinese when needed, but writing characters with a pen is mostly beyond me, besides my name - can't even write one to ten. If it became important for me to learn this I would learn from a real live person.

All that said, I'm a fan of reading and writing. I love reading. But our resources are limited (stupid immutable laws of economics!) and thus what we can do is limited. I hope that we do have more material to learn reading and writing in the future. But I think it will probably be "in the future." :)

Xiaohu, what's with this obsession with goading other people into writing Chinese? If people want to write in Chinese with you they will, and if they don't they won't. Big deal. 你写啥我都能看懂，但是我对跟你练习中文写作可没趣咯，况且你又侮辱了他人，怎么还想大家会踊跃地来跟你交流？呸。。。

I agree with all of the following:

Spoken comes first and is often neglected, CPods strength is spoken language, podcasting suits spoken communication best, traditional teaching often misses the point, you can learn Hanzi by yourself with books or third party websites.

However, there is the catch:

John and Clay, you both already got a full backpack of "traditional" knowledge when you realized the need to focus more on spoken communication. And most of the more Advanced learners brought along Hanzi, too.

However, many pure CPod learners do not share that background. They start from absolutely zero. And quite a few have become convinced here that Hanzi are a troublesome "nice-to-have" that might be "maybe tackled somewhere later in the future". Cf. Taipans post above.

This is the point when we throw out the child with the bathwater. A fallacy that even got its own name: "Elementry-Intermediate gap".

Written language is an integral part of any language, and in my opinion it is absolutely crucial for acquiring Chinese as an adult - it is the very core ingredient for picking up, remembering, and distinguishing larger vocab amounts.

It starts at the Elementry level when the dialogue between Ken and Jenny follows this pattern:

"Those too sound absolutely the same"

"They do. But the characters are different"

"You absolutely have to see it written down"

Besides:

Why would CPod want to send its students elsewhere along the way? "Go acquire written language for yourself. Buy books. Take classes. And maybe come back later for our more advanced level." (?)

My point is not that CPod should abondon its path. But that it might be advisable to *support* it with additional, more written content on all levels.

Even if it got that light "traditional" smell.

Clearly, it's all preference for where you're at in your studies and your life.

I personally love the language but have no interest in learning the characters. I don't bother trying to decipher posts that have hanzi, I don't want to type Hanzi, I don't want to text Hanzi... I listen to the lessons on the ipod, and even if the characters were popping up on screen, I wouldn't read them while driving or walking the dog. I absolutely agree with goulniky and xiaohu that i would benefit in my speaking and higher learning if i spent the time to learn the characters, but I would benefit on my speaking just as much or more if I spent that same time working on speaking. It would be cool to see writing resources here, but that would take the cost of a whole other team building materials for those who want to learn to write and read beyond the flashcards and transcripts. As an audio/web interactive learning and listening site, that time and money is probably best spent on more audio/web resources. Ulitimately, it is inevitable that it will all converge, but as first movers in a growing market, we have to settle for the production timeline that's acheivable.

Xiaohu,

Lets get to where we are taking digs at each other now. Ha, I wish my spoken ability existed when I came to China. I have no motive to mislead anyone, so what I said you can assure to be true. Feel free to email Prof Ted Yao at UHawaii. He would laugh at that presumption. (in fact, im going to send him a link to this to see what he has to say on this subject. He is author of the Integrated Chinese textbooks btw)

And I also think you mistaken when you say,

"....in any language not just Chinese, reading and writing are considered to be the more difficult aspects of language."

I'm not saying I speak the gospel, but in China at least, you are more likely to encounter someone with written/reading abilities that far exceed their spoken abilities. (everyone one of our Chinese employees would this fit this profile in regards to their English ability, including Jenny Zhu) This is one pitfall with the traditional school method of learning a language. Its easy to gravitate towards reading and writing. You can go at your own pace.

First of all, no argument that writing helps. However, there are plenty of illiterate people who speak their native language and others as well. My Dad speaks fluent Tagalog to this day from his WWII service: no lessons, no writing, hasn't returned since. I don't believe that's uncommon.

Second, given the rather significant difference between spoken and written Chinese (something I didn't see mentioned above), a dialogue-based approach to writing instruction past the Newbie/Elementary level seems problematic. IMO, Cpod's strength is teaching dialogue, and that's what it should stick with.

I love ChinesePod and we all think it's an invaluable tool for learning the language. However, I don't think anyone should expect to become proficient (spoken or written) and fluent from CPod alone. There are so many other tools out there, most of them accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. That's one of the great things about CPod...we all share those tools with each other. CPod can't be everything to everyone. If there's something you want to learn that isn't provided here, look elsewhere. There are a million ways to learn reading and writing characters, many of them free. I'm not saying not to voice your opinion about improvements you'd like to see - definitely voice them, but get what you want elsewhere until that improvement comes to CPod (if it does). xiaohu, I'm not Clay but even I take offense to your presumption about him. Why even say something like that? I also take personal offense to what you said in this thread, "...there are very few Chinesepod users are fluent in or even interested in reading (I think the extent of those people have already posted responses to you on this thread)." Again, presumptuous. I'm pretty sure there are more than 5 users interested in reading and writing Chinese. I know I am...and I'm getting that education through other means. Just because someone doesn't respond to you in hanzi (or at all), doesn't mean that they have no desire learning to write. Not everyone is at your "level"...so please try not to belittle (purposely or not) those who are at a lower level than you.

Actually, xiaohu, I find that I tend to gloss over posts by fellow users who write in Hanzi. My skills are so weak in this regard that my choices come down to spending inordinate amounts of time going back and forth between browser tabs to translate it, or ignore it altogether. So far the latter wins. What I would love to see, however, is the same great ChinesePod method applied to this area of the Chinese language.

That's just one user's opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary.

John:

Perhaps I should have said it a different way...learning to read is an integral part of the overall learning process and reading is essential to higher learning.

However, I don't see how my point any more or less reasonable than Clay or JohnB?

JohnB says:

"Chinese is a pretty straightforward language to read, once you get over the characters. No verb conjugations to decipher and no cases to mess you up."

So to learn how to read 3,500 or more characters is easier than to learn to change verb form?

Go, going, gone, will go, have been is easier than 去，去了， 会去，去过？

By the way it takes most people years and years to get over the Characters, while it takes most people only a few days to pick up 26 letters.

Most languages have the benefit of phoenetics which Chinese doesn't have and Chinese has been rated as the hardest language in the world to learn to read and write and yet has been rated as fairly easy to learn to speak...because it has no conjugations or cases to mess you up.

Clay says:

"I couldn't understand a thing. Like, literally not one sentence. And likewise, they couldn't understand me. But I could write! If i wanted to go to the shopping center, I would have write it down in chinese characters."

I'd be curious to see the extent of Clay's writing abilities...as he hasn't shown them to us yet in the message boards. I would be willing to wager a large lump of cash that after coming to China Clay most likely found speaking to be the easier to master.

Besides, in any language not just Chinese, reading and writing are considered to be the more difficult aspects of language. I guess Clay was an exception.

My hope is that more Poddies will wish to explore the Chinese Characters and that we have a lot more blogging going on around here in Hanzi.

Okay, but the fact that there are more Newbie lessons that anything else shows me that you're aware that a healthy part of your audience has little to no prior experience in the language. For a lot of us, myself included, this IS our Chinese education. We're missing a whole facet of that learning.

I think JohnB and Clay make good points. Xiaohu, I'm sorry, but your claim that "reading and writing are essential to learning to speak" is absolutely 100% wrong. You know how long the human race existed, talking happily, without writing, right? Writing is a technology. YES, an educated speaker must read widely, but we're focusing on the listening and speaking that comes long before that.

clayroup:

However the support here for reading and writing is a bit lacking.

In response to one of my earlier posts a member of the Chinesepod staff posted that Chinesepod makes no pretenses at being a place to learn reading and writing, just that it has transcripts available of all the Podcasts and that's the extent of it.

As I've pontificated many times before, reading and writing are essential to learning to speak. Learning each aspect of a language goes hand in hand with the others to create our full, human system of communication. In the end each helps the other and makes it stronger.

Besides, why would anyone want to voluntarilly be il...um...readingly challenged?

Johnb is right. Its the listening that is the toughest to come by, and therefore to learn. I studied one full year at Hawaii when I arrived in china for the first time. I couldn't understand a thing. Like, literally not one sentence. And likewise, they couldn't understand me. But I could write! If i wanted to go to the shopping center, I would have write it down in chinese characters. My vocabulary was virtually useless, as it only existed in written form.

ChinesePod recognized this problem with traditional students, and therefore provides the means necessary to COMMUNICATE. That is not to say they preach the student to not write, but again like JohnB says, thats easy to do on your own. Listening and speaking are not.

This is my non-professional opinion (I don't work on the academic team or make these sorts of decisions, so I'm just speaking as a fellow Chinese learner here): learning to read and write is much easier to do on your own than learning to speak and listen.

Chinese is a pretty straightforward language to read, once you get over the characters. No verb conjugations to decipher and no cases to mess you up. For the most part (though there are some tricky structures), if you know the words then you'll understand the sentence. I would tend to argue that if you can't read something you either don't have a sufficient vocabulary or a sufficient grasp on the grammar structures being used, both of which can be rectified through *more reading*! :)

Listening, and by extension speaking, is a different can of worms, and lends itself to being taught via podcast. I'd like to see more material on CPod to support reading, but if I had to pick one (given the wealth of reading material on the web, and the relative dearth of listening material), I'd want the listening.

'contend'?

(And "argue" may be the wrong word there. Let's call it a "counterpoint.")

Actually, gentlemen, I'd argue that by the time you reach the Advanced and Media lessons, you no longer *need* any real "teaching" on the characters. It's down at the Newbie through Intermediate stages where that support is lacking and that's where it's really most useful.

I have no idea what the party line is, but I agree with your point Henning about Advanced, and Media which we just started using on my Practice Plan.

I realize I was probably too quick in arguing that CPod focus was spoken Chinese in my earlier response to Business Chinese. I almost treat it as a one stop shop, though I do get my daily dose of CSLPod as Chinese only; not to mention my own sources of online news.

I don't need any formal source of grammar or writing, I'm happy with inductive learning, but I can see that others feel differently, and that's something CPod may have to cover at some stage.