User Comments - light487

Posted on: Afraid of Dogs

Hehe.. 我的姐姐有小狗! (Wode jiejie you xiao gou).. not sure how to say she has new puppies.. but anyway.. here is a picture she took of them:

Posted on: Cosmetic Surgery and Mooncakes

I don't know about MoonCakes but my favourite Chinese sweet "pastry" are these things called "cream puffs". They are made with some form of egg-custard batter that is placed into a shaped grill that fries the batter and leaves the inside all hot and gooey inside. Here are a couple of pictures:

Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market

Couple of suggestions:

1. Have a look at "Sesame Street" and take some pointers from their video style clips of going to places and doing things.

2. Nouns are great but there are so many nouns to learn that one could spend months going through a dictionary to find them. Usage words are much better.. the hair salon one was ok becuse it almost had a story to it. I'd prefer if the videos had more than just nouns, and had usage of those nouns within a sentence.

May be have a running dialogue/storyline, then pause/slow-mo (like the pauses in this and the preview videos) to highlight wordsm then continue on with the story.

Posted on: The Neutral Tone

The neautral tone is too fast to capture on the slow-mo :) lol

Posted on: At the Hair Salon

Just realised.. the hair style Amber walks out with is not the now famous Amber-style "as seen on TV".. lol ;)

Posted on: Keys, Wallet, Phone

Tee hee.. how cute. :) Love the running footsteps. :) A cute lesson overall actually.. :)

So in this case we are using "zai" to talk about location.. but it can mean doing something.. these are the types of duplications that confuse me when I am trying to understand. I know that I need to concentrate on the chunks (words before and after) rather than the singular words themselves but I still have trouble with this.

Posted on: Street Argument

Yeh.. something I learnt yesterday also to do with this "kan" thing is:

我看不懂
wǒ kān bú dǒng

This means "I don't understand what I am seeing/reading." Very useful when you are chatting (online like in text chat) in Chinese with someone else.

Posted on: New Lessons, Video, and Groups

I half agree (吧 :)) with boran.. I like that it is another podcast but I'd prefer there to be more of a "Saturday Show" feel to it rather than just a list of things to come.. have some fun with the News & Features segment.. throw some jokes in, some news about what is actually happening at Praxis offices, gossip.. all that fun stuff! :)

Posted on: Teaching English in China

I am really interested in the prospects of teaching English in China. I fear though that because I don't have a University degree, and my Mandarin skills are quite poor that I will have a long wait before I would even stand a chance at getting a job teaching the language.

You say that there are lots of opportunities for this in China, and I assume more opportunities in the smaller cities and towns, and I don't really mind about that.. but I am guessing I need a lot more spoken mandarin skills in order to be able to teach the English even at a very basic level.

I am starting a more in-depth, daily course in the next week or so to get my mandarin skills up faster but I am curious as to the specifics of what is required to get a job teaching English in China? I have asked Amber to do a Dear Amber about this.. but I want as much information as possible now, so that I can to prepare properly.

I have minimal teaching experience in the IT industry as well as being author of a few guide books, also for the IT industry, so my level of English comprehension, writing and articulation is above average but I'm really unsure if that will be good enough. And.. I don't have the time for doing a course and working at the same time as I have a mortgage and many bills to pay.

Posted on: Street Argument

Thanks Amber! Informative as always. I've been exploring the idea a little more and realise that you're right, well of course you are, but it takes me a while to get my 'realisation' sometimes even after I have been told how it works. I am still struggling with 'de' I think by the time I have mastered 'de' I will be old and grey! :)

I really need to find a place where I can ask quick questions.. sometimes lots of them, and get answers within the hour. On the way to work on the train this morning I had at least 10 questions I wanted answers to and I have no where to really ask them.