User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Detective Li 4: The Circus Troupe

露富。。。to reveal one's wealth inadvertently...like leaving diamonds hanging about the place...

Posted on: Detective Li 4: The Circus Troupe

Posted on: Detective Li 4: The Circus Troupe

Just had a look at the lineup of characters, and while a lion tamer hiding it in the lions mouth is appealing, I hope it's the magician and that Li tan zhang of course will triumph..outsmart the magician which will redound to his greater glory.

Posted on: Detective Li 4: The Circus Troupe

太棒了，我很激动。。一定会猴子的错。。好，我来听

Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet

天啊！ 我以前错了很多次。。以为你的名字是骄杰。。不好意思朋友 ：）

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

btw, further to the above, while on the icecream topic you mentioned that :

"Same went for ice cream"

...so they didn't refer to icecream as either bingqiling or bingjiling? If not then can you tell us what they did use? ..and I presume you were sure they were using putonghua and not a dialect?

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

Further to the above, I'm a little confused by some things you say. You say:

"If there ARE parts that are useful, they're in a poor order"

..so it sounds to me you want to have an order in your learning resource, but then you later say:

"Some are going to say, "You can't just start teaching Chinese on a bank topic." But why not? Why do I need to know what to call an orange giraffe before being able to communicate smoothly with a cab driver?"

...perhaps this is still consonant with your want of order, but if so, surely it's going to be very difficult, nay impossible to present language in the exact order it's needed as everyone's learning needs are different. For example, I think it's very unlikely I'll be opening a bank account in China when I one day make it there as a tourist. But it may have been much higher up and earlier in your learning needs.

Hang on, you do go on to say:

"I just feel there is not enough effort put into LOGICAL and APPLICABLE orders of lessons on CP."

...ok, so clearly you want a logical order. Ok, well you're not the first to complain of this. Texts try to do it [ and yet many ...perhaps including yourself...seem to complain that it doesn't work] and CPod's approach has been more modular so you can just jump in at any point, say a lesson on opening a bank account. But I think they have started to organise some "logical" courses with a list of lessons to follow, or you can be guided by teacher services.

But here's where my confusion really kicks in. You say:

"international students who would take ELI classes before they were allowed to take academic classes"

"I don't want it to be 2 minutes of Chinese and 14 minutes of English"

"Don't tell me to slowly say, "xiee xieeeee" when in real life it's ten times as fast"

...which to me makes it sound like you do want to or need to jump in at a much higher level, and not start at some low level following some ordered course. I'm wondering what level your Chinese is at?..how many years have you been studying it, and how consistently? Maybe you need to just jump in to the high level stuff straight up...the higher the level the closer it approaches natural speed. It also, in my book gets yue lai yue entertaining and interesting as there is more scope for language at those levels. What higher level lessons have you listened to that are in areas that are of interest to you? What's your constructive feedback on them.

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

isanthonyhere,

thanks for giving a couple of concrete examples mate. I'm a little surprised by the fuwuyuan example. Perhaps this is somewhat regional, or maybe you are right and it's dated now or too formal [if so maybe more expensive establishments] or something. Can anyone shed any light on this? Where is this fuwuyuan used if at all? I guess some language is pretty universal, and then other language is going to depend on what circles you move in such a huge country.

Let's look at your bank example because I'd love to get down to the specifics here otherwise I really don't know what to make of it and I've learned nothing from it. Here's a CPod lesson dialogue on opening a bank account:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/bank-transactions/dialogue

I'd love it and appreciate it if you could comment on which words and expressions used in that dialogue you think you'd never hear when opening a bank account in China? Bearing in mind that I reckon if I opened a bank account here and then popped to the bank down the road to open an account, apart from some key words, I could have 2 very different conversations, both entirely natural as we're talking to a person not automated robots like transport announcements and language is so rich. Also here is a list of other bank related lesson [there is a much longer list if your search criteria is less strict]:

Elementary - April Fool's Day Car

Upper Intermediate - Facing Bankruptcy

Elementary - Bank Hours

Upper Intermediate - Applying for a Loan

Intermediate - Help at the ATM

Intermediate - Transferring Money

Intermediate - Bank Transactions

as you can see ranging from Ele to UI. I would think the idea is to study different lessons such as these and then kind of put together what you've learnt from them to adapt to the conversation you're having. Then there are dictionaries for filling in other vocab for stuff you want to say. Do you recall any language that was used when you opened a bank account and could you be so generous as to share some of it with us?

Btw, you may love bodawei's "heard it on the street" group and if you could contribute there that would be awesome:

http://chinesepod.com/community/groups/view/i-heard-it-on-the-street--723

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

I know it looked very similar to this:

..except it was in an assortment, and so while I know I had some with the eggs in the center as in this pic I can't recall if the durian one had egg in the center. But as you can see, it was an amorphous paste/jelly like substance with a strong durian flavour and golden brown in colour.

Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet

good pick up mate...thanks for pointing it out. Classic CPod...there's oft something significant in the name if not always, hehe.