User Comments - ElijahW

Posted on: Let's Go to a Movie

一样！有一次朋友请我们去看《变形金刚3》，可怜的老婆一直塞住耳朵！

Posted on: Let's Go to a Movie

我和老婆唯一的冲突：我最喜欢科幻片，她只爱看快乐的浪漫电影。 我记得八年前每次去中国的电影院看电影基本上是空的，不会碰到人潮。听说这两年中国的票房越来越热，估计现在最好去看早场。

Posted on: Go to the Emergency Room 去看急诊

Maybe I've missed part of the conversation, but... Isn't the slowdown feature already available in the app? I use it to slow down Expansion Sentences before going over them with a tutor. Once I start playing a sentence, I'll hit the "1.0x" button in the upper right corner of the screen, and I get a slider for slowing down or speeding up. I'll then usually hit the "Repeat" arrow in the upper right area of the screen, so that it will play over and over until I stop it.

Posted on: 人机合一（一）Android Part 1

同感。

I think ChinesePod has bitten off more than it can chew with articles intended for native speakers, and then putting them into the “Advanced" level. In the old days, this would have been a "Media" lesson, and that level was a constant thorn-in-the-side of the old crew. They never really figured out a good way to make those lessons attractive to foreign students. There are lots of free podcasts out there aimed at native speakers that are much more engaging.

For Advanced lessons, I remember John Pasden explaining that the Advanced lessons were still deliberately written below native level, saying something like, "If you can learn from media intended for native speakers, then you don't need ChinesePod any more."

As to how the lessons are presented... It seems Jenny and Grace are doing a great job figuring out how to interact in a way that's helpful and engaging, but by no means can just anyone do that. It takes both skill and training. If I recall correctly, ChinesePod only had Ken and (the other) Jenny at the beginning, and it took them years to gradually train up others (John Pasden, then Connie, David, DiLu, etc.) to be able to do it well. It was a slow process. By trying to get so many host involved so quickly (and, no doubt, getting too many untrained sound engineers involved too), quality control becomes unwieldly.

Posted on: Go to the Emergency Room 去看急诊

我有一个学护士的朋友，第一天在美国留学她就出事了（她本来就有糖尿病），就去一趟急诊室。这是晚上的事情，在那边等了几个小时才有机会看病。看病的时候，时间过了晚上12点， 所以算是“住院了”，“第二天”回家了。

因为有糖尿病，她在中国也经常去急诊室打针，一般50元人民币左右。但是在美国，她收到账单的时候惊呆了：超过$4,000快美金！她自己也是学护士的，说在美国急诊室得到的医疗跟在上海的急诊室得到的医疗一模一样。

最后，填写了表格，说她是刚来美国的留学生，没有钱，医院就告诉她一分钱不用交。

她问我，这是什么情况？我回答：我们美国人也糊涂投了。

Posted on: I Don't Feel Well 我不舒服

I think it certainly could work, but I wouldn’t know how to accomplish it. If I were doing the video, I think I would have to experiment with it. I never quite know what’s going to work until I start editing to see what “feels” right. I would be doing a lot of trial and error.

One point I would make is that it needs to be established as a normal convention throughout the lesson - not just something that pops up occasionally. It needs to “feel” normal, so that a viewer could almost subconsciously anticipate it.

My first bachelor’s degree was in cinema and video production, but I honestly didn’t use it much until I recently worked for a publisher of video-based homeschool curriculum. I worked with history/social studies, both shooting and editing virtual classroom sessions with the teachers, and writing/shooting/editing dramatic “special segments” designed to illustrate significant points from the lessons.

Posted on: Counting to 10

Nicely shot. Where is the location?

I learned a new word in a newbie lesson! 蜻蜓

Posted on: I Don't Feel Well 我不舒服

A couple of things that make it abrupt:

1. Significant difference in image quality. I don't necessarily mean "good" quality vs. "bad" quality, but rather color, depth of field, etc. The two shots just look really different. I'm guessing the two cameras being used aren't identical models/lenses/exposure settings?
2. The brevity of the switch. It's extremely brief, and then we cut back to the front view. It makes the viewer ask, "Why?" It looks very much like it was thrown in for no purpose but to cover up a mistake. Whether or not that's the case, I couldn't say.
3. The teachers are still looking at the other camera. While this was no doubt intentional, it gives the appearance of a mistake. When talking heads are looking at the camera, they always look at the camera. While there are exceptions to the rule, the viewer generally expects it to pretty much stay that way throughout a presentation. When those expectations are broken, it's jarring, often for reasons the viewer can't quite explain.

When I used to do educational video, we'd get around these problems by having two or three completely identical cameras right next to each other - one zoomed out to a long shot, and two zoomed in to different perspectives. We did live switching (cutting between camera angels) as we were recording. There was a red light above each camera that would turn on when that camera was live. That way, the teachers always knew which camera to look at.

Of course, this kind of setup tends to be expensive to install - and difficult to maintain. But it did make for smooth transitions.

Posted on: How to use our Audible Dictionary

That's Grace! That example-based audible dictionary was a gold mine for me when I was an Elementary/Intermediate student, struggling with massive lists of incomprehensible words in boring textbooks. Whenever I found that one of the words was in the ChinesePod dictionary, I knew there was hope!

Posted on: We Can Talk About Anything, But Don't Lecture Me

跟以前的课程来比，这篇比较像“Media”，不太像 “Advanced”。