User Comments - RJ

Posted on: Walking the Bird

Unless the bird can talk, I have no interest. I wonder how parrots do with Chinese? Any stories? Can birds handle tones?

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

I think a Chengyu typically imparts more meaning than can actually be conveyed by the characters alone due to an ancient consensus or a tie to some story or parable that everyone that speaks the language seems to be aware of.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

I agree with you. btw- if you are not in a minority, that just makes you "average". Be special. :-)

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

Im not real hot on flashcards, but I do use them from time to time, mostly for brand new lesson vocab. I find flashcarding very boring. Especially without the audio.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

lessons are never "finished". That is why it should be easy to put them back into bookmarked status from time to time for review. I have found that there is a limit to what you can learn from a lesson. But, come back to it in several months and many new lights come on, supported by the other learning you have been doing.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

update - I did re-save my vocab list using only mouse clicks and it worked for many of the entries, but certainly not all. Multiple character entries seem to have a greater chance that the audio file will not function properly. So this is only a partial work-around it seems, to get the flashcard audio to function.

Oh jeez, now Im talking to myself.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

baba has explained nicely actually. When you save vocab from lessons, (which you can do by selecting and saving from vocab page, or by left mouse clicking on any word in the dialogue on the dialogue page) it goes into your saved vocab list under Tools (major website tab). Go to tools and it will open to this as baba has pointed out. There are several drop down choices but basically you are shown hanzi, you click to see pinyin and english or to hear the audio pronunciation when you want to verify, reinforce, or reveal the "answer". Then you move to next card. You can keep score (right or wrong) on each card but I dont bother with this. The flascards contain the same words as your saved vocab list which makes it a useful dynamic tool. It also can be synced with the itouch or android mobile apps giving hand held mobile flashcard capability. There are no audio options with the mobile apps however. I prefer to hear the answer rather than see the english and or pinyin becasuse it helps with pronunciation. Learn a new word - learn it right, from the begining is how I feel about it. You can also put your saved words into groups by naming them and they can be manipulated. Best way to learn all this is to play with it. Do=learn. More questions?

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

I got you and you are right.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

baba,

what he means of course is that if you click on one of these terms in the dialogue, it saves the entire chengyu as a unit to the vocab list, rather than just the one word you clicked on. This way they do become flashcards of the chengyu's in their entirety, and the sound files work! I have had problems with my sound files working on the flashcards but I just discovered that if I save a word by clicking on it in dialogue, the sound file transfers to flashcards just fine, its only when I add words using the "save selected vocab" on the vocab page that they fail. This is a clue Peter if you are interested in finishing the fix you started on this one. Another quirk in the flashcards is that the sound icon on flashcard number 1 never shows up until, or unless you move on to flashcard number two, and then back up to number one again. Then it shows - well lately its just trying to load, none of the sound files have been loading for me. I just get the little seaching for sound file icon. Now, of course it does work with words saved directly by mouse click, as mentioned above. Hope that helps, and I am adding my praise to the cpod team for setting these to save in their entirety for easy flashcard use. It has been noticed.

Now I have to go back and re-save all my vocab using the click method to coax my flashcard sound files into working properly.

Posted on: A Short Haircut

yea, I liked it too. My compliments to the sound crew once again. So what song was it?