User Comments - ElijahW

Profile picture

ElijahW

Posted on: 2018 Google Most Searched News
January 4, 2019 at 2:49 AM

Holy cow, do you poddies know who "Ash" is?! Have a look: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/pages/our-team

I had been reading some of John Renfroe's blog posts (like part one and part two of his series on etymology and Chinese characters), so I would have recognized his name. But I hadn't read any of Ash Henson's work until just now.

ChinesePod, how could you have someone like this make an appearance without, like, setting off fireworks or something!

Posted on: 2018 Google Most Searched News
January 3, 2019 at 12:33 AM

I think I found my ideal Elementary dialogue recording: In a Moment (Dialogue mp3)

Posted on: 虎妈教育方式的的利与弊-Tiger Mom（2/3）
January 2, 2019 at 10:10 PM

I really wish ChinesePod had from a much earlier time publicly laid out for their students the guidelines they were using for the level system. John Pasden had it set up by the beginning of 2008, and enforced it until he left in 2014. (The 2005-2006 lessons were pretty much random chaos.) Unfortunately, after John left, "Level Drift" became a serious problem, and every year the pedagogical approach has become less and less clear.

I asked John about the system he laid out, and he said that this is an oversimplification, but it's basically right:

  • A1: Newbie

  • A2: Elementary

  • B1: Intermediate

  • B2: Upper Intermediate

  • C1: Advanced

  • C2: Media

Note that this is for speaking only, as during the Pasden years ChinesePod kept its pedagogy clear by exclusively focusing on modern Mandarin as actually spoken.

A big crack in ChinesePod's foundation occurred in 2015, when the highest level, "Media," was eliminated, with some unintended consequences. Without a C2 level, what happened? Advanced lessons started getting harder and harder. As Advanced moved upward to become C2, Upper Intermediate followed it up to C1. Upper Intermediate then pulled Intermediate up to B2. Elementary and Newbie stayed put, but the gap between Elementary and Intermediate became unmanageable. Result? The "Pre-Intermediate" level was created.

This is a massive problem. Since ChinesePod was designed so that students could choose whatever lessons they want, it's absolutely critical for the level system to stay consistent. If it's not consistent, student placement becomes difficult, and student frustration and discouragement spreads.

I unashamedly advertise ChinesePod everywhere I go, but I also warn people: Before doing a lesson, always check the date. If you want to do video lessons, make sure you stay in the 2015-2017 system. If you do audio lessons, stay with the 2008-2014 lessons. If you cross the January 2015 Firewall, you're likely to get confused and frustrated.

This crack has gotten worse in 2018. Fortunately, ChinesePod has hired Elsha, and she's working with a team of linguists to straighten this out, but they certainly don't have an easy job.

Posted on: 2018 Google Most Searched News
January 2, 2019 at 2:36 PM

Robert,

"More focused on China" - one of my thoughts exactly. I was excited to see "most searched news" as the title, because I had recently seen a headline about Baidu's results coming out. But then I was dismayed (and lost interest) when I noticed... Google?!

Sorry Robert, but I've actually been pestering ChinesePod all year about adding more music and sound effects to the dialogue recording. But I do agree that in this lesson, the music doesn't really add that much.

With each lesson, there are 3 different dialogue recordings, each with a different purpose:

  1. The "Dialogue mp3." This is supposed to be as natural as possible, including audio effects. It's fast, and mixed with other sounds, making it the hardest of the 3 to listen to. It's supposed to be the closest of the 3 recordings to real life.

  2. The "Dialogue Breakdown" within the lesson itself. At the lower levels, the hosts themselves essentially make a second recording of the dialogue, one line at a time, breaking it apart for analysis.

  3. The "Dialogue Tab." Each line of the dialogue is recorded again a third time, slowly and clearly with no background sounds or any other distracting elements, for students to scrutinize. When I was new to a particular level, I spent a huge amount of time on that tab, trying to understand and repeat the dialogue one line at a time.

That "Dialogue mp3" is likely incomprehensible at first, but by spending time with the other two recordings, that main dialogue recordings slowly becomes more understandable. It also becomes fun and entertaining.

I think the following lessons provide a good standard of what I believe ChinesePod should be shooting for in the dialogue recordings for each level:

This is what I think ChinesePod should be shooting for.

Posted on: 2018 Google Most Searched News
January 2, 2019 at 2:13 PM

It's nice to see Ash and Rebecca doing a lesson! Great job guys! It's great to have both a native English speaker and native Chinese speaker.

I agree with schg - it seems too hard for Intermediate. It's long. A monologue at this level, especially a newsy one, gets harder and harder to listen to as it goes on and on. Long dialogues at this level can work because with each change in person speaking, the listener gets both a confirmation on his/her understanding of the previous sentence, along with a "fresh start" with a new voice and a new direction to the conversation. "Media lesson in disguise" - ha, that's a great phrase.

Believe it or not, the interaction between the two hosts is far less awkward than many of the previous hosts when they were new. Have you ever heard the early lessons with Ken and Jenny? Yikes! They were painfully embarrassing. Most of those lessons were thankfully deleted from ChinesePod long ago. How about Jenny with John Pasden? Jenny already had experience by that time, but John's first appearance was mostly awkward mumbling, mixed with Jenny not really knowing how to get him to talk. But with some practice, I'd say they did just fine.

A point of disagreement I have is on the changing of camera angles. I don't think changing camera angles is a problem - I think awkward changing of camera angles is a problem. A good camera change is one that nobody notices. The early Jenny/Grace lessons clearly had a problem, but it seems to have improved as time went on. By the time my wife and I did some recording with them (HSK and Crazy Rich Asians), camera changes were still common, but far less distracting than they used to be. (But a continuing problem was not knowing which camera to look at.)

But, here we are again with a new setup, and I do agree that the angle changes are a bit jarring for some reason. Previous educational video settings I've been in had a setup where the cameras were placed as closely side-by-side as possible, so that there would be a long shot with both people, a medium shot with both people, then a close-up on either host (done with 2 cameras with 2 zoom settings - essentially 4 different shots). There were no major angle changes - just changes from long shot to medium shot to close-up.

By the way, the audio recording quality in the tabs (Dialogue & Vocabulary) is getting better!

Posted on: Challenges of smoking control in cities 任重道远──城市控烟
December 31, 2018 at 8:30 PM

I just had a fresh listen to this lesson, and discovered that it's probably the easiest Media lesson I've heard so far.

Do you like stories? I have a blog post with links to some of the story series that have been done on ChinesePod. Maybe you could try the Detective Li series - it's been quite popular.

Posted on: Challenges of smoking control in cities 任重道远──城市控烟
December 31, 2018 at 7:28 PM

I see, that makes sense. I was there for 7 years, and found that I stopped making progress for 5 years while here in the U.S., so I resubscribed and am now making progress again. 

If you’re looking for something easy but interesting, most of my favorite lessons are the Upper Intermediate lessons produced between 2008-2014. Lots of interesting topics with useful vocabulary. I’m now working on Advanced lessons 2008-2014. 

If you’re looking for something harder, Fiona’s Advanced lessons (2015-2017) are just about the hardest things here. She is a master of explaining grammar, but the dialogues tend not to be as interesting in my opinion as the older ones. 

Posted on: Challenges of smoking control in cities 任重道远──城市控烟
December 31, 2018 at 6:29 PM

If you're pretty comfortable with reading and listening to this, then you are indeed well on your way to being a graduate! ChinesePod recommends doing 80 Media lessons before leaving ChinesePod behind to learn completely on your own from places like Xinhua News, YouKu, or Ximalaiya.

There is a written placement test on the site you should try: https://chinesepod.com/tools/placement-test/. There used to be an audio placement test on the site that I personally found to be much more helpful, but unfortunately it's now gone.

Posted on: 虎妈教育方式的的利与弊-Tiger Mom（2/3）
December 31, 2018 at 5:47 PM

Yes, I found this topic to be quite interesting, but I never really dove into these lessons because of the same old difficulty plaguing all the lessons lately: Level appropriateness. Xiao Yao's work doesn't strike me as Advanced/C1 material, it's much more like Media/C2 material. I'm content to stick with Advanced/C1 for another year or two before I struggle through something like this.

Working full-time in a neighboring city while parenting two little kids while juggling all kinds of other over-commitments has left me with an extraordinarily low tolerance for frustration at this point in my life. Just give me the solid, predictable consistency of the Pasden-supervised C1 Advanced lessons, and I'll keep happily plugging away.

Posted on: 虎妈教育方式的的利与弊-Tiger Mom（2/3）
December 31, 2018 at 5:40 PM

Once upon a time, ChinesePod didn't offer English translation for Advanced or Media lessons at all. It took a while for the community to persuade ChinesePod to start offering it for Advanced lessons. The argument was that, yes, Chinese-only works well in a real classroom environment where you can interact with the teacher when you don't understand something. Since ChinesePod is learned remotely, there's no opportunity for interaction to confirm or correct the students' understanding.