User Comments - catherinem

Posted on: Ending, Completing, Finishing

Fixed now. Thanks for your patience.

Posted on: 疯狂的球迷

Thanks will fix right away.

Posted on: Construction

We have 294 Intermediate lesson and 217 Upper Intermediate lessons. There are a couple of reasons for this. As I'm sure you've noticed, there are more lessons at the lower levels than at the higher levels. This is because when we launched in 2005, we started by publishing only newbie, then newbie and elementary, then newbie, ele and intermediate level lessons, etc. Also, since we stopped publishing new newbie lessons last year we have been publishing either 2 elementary or 2 intermediate level lessons per week (we only publish 1 lesson at the other levels). Thus, the number of intermediate and elementary level lessons has grown faster than Upper Intermediate and Advanced level lessons.

In addition, our data shows that more users study newbie, elementary and intermediate level lessons than upper intermediate and advanced level lessons. Finally, with well over 200 upper intermediate level lessons (and growing) users should have no problem finding content to study! If the uppers prove too easy, you can always check out our 219 advanced lessons or 86 media lessons. I hope this clears up your questions!

Posted on: Construction

Sure here are a few existing examples:

animals; children; directions; work

The tag list shows how lessons are distributed across the levels within a specific tag (for example with animals, we have 7 newbie, 7 elementary, 4 intermediate lessons, etc.).

What we're working on this week is clearing redundant tags, consolidating tags, and generally cleaning the list up to increase usability. We've had many different people adding tags to lessons over the past 5 years, so we have to make sure they're both useful and somewhat standardized before we publish the big list. When adding tags, we try to be straightforward and descriptive. For Monday's Construction lesson, for example, we chose the tags "construction," "repair," "transportation," and "vehicle." Hope this makes sense.

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

Foghat will always rock.

Posted on: Construction

John and I are in the process of cleaning up the tags list, which we plan to make available to users very soon. This project has been in the works for a while, but with the many updates to the site it got pushed off. The tags list will be just that - a list of topic and function tags. Clicking on a tag will bring up all of the lessons that share that tag. We have not forgotten about it and hope to have it ready for everyone within the next few weeks. I will make sure to keep you posted (on the site and on the blog).

Posted on: Site Updates and More Anniversary Videos

We're working on a number of different things, such as vocabulary videos (you can check out our facebook page for a sample) as well as a show on study tips for learning Chinese. We hope to get user feedback on these initiatives, so let us know what you think!

Posted on: Shopping for a Rice Cooker

OK I understand your problem. I'm going to work with Peter to investigate. Will let you know when we find out what's going on. If anyone else is having this problem please let us know! Thanks.

Posted on: Shopping for a Rice Cooker

Bodawei,

I'm afraid I'm not able to recreate the problem you have described. Have you tried checking into your browser's support of Chinese characters? I'm on chrome and have checked safari as well and don't seem to have problems. For example, I can see: 中国，翻译，小气, etc.

Posted on: Ordering Food for the Group

Pretzellogic,

I can understand how you would feel frustrated if you think we're not listening to your suggestions, but I can assure you that we are. I looked back at the lesson suggestions post and noticed that the following lessons that you requested have already been published:

"manly arts" (cars): 4S Dealership, Buying Gas

Plumbing: Leaky Pipes and Faucets

Cheese and dairy products: Smelly Cheese

Comparing types of Opera: 中国戏剧

Fire: Fire in the Hallway

Procrastination: The Lazy Child

In addition we have a lesson coming out in late September about life in the countryside and the harvest. We generally publish lessons 2 weeks to 1 month before they come out, so new suggestions go to the end of a long queue. For this reason it might sometimes feel like we're not using your (and all of our other poddies' ideas) but we are. And one of the reasons we tend to talk about food a lot is because people ask us about food a lot! We recently went over all of our old lessons and realized we had never done one on mooncakes, so even though this will put us at 129 lessons about food, I (and the rest of the staff here) think it is important to cover this part of Chinese culture.

As for the second question you posed above, I simply meant that ordering food for other people (usually a large group of people) is something that people often find themselves having to do very often in China (and for a lot of foreigners, this is a new concept). While this has been mentioned in other food lessons before, we have never done a lesson that focused on this issue specifically (the sentence structures, the phrases and the social pressure surrounding it).