User Comments - John
John
Posted on: Military Training
October 20, 2008 at 1:15 AMI'm glad you enjoyed it!
Let me say a few things...
- This video was intended all along for Intermediate learners. It should have been labeled as such from the start. Sorry for the confusion.
- Right now the videos are missing some of the features of full lessons: dialogue tab, full transcript in the PDF, difficulty level, etc. This is partly due to an insufficiently flexible backend production system. We're finishing up an upgrade now (it's 80% done), which will allow full support for things like transcripts.
In the meantime, it really is a good practice to listen again and again, making guesses and looking up words you think you hear but don't know. You struggle, but that's the very reason it's so beneficial!
Posted on: Rome
October 17, 2008 at 6:17 AMIt's true that 以为 can sometimes mean "think (not mistakenly)," but this somewhat formal usage tends not to appear in spoken Mandarin. For practical purposes, stick to the rule "以为 is for mistaken ideas."
Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Chemistry
October 17, 2008 at 4:34 AMHere are some chemistry videos to help you understand all the tests the students were doing:
Splint burning bright on oxygen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HdT3oBy6Lg
Burning carbon monoxide:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bPN26Zt08s
Burning hydrogen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2tRQz7kz_Q&NR=1
Limewater CO2 test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21aBA0jUJXU
Posted on: Rome
October 16, 2008 at 5:00 AMfrank,
Great to see you "in my neighborhood." :)
I'll have to see Rome for myself one of these days...
Posted on: Rome
October 16, 2008 at 4:59 AMSpeaking of tone changes for 不过 (bùguò), we do have a lesson about this specific tone change rule: Tone Rule: Changes for 'bu' (which bettine mentions above).
Pinyin has rules, including rules for how to write the tones when the tones change, so to write "búguò" instead of "bùguò" would actually be incorrect according to the rules of pinyin as laid out by its architects. (We don't make the rules...)
So that means you really have to know the rules!
Posted on: Party Time at ChinesePod
October 13, 2008 at 1:48 AMA0001 is not the first ever lesson chronologically. The first ever lesson is buried in the vault somewhere. You can be sure that some of the vetern poddies (e.g. Bazza) have it, though.
It was definitely a fun party! My dog even made a guest appearance toward the end... hehe
Posted on: The Boy That Cried Wolf
October 11, 2008 at 6:14 PMI'm glad you guys are liking the experiments we're doing with video. We made certain decisions here to try to make learning more cognitive. Some examples:
- The first time you watch/hear the story, you get no "help"
- You never get subtitles for the whole thing; that would be too easy
- When you do get visual queues, they're not a cartoon telling the whole story; they're more like big clues
- You don't see any written language until the very end (this keeps the focus on the language you hear and the meaning you see, rather than reading)
Ken wanted to do story-telling this time around because story-telling is completely real. Actors in a scene are fake, but someone telling a story (as herself) can still be genuine in her communication.
The other stories to come will not all be familiar ones, and we'll be trying out some more tricks to help your brain pluck meaning from the language on display. Stay tuned!
Posted on: Post-Holiday Preview
October 6, 2008 at 6:52 AMlight487,
Yeah, I'm better now. Dutiful employee that I am, I confined my illness to my vacation days. :(
Posted on: Post-Holiday Preview
October 6, 2008 at 6:51 AMazerdocmom,
Great to hear! It's also very nice to see you commenting again... :)
Posted on: Google vs. Baidu
October 21, 2008 at 3:26 AMBaigoogledu! [Warning: this site has been reported as containing malicious content, so visit at your own risk! It may end up installing crazy malware programs.]