User Comments - zhenlijiang

Posted on: Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Expansion 5b　－　学校规定学生必须穿校服上学。
In this sentence 规定 is ａ verb, correct?
In the Supplementary Vocab the pinyin for 艺术 is showing as yìshì.

Posted on: Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art

嘿没有没有，过奖了。　没什么秘诀哦，只要从幼儿园起到高中毕业上个国际学校就好！哈哈

More seriously though I wish there were such things as tricks. I was fortunate to have grown up learning social skills as well as the three R's in English at school while being surrounded by Japanese everywhere else. I also think I became more fluent in English than some of my classmates because I was able to continue using English out of school, with my family at home (my father especially was conversational in English and he encouraged me to read, which I loved doing anyway). To this day nearly all my recreational reading is in English. Reading in Japanese is still "work" for me!

Posted on: Extreme Weather and Pollution

It can also be a good thing, as in the example Jenny gave 平凡的家庭生活是最快乐的--uneventful, nothing that sets you apart from the crowd but you're appreciative that there are no major tragedies either. It's good, you're content. Japanese say that a lot too.

Posted on: Extreme Weather and Pollution

Hi Grambers, banish from your mind for a moment the English translation common / commonplace, because that has to be why you're having these questions. Having said that, let me offer that a sentence like "Extreme weather is becoming increasingly mediocre (another possible translation for 平凡)" does not work. And that's why 极端天气来得越来越平凡了 doesn't work. I think it would be much easier to go to an antonym dictionary to clear this up. When we say 平凡 it's a judgment, not just a comment on quality but also imparting how we feel about that ordinariness (resigned / dismissive / content). You're saying how great or remarkable something isn't. Does this help any?

The 家常便饭 expression Connie gave us is great! I'm making a note of it.

Posted on: Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hmm John said “in other words--stay in line”. I think though what's meant by this 参观时，请站在绳子后面，不要跨越绳子 is "pls stay behind the ropes guarding the exhibits--don't touch the paintings and other exhibits. Which totally brings back from my memory a museum visit in Vienna about 15 years ago. There was this guy, part of an Asian group of tourists, who kept lunging right up close to the paintings, touching the ropes and setting off the sensor like every 3 minutes. We'd hear a loud beep tearing through the tranquil room and it would be him again. At the third beep I looked over at him with a mind to express disapproval. He noticed and grinned at me like a shy child. So much for the icy hard look I had all prepared to shoot over once I had his attention. He seemed just really fascinated and delighted with the whole experience of being there (first time overseas maybe, maybe the first ever in his family to take a trip like that for pleasure) and like he wanted to see everything up close that he could. I'll admit that I assume the tour group was Chinese though I didn't attempt to ask or confirm in any way. You know, just as there are certain giveaways to identify a group of Japanese tourists there are clues that led me to conclude that guy was Chinese (we're not Westerners, so we know how we East Asians don't all look identical). Anyway I guess it's one of those things some visitors need to be forewarned about, stay behind the ropes.

However I would like some clarification about this lesson. I mean this museum is not fictional, it's real, and real famous. Surely CPod wouldn't misrepresent the visitor experience there or its rules in a negative way? I've been there too and thought the same as John--visitors were not restricted like this. So did someone go there quite recently and have this experience? A visitor from China--not even a large group, this guy's only buying tickets for three--can expect for security reasons to be told to follow an employee?

Posted on: Extreme Weather and Pollution

More to the point, I don't think you could say 来得平凡.

Posted on: Extreme Weather and Pollution

频繁 is "frequent". In the context of this sentence it can be translated as "common", "commonplace" as in "frequently seen". 平凡 is "unremarkable", "ordinary" often used in a negative sense describing a person and his life, or a creative work, accomplishments etc. I'm pretty sure it couldn't work in this sentence about extreme weather.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization

I don't know how the site works these days if you're someone who has never had an account here, but if you've been a paying user and your subscription runs out they don't shut you out of the site. You have no access to the lesson materials of course but you can log in, browse the Community and comment as I've been doing for some months now (until I paid again, today). Or you can simply browse the Community and read all the Conversations including those of all our user groups. You only need to log in if you want to comment.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization

Mm but RJ isn't saying he feels the need to understand every last detail of the discussion between the hosts, if you go back and re-read his comments here. That's not at all what he's saying. And he's saying a transcript of the whole podcast (yes we already have the dialogue script, I don't think there's any confusion there), of the hosts' banter and discussion of the lesson, would help him study the lessons at his level.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization

Baba I might well continue to do transcripts even if CPod started providing them, because I transcribe for myself. Doing the work helps me. Then I would have the official CPod transcript to check against, all the better. What I would probably be much less inclined to do in that case is post my own efforts.