In recent months we’ve taken a more strict approach to defining the levels. (I’ll post a level chart on Friday, explaining the details.) For the Newbie level, some of the general guidelines:
a. Each lesson should be suited to a first time visitor to who has no previous knowledge of Mandarin
b. Each lesson should offer ‘survival value’, the types of basic functions that would help a first time traveler to China.
c. Use set phrases without grammatical explanations.
I personally think the newbie lessons have improved in quality. One thing strikes me as interesting, however: the newbie lessons don’t get many comments. I‘m wondering why.
Ken Carroll
pretzellogic on 
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Dave on
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
The comments pages don’t look or feel like safe newbie turf.
Aunty,
Tell me about that. As a learner, it wouldn’t bother me at all, so I’m not sure how to deal with it. How could we make it look and feel safe?
Ken
Ken,
Yes, the newbie lessons have improved in quality, and yes, it is good to have this focus again on the large group of people, users, potential customers of CP that have no idea what Mandarin is all about. Personally I have moved beyond the newbie level but I still listen to the podcasts as I feel that there is always something in it that helps my progress with the language and the culture.
Marc in Belgium
Ken
You are right our Newbies are not posting after the lesson but there are plenty of new posters here in the blog and the forum. Aric generated many all by himself Saturday. I do hope they post as it is true like Marc has said, if you have been able to move up the issues you may have with a Newbie lesson will be different from a true Newbie. And it is only with their help the whole podcast gets better and better.
Newbie’s I guess are all cute and cuddly and somewhat scared. Remember when Bazza was just a mere Newbie? You and Jenny are the proud parents(teachers) of many poor tone, lousy pronunication, non-existant grammar speaking Chinese CPoddies. But the point is we are speaking and would not have done it without your help as well as each others. So come on little cute Newbies spead your wings, open your mouths and talk to us.
Mike in Jubei
Ken, you’ve seen me prattle on about this lots of times.
There are two groups of people using the podcasts in different ways:
1. Excitedly struggling with yet another four new words and a kooky new sentence pattern.
2. Using it for vocab and culture enrichment and confidence boosting.
The way they want to use the Comments section is different. And in any such forum the more confident tend to drown the others and shape its content.
In particular, since you mentioned it,
a. The comments are not suited to a first time visitor to who has no previous knowledge of Mandarin
b. The comments do not reinforce only the current ‘survival value’ offerings, the types of basic functions that would help a first time traveler to China.
c. The comments go way way beyond the set phrases and often add high falutin grammatical debates, exposing more than pedagogically desired at that point.
A beginner might see the Comments as being an extension of THAT lesson for that lesson’s targeted students, and expect to find only support for that lesson and various questions and comments from people who are just barely coping with the new material. That’s not what they see.
I can’t often find value in reading the Comments. I read a couple the other day, for the first time in months, only becuase I was into the pet thing and looking for a ying1wu3. All the comments pages do is confuse and alienate me, or do nothing much. If I want extra discussion of my lesson, i want it on my level, and I’m not experienced enough to tell whether the grammar/vocab/character chat in there is on my level or way above and can be ignored. Nor do I have the means to judge whether the recommendations are correct and consistent with the intended style of the course, again it’s an experience thing.
There’s more fear of frustration than there’s what’s in it for me value.
For example, if there were a specifically one-podcast-related chat, for and by naive students on _that_ lesson level only, with a reliable staff member looking on, where the lessons were discussed and our silly little problems raised, where if I said something wrong it would only be among my peers, and there was participation of a number of newbies struggling with that particular lesson, then I’d love it so much I’d consider paying for it. Do you get the difference?
But we also have the problem that most of the people listening to the newbie podcasts are way past them and want to discuss on their own level too. They’re paying for a lesson each day and making do with some being very easy for them. And the other problem is that newbies (anything, anywhere) are less inclined to post and slower to get around to it because they’ve relatively less to say and more to risk by saying it.
I can’t learn from elementary, intermediate, or advanced podcasts, I have my newbie-issue lessons each week to work on and that’s it, all of it. So anything I don’t like in the Comments is occupying my whole week or half a week of lesson-chat space. The issue can become bigger for us than it might seem from way up there. And don’t try saying there’s scores of newbie level podcasts you could do one each day, because it’s true, but it’s also true that everyone else has lots of podcasts at higher levels plus non-lesson resources they can get value from, so one could equally argue they don’t need to go and intellectualise all over the newbie lessons either.
So, let me ask you about the Comments, Ken. It’s your own teaching approach that’s what I’m not seeing coming through, so can you explain this to me:
As a (happily) struggling newbie, what’s in it for me?
There are past newbie and elementary lessons where the comment posts are way beyond the scope and level of the lesson. This can scare off some from commenting. Many listeners might just use the podcast and don’t even see the comments. Comparing podcast downloadings to comment page hits should be easy to measure.
Even still, when the lesson is “Hello. How are you? I’m doing well. And you?” How much more is there to say on the lesson?
Aric did a good job recently getting some to post who normally don’t. Perhaps he could sub for you next time you’re out of town.
I think it is different now. But I remember when I first joined there were a bunch of people who already had been with Cpod for a while sometimes posting scary looking Chinese characters and discussing grammar that I knew was way out of my level of need. So I thought “err … I”ll get my coat…”. I even came away with a slight anti-grammar and anti-character bee in my webbonnet (evidanced on my early forum excursions, sorry guys). This is why until recently I hardly every posted in the lesson comments until recently. Now of course I see things completly differently (human nature).
I am not shy of posting anywhere else and blurting out what I think or feel (hopefully enough evidance for that) but you will find hardly any posts (maybe none now I come to think of it) in the newbie lesson comments.
I can’t imagine I was the only one to feel this way. Now the class of 2005 and early 2006 has cleared the newbie corridors, perhaps a new batch of voices will appear.
I does appear (IMHO) that a lot of the new ‘faces’ that appear in the posting fray are already elementary or intermediate level before they got here??
For me, it’s the way I do the lessons. I listen to the podcast of the day, and then I’ll go back to an “old” newbie lesson, and usually post a comment. Of course, these are lost in the wilderness unless someone else has gone back to the same lesson. Also, noone talks to newbies, we’re newbies!
Perhaps some of us mega-posters are a little scary, especially (like me) if we post a (maybe not-so) eloquent philosophical debate on the nature of the content. It doesn’t necessarily prove conducive to asking about how to say “I like tea”. Perhaps we could agree to back down a bit on the newbie lesson blogs for a while and see if that helps. Discussion on the lesson content can still take place on the forum. There’s also a lot to be said that there isn’t as much to discuss about a newbie lesson, becuase there’s less content, and is less likely to be controversial or philosophically profound. And those of us who are big posters aren’t necessarily listening to the newbie ‘casts as much, so we’re not necessarily posting there. I post far less on lessons (less on lessons – hee hee) that are lower, because I don’t listen to them all.
Nah, we just want ‘stuff’
Hardly anyone posts in the advanced comments or blog, so I don’t think level or intimidation has that much to do with it. I find it hard to believe that the N. American audience is too shy, intimidated and quiet in class to post. Rather it’s because it’s a podcast, people listen to the podcast and get on with their busy days.
At the end of your podcasts you often say ‘Go to Chinesepod.com’…but you know, every service, every company, all marketing campaigns say ‘go visit our website’!, yawnnnn–we all just tune that out. The best way to get people to do stuff is prizes, during the podcast offer newbies an extra week if they vist the site and post, a free popsicle, a pen, a quiz, a chance for fame, you know STUFF, like the stuff that makes me go to conferences and walk around for 8 hours so I can fill up the bag. Even kids get stickers in classes! Be specific, create a path that entices a listener to DO something.
Didn’t anyone notice that Aric gave away t-shirts , Aric is a smart man and has good hair. Listen and do as he.
Hey—and did I mention that the advanced shows get few posts?—that’s my DaVinci code for freebies over there too! BTW, I do think it’s a good idea for it to be a little ‘quieter’ in the newbie comment threads, but I’ll be honest I still learn a lot and listen to those casts too, I don’t think in language there really are newbie lexis and advanced lexis, only lexis that I know and those that I don’t.
Asynchronous Time
A challenge to your creativity may be how to create an interesting path from podcast to website that is time-shifted. There are those of us with the luxury/time to follow the podcasts/posts daily, but many more listeners that are too busy to do that. What kind of incentives, bits of info, interaction can be made to attract people from different levels to different threads, all the while scalable and interesting over time at different times any time?
Connie’s added vocab adds value and interest to the thread. (She’s getting much better at making it lexical too these days!)
How about ‘highlighted’ ‘blockquoted’ fun tips and advice regularly posted at certain intervals by Cpod staff to keep threads ‘alive’. A weekly update/tidbit in the ‘Hello’ podcast to put the thread up in the recent comments listing/ranking.
An incentive to post and not just read, if it’s your first post, birthday, or you’re from a city not on our ‘Cpod City List’, you get a VIP sticker.
If you and a friend both post on a thread, Ken will kiss you.
If you post and email Cpod a funny Chinese-language learning funny photo, including self-portraits, you get the answer key to the expanded exercises.
If you write 2 sentences with the day’s podcast on a post thread you get glory and fame on the Cpod Glory and Fame page.
If you write 5 hanzi characters on a post you get to slap Ken’s wrist with a ruler.
Visit, post and boast. Get kind sweet words from a cute Shanghainese host.
But wait… how can we sit here and discuss what newbies want? My own hypothesis says that that is actually the problem: non-newbies are overly confident that they know what goes on in a newbie’s heart and brain as they work with the site, but they are way out of touch with the subjective experience of beginners. ChinesePod can only base their offerings on the feedback that they get, and if my hypothesis is correct, that feedback is coming from inappropriate sources. Indeed, one of the longest and most impassioned discussions about what to do for newbies was held in the Comments of an advanced level podcast! Excuse me? BTW I’m lumping myself in the inappropriate group for the sake of this argument too, since I’m still working only at that level but no longer a beginner in learning Chinese.
As for prizes, the best prize is getting through a newbie lesson and understanding, remembering, and being able to use the material. That’s heaven on a stick and nothing material could make it better. Any other prize offer might be taken to invalidate our experiences and motivations and cheapen our achievements, in some people’s view.
If there’s anyone watching on who started larning Chinese from scratch during, say, the last couple of months, please please please chime in! We want to hear your ideas, especially if they don’t quite gel with ours, we need your help here.
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