User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: Arrival in Jizhou
September 18, 2007 at 12:06 AMJust to clarify... I don't think the speed in either the Upper Intermediate or Advanced is TOO fast. I just meant that the Advanced lessons are, for now at least, too hard for ME. That's not a complaint; that's just a reflection of my level! There are probably others like me, who can listen to an Advanced and follow the banter reasonably well, but then get totally lost when the dialogue begins. I remain undecided about the lack of English on the mouse-over dictionaries in Advanced... I certainly understand the educational value in that, but... it's a pain. Every so often, from Intermediate level on up, there does seem to be a super fast line where I hear it, and I have no idea. Then I read along with the transcript, and I look at the line, and... I just don't hear it. I seem to hear 3-4 syllables but the transcript obviously has 10. But I assume that's also a function of level. Here in Taiwan, Mid-Autumn Festival is actually next week, and the stores are full of mooncakes and pomelos. Today, however, is a typhoon day in Taipei and I get to stay home and watch rain lashing my window. This'll probably double the price of green vegetables again.
Posted on: Arrival in Jizhou
September 15, 2007 at 10:17 AMThese odder stories are a great diversion. Upper-Intermediate especially seems to suffer from a little too much technical language... it seems to me the Advanced ones, to the extent that I understand the topics, are where the really interesting cultural stuff comes in, but I'm just not at that level yet. (I find with Advanced I can follow the banter pretty well, but the conversations totally lose me.) One point I'm quite happy with: the expansion sentences are really good in this lesson - they're at a nice level of pushing me to remember fairly common vocab, without introducing too much that's new. Well done; the language is graded very well, which hasn't always been the case with the expansion sentences.
Posted on: How do you take your coffee?
September 14, 2007 at 10:52 PMStarbucks in Taiwan: www.starbucks.com.tw
Posted on: Basic Shapes
September 14, 2007 at 3:35 AMLike others, I'm a little stunned that I've never learned the basic shapes in Chinese. What especially confuses me is how often I TAUGHT the shapes to children's English classes for a year or so (a long time ago). Anyone know why some children's books consider the shapes so important? I'm guessing they're not THAT important, since some of us here didn't even realize we had this hole in our knowledge. On the "unh" grunts - those are actually one of the big things I warn my (ESL university) students about. They're a totally normal part of Chinese conversation, but to western ears they often sound a little rude or abrupt. Which makes me wonder: are there things native English speakers do that annoy the heck out of/ seem rude to native Chinese speakers?
Posted on: How do you take your coffee?
September 13, 2007 at 1:56 PMHere in Taiwan, venti didn't exist until about a month ago. Before that, grande = 大的. And actually, when I ask for a 一杯香草拿鐵, 大杯的, 熱的 (or however they write "latte" in that store - I've seen it a couple of different ways, and sometimes 咖啡 appears with the 王 radical rather than 口), the baristas will promptly shout out "one vanilla latte grande hot". I'm not yet sure what will happen to the sizes now that grande is the middle column. For now, "大" gets me a grande, and "venti" gets me a venti. Once I tried to use the term for low fat, but no one ever understood me, so I just said "low fat" and had no trouble. Now I've forgot what the word even is. Use it or lose it, as always. What I could really use is a Subway [sandwich] lesson. The Starbucks workers usually know the English jargon for their trade; the Subway folks don't.
Posted on: Death by Ninja
September 12, 2007 at 8:12 AMSo, like in the LiLi/ ZhangLiang saga, is there going to be an alternate ending where pirates come to Peter's rescue? (I keep waiting for John to elabourate on the ninja/ pirate war mentioned in an earlier podcast.) I was actually kind of hoping this saga would reverse stereotypes, and have "sweet gentlemanly Canadian" Peter totally rip off the well-meaning but naive Chinese businessman. Finish off with a fake news report about the dangers of doing business in Canada. Ah well.
Posted on: All About 所有 (suǒyǒu) and 都 (dōu)
September 11, 2007 at 12:09 PMWay back to the topic: how does 全部 fit into this? For example, in this sentence (which I think comes from the archives somewhere)... 父母把全部希望都寄托在他身上了。 His parents put all their hopes in him. ... could we use 所有 as well? (My apologies if this is explained in the grammar section somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding items within that.)
Posted on: Beauty Pageant for Bloggers
September 9, 2007 at 11:03 AMChipping in with some positive feedback: I was glad to hear John's suggestion in the podcast that there may be more to come. I'm enjoying the serial stories and this one's got a more interesting beginning than either the ZhangLiang/ Lili or the Peter/ sweatshop stories. Of course, if you want to TOTALLY mess with your students' minds, you could include a Miss South Carolina-style brain fart in one of the conversations. (It'd probably sound far too similar to my own efforts in Chinese...)
Posted on: Election Candidates
September 8, 2007 at 2:11 PMOuch... I'm a politics junkie, but this lesson was a case of getting too much of what I wished for. There's A LOT of vocabulary in this one. The grammar wasn't too difficult, but words that were unfamiliar to me... let's see, quick count of the highlighted terms on my copy of the transcript... 65 or so. Wow. Normally an Upper-Int "only" has around 30 newish items for me. I'm not complaining about it, but I certainly feel like I've been put in my place! Dialogues like this actually highlight one of my main problems with Chinese... I've lived in Taiwan long enough that small talk, in general, bores the heck out of me. (How many times do I have to explain that, yes, I know how to use chopsticks, and no, I'm not scared of spicy food?!) But more complex conversation remains utterly beyond me - I can follow bits and pieces, but produce anything? Not even close, not yet.
Posted on: Cycling
September 22, 2007 at 10:00 AM脚踏车 (jiǎotàchē) is the common spoken word for bicycle in Taiwan. Not sure how often it's used in Mainland China. Tip: if you search for the lesson "A Flat Bicycle", that lesson and the thread has a lot of other cycling vocab. I don't think spinning is there, however. On Asian bicycles: Giant's actually based in Taiwan.