I want you to think like a Mandarin teacher. You’ve just met someone who is really interested in learning Chinese, but has never studied it before. What tips do you offer the newbie?
Next you meet an elementary. Again, tips for an elementary?
And so on.
If you’re willing to share your advice on learning Chinese, we’d sure like to hear it. We spare someone a lot of time and effort through a few simple suggestions.
Ken Carroll
pretzellogic on 
Andrew Cockerham on 
Dave on
{ 78 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
Lantian,
It is not as simple as that. I have been here for about 6 months and am now realizing the shortcomings here. I do agree that the CONTENT is superior. Just not the implementation. In C-pod lessons there is a lot of intellectual discussion built-in to the recordings. The discussion is interesting but not the kind of stuff you want to hear over and over again. It is the repetition that allows it to become second nature. Once you have a whole lot of constructions or building blocks you can quickly retrieve you can begin to build a fluency. One needs a lot of repitition before these structures are commited to long term memory and yes I agree with Bob Mrotek that once they are learned you can still retrieve them years and years later. I learned a lot of Chinese children’s songs and will be able to sing them until the day I die–also remembering the meaning. It is because of the repitition. Same idea behind jingles to sell products–I can still remember annoying TV commercials from when I was a kid some 40 years later. I do believe that the ability to participate and repeat over and over is the key. Pimsleur is great at that building upon each lesson and adding just a bit more–they are experts in knowing how to repeat material in different ways and at what point to add a bit more. I think C-pod can still pull off having dialogues that are on unrelated topics as long as they start providing the opportunity to repeat and practice. The intellectual comments on grammar, syntax, etymology, cultural relevance or whatever seems like should be on a separate recording or track so that once you hear it you don’t have to listen to it over and over. It actually makes you NOT want to listen over and over cause you wouldn’t want to hear that over and over again–that is a one shot deal and is wasting time to listen to over and over again. What is helpful is being able to both practice and be challenged to practice (i.e. how do you say, “Where is the bathroom?”) over and over again until you just know how to ask the question without thinking about it. Hope this helps and I truly hope the C-pod community can take some of these comments to heart.
I like the podcasts because they get me used to listening to real Chinese speakers speaking at normal rates (especially the intermediate ones, which I have started listening to).
Just being able to hear all those sylables and not miss them is important. I remember years ago in Hong Kong I kept asking my wife and her family what a particular phrase meant that I was hearing on TV(B, I think it was). It sounded like ‘lei tik-a-toi.’ When I finally managed to point out the phrase, it turned out that it was:
你的電視第一台 (In Cantonese of course) and I had missed three or four sylables. This happened more than 20 years ago and has left an enormous impression on me.
However, one problem I have is the lack of male native speakers on the ChinesePOD series. It seems to me to be important to hear male native speaker so I can callibrate my pitch and so on.
It is not clear what the problem is. Perhaps only females in China will do language work of this sort.
Having said all that it seems to me that Jenny ennunciates very clearly event when she is speaking 20-to-the-dozen, which makes her a delight to listen to.
Erica — You Go Girl!!! — Delta
Delta, you too, 加油! I agree with everything you said 2000%!!! I would pay extra for the Pimsleur-like added feature, that is one thing for sure! For me that would be just as important as getting access to the transcripts. Please note Pimsleur doesn’t even offer any transcripts but they are so popular people generate them for themselves! This tells you something. It works therefore it sells! I keep trying to get them to put out a 4th level of their Mandarin series.
Hi Erica and Delta,
If you could indulge me for just a bit more, and we’ll put aside the usual ‘pleasantries’ of ‘everyones different, different methods for different folks, etc., for the sake of argument; let me throw out two things:
(1) I don’t disagree with your suggetions for ‘drill-types’ of podcasts, I’ve also asked for them. But I’d like to see them appear with a bit of a twist — as a separate companion podcast to the regular Cpodcast episode.
Plus I’d like the repeating and drilling to go thru parsed patterns, lexical patterns, and then isolated morphenes in different words. Versus just word and phrase repetition aka Pimsleur.
(2) Do you think ‘drilling’ and repeating and memorizing really works? I remember some English rhymes and Shakespeare but I don’t think it’s ever really helped with my English speaking. Millions have used Pimsleur — and don’t really speak Chinese well at all afterwards. I have yet to meet a non-native Chinese speaker of a high-intermediate to high level that mentioned to me that a Pimsleur route was how they got there.
And now for me to get on my high-horse over pronunciation, Red Violin and Richard S, Red’s quote was
“Pronunciation is the first and greatest hurdle to be overcome. If you don’t get it right from the start, it will be difficult or impossible to correct later.”
Do you have any proof for this? My experience is that it ‘can’ get better over time in two ways, naturally with general increased ability, and with explicit attention/correction.
If everything fossilized (which I’m not saying it can’t), then you two are also saying there’s no hope for my putt shot, or zh-ch problems.
May the glory of change rise with each morning sun.
I have to admit that I have been a “victim” of Pimsleur. I totally relied on this system daily for the past 10 years, based on recommendations from others. You would think that I would be at the advanced level in Chinesepod..but no way…i’m even struggling with the “newbie” lessons. My tones are terrible and I can’t even pronounce basic stuff like “Ni Hao”.
I’m now convinced that the ability to become proficient in a second language depends on superior genetics. I’ve wasted 10 years and now ready to throw in the towel.
Lantian says:
“Pronunciation is the first and greatest hurdle to be overcome. If you don’t get it right from the start, it will be difficult or impossible to correct later.”
Do you have any proof for this? My experience is that it ‘can’ get better over time in two ways, naturally with general increased ability, and with explicit attention/correction.
I have to agree with both of these parts. Pronunciation is so very important that if your pronunciation is different (outside the range expected by your interlocutors) it is a serious impediment to communication. My wife, who is Chinese from HK, always complains about English speakers from India who have accents. Since her ear is not attuned to their accents, and she is not as patient as I am, she has problems understanding them.
However, it is true that your pronunciation can improve over time, especially if you are prepared to believe that your pronunciation has problems and you want to improve. Of course, you have to be prepared to open your mouth and make mistakes.
My wife’s pronunciation has definitely improved since she went to Australia as an eighteen-year old and could hardly speak English. She now sounds Australian to some extent … through long usage on a daily basis.
Clever Dick says:
I’m now convinced that the ability to be proficient in a second language depends on superior genetics. I’ve wasted 10 years and now ready to throw in the towel.
Hmmm, don’t give up. Spend some time doing a formal course at a community college first. There are several in the Bay Area that are very flexible and offer classes in the evenings … give it a try. You might find that you improve.
Wow! Interesting discussion!!
In my original post, I said. “Pronunciation is the first and greatest hurdle to be overcome. If you don’t get it right from the start, it will be difficult or impossible to correct later. “ After reading some of the above posts and thinking about it a bit, I think I should have written the following as my second sentence: The longer you wait to get it right, the more difficult it will be” I think people with bad pronunciation habits can improve them at any stage. But the longer you wait, the more difficult it is. My advice for someone working on correcting pronunciation is this:
Start with a few single words. Know what each phoneme in the word and read up on their physical description. Only practice saying them immediately after a recording of a native speaker. (Otherwise sounds, particularly vowel sounds, will tend to drift back to your native language sounds) When you think you have it right, check your results with a native speaker. When you are able to pronounce and number of words with good pronunciation, do the same with a sentence. Continue doing this with more words and sentences. Bit by bit, your rate of progress will accelerate. Avoid pronouncing words when you are not sure of the phonemes. Beware of “false phoneme friends”. The word “xi” in Mandarin is not the English “she”, even with a tone added.
I was surprised to learn that most of you posters are, like me, studying the intermediate lessons. I had assumed that most of you were advanced students.
I studied French, and particularly Spanish with a very large amount of drill recordings. To give you and idea, in my first 26 weeks of Spanish, I had to memorize and recite 48 pages of recorded dialogue along with about 20 hours per week of recorded drill work. It was something like the Foreign Service Spanish course but even more rigorous I think. I continued drilling and studying ever Spanish recording I could find for quite awhile after.
That kind of rigorous structural drill approach has gone out of fashion. Instructors hated it because it really gave them nothing to do, you just needed the recordings. Most students hated it because it was, well, inhuman. Sentences were given at a rapid fire, native speed pace, and you had to reply just as quickly. It was relentless. I got through it by continually stopping the recording, sometimes for minutes as a time, while I broke down and practiced both the stimulus sentences and their responses. It usually took me about 10 hours of work to totally master 1 hour of drill recordings. I persevered because I was motivated, and I believed it would give good results. But none of the other students really mastered the recordings and many expressed their dislike of the method. For these reasons, I think we must look for better ways.
Nevertheless, we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Drill approaches (combined with other approaches) can be very effective, but they need to be humanized and customized. And now, with our computer technology, we finally have ways of doing this.
Imagine a language teaching computer program. First it would ask you a series of questions about yourself. How much of the language to you eventually hope to speak? Do you want adequate pronunciation or great pronunciation? How much time to you want to spend? What kind of vocabulary are you most interested in? Will you be doing your studying at the computer only or also in the car? Etc.
From these kinds of questions, a good language teaching program could make an attempt at customizing a program for each individual. And, it could continue adjusting the learning program according to the feedback it received. Computers are beginning to have the capability of judging your pronunciation. But it could also get feedback from more questions, from the speed of your responses etc. It could give you homework in the form of customized Cds to be played in the car. Also, listening lessons to be loaded into your Ipod.
Imagine if the program used some of the Pimsleur principles. But now many responses could be elicited using pictures and animation clips, thus keeping your mind working in Mandarin. And the computer would know (or you could tell it) how well you responded and time further requests in the manner of the Pimsleur recordings.
The computer (and users) could send feedback back to the programmers to help with upgrades.
The program might make use of sensors to judge your level of attention, frustration etc. and make continual adjustments accordingly. It might use a Skinnerian type reward system to keep you interested.
I think the eventual best solution will be a virtual reality type game. You take your smart drugs, get hooked on the game. A few months later you are fluent in Mandarin.
I’m sure many readers could think of other ideas. Perhaps some who agree with me that this is the way to go might suggest how long it might be before programs like this start to appear.
addendum to my last post: The Spanish course had 2 hours per week of recorded drill. It took me about 20 hours to completetly master it and memorize the accompanying dialogue.
Lantian,
I’ll be happy to indulge you, but let’s not put aside ALL ‘pleasantries’ as we’re all on the same team, just with different experiences and ideas about how to help ChinesePod help us. Here’s a pleasantry to start us off with: I love ChinesePod for its fun and educational PodCasts and especially for its community. I’ve also read a number of your posts with great interest and am an admirer of your Full Transcript Initiative (FTI). OK, now on with it …
Your point (1): “I don’t disagree with your suggestions for ‘drill-types’ of podcasts, I’ve also asked for them. But I’d like to see them appear with a bit of a twist — as a separate companion podcast to the regular Cpodcast episode.”
If you read what Erica and I wrote (see above), and my comments elsewhere (especially the second of my 2 comments in the “HSK” blog), you’ll see that we are all saying the exact same thing, so welcome aboard. Now if we can only get ChinesePod to listen. I’ll quote myself in part: “At first I thought it most convenient to put it [ the review / drill / self-assessment ] at the end of the PodCast. Subsequently, I realized that it should be a full scale separately produced PodCast and put into the premium section to cover the cost of producing it. Also, that would draw in new premium subscribers who prefer the PodCast approach to the online software approach.”
Please take a look at those comments for a fuller explanation of how this could work.
Your point (2a): “Do you think ‘drilling’ and repeating and memorizing really works?”
The short answer is that I know for a fact that it works from my own personal experience. Also, if you look at the Amazon reviews for Pimsleur’s full, unabridged CD sets, then you’ll see that most purchasers agree. Amazon reviewers, by the way, can be brutal, yet this product consistently scores at the highest level, even though it’s among the most expensive of products sold in its category. Consumers almost always rate products on a sliding scale with the product’s price in mind. The fact that Pimsleur raises expectations by being expensive and that it also gets consistently high ratings over a long period of time, has to say tell you something. For the casual, free PodCast downloader who comes here, there is a totally different level of expectation. In fact, I only become demanding when I consider giving ChinesePod my hard earned money (and then I speak up); otherwise, I’m also happy to just download for free and use ChinesePod as a supplement to something else that’s more structured, listener participative, interrogative and demanding.
Your point (2b): “I have yet to meet a non-native Chinese speaker of a high-intermediate to high level that mentioned to me that a Pimsleur route was how they got there.
As I said in my HSK blog comments, “Pimsleur leaves off short of where ChinesePod intermediate begins.” So we all agree once again. If Pimsleur produced more advanced levels, then we would buy them. That’s why we’re trying to get ChinesePod to be our one-stop, self-study shopping solution. (As an aside, I can’t believe that you’re implying that the Pimsleur METHOD doesn’t work because there isn’t a Pimsleur Mandarin Volume 4 through 10?)
Delta, dui4, dui4, dui4!!!
Let me give a background on my studies. Eight years ago today I traveled to China to adopt my little girl who is now 8. Eight years ago I knew no Chinese. I became passionate studying with my daughter. I learned more children’s songs in Chinese than most native speakers and will sing at the drop of a hat. At that time I never dreamed I would start studying the written language. I got the sounds very easily I guess cause I must have some natural gift and also because I worked very hard and listened a repeated a lot. It wasn’t until I had a pretty good base that I even started with the Pimsleur–I do think you can start with Pimsluer too early. When I started I was ready and just took off. Please don’t tell me Pimsleur is all about “memorizing” …. When I started Pimsleur I needed only to listen 2 or 3 times to each CD before I mastered it. I did NOT memorize any of it. I practised enough that when they drilled me in English for the Chinese I could very quickly construct it in my head. Also the very nature of Pimsleur is that they provide enough repeated practice on any 1 CD that just a few exposures to it allows you to master it. Pimsleur re-introduces the material in so many ways so that you really do understand what you are saying and can use it outside of the lesson context. Pimsleur gives you just the right time lags to develop a proficiency. This is the path needed to develop a fluency. Everyone tells me I would quickly become fluent now if I went to China and allowed myself to become “immersed” in the language. However, I disagree. I have been “immersed” in the C-pod intermediate lessons and really am not ready for this. If I could continue with Pimsleur I know I would quickly get there. I could progress MUCH faster if C-pod or Pimsleur would provide the support in a Pimsleur like approach. Without this support my skills will start fading and now I am getting more interest in the written so am spending more time at Chinese school studying the written long form characters. All the while the path I was on with Pimsleur is now derailed until more support for my verbal practice becomes available. No one is going to develop a fluency in any language if they don’t practice speaking every day–you need a lot of practice and C-pod is not presently helping with that. I enjoy listening to the C-pods but most of it doesn’t stick in my mind because it isn’t really designed for repeated listening or practicing so while interesting it is not a real good use of my time if I’m not remembering it and putting it to practice.
By the way, are we just talking to each other about this, or is anyone from C-pod listening? Me thinks we are just wasting our time here.
Erica
GET RE-WRITES – I find that writing down and having my Chinese edited is a great way to learn and it’s interesting. Let me warn others though, it seems very very hard to find Chinese teachers and people who will do this for you. “Editing” seems not highly practiced in schools and universities here.
But on Cpod, we have friends, and friends help friends! See my State-of-Mind post at the comments for the Hardships of Finding a Job
http://www.chinesepod.com/podcast/?p=192
Lantian,
I just had the same experience – although I do not yet dare to try this on these forums. After I got my corrections I complained once again to my wife about those missing grammar rules. She claimed that there are indeed clear rules. But the ones who follow those rules sound “strange”, “like foreigners”. She recommended to get more input to further improve the feeling for the language. Listen to even more Chinesepod lessons.
Erica,
I do not believe there is anything like a straight “path” to Chinese – there is definately none for me. I am convinced that it is a fallacy to believe that you just “build up” lessons on top of others and gradually increase the “difficulty”. This only well in a laboratory setting within the confines of a selected set of grammar points and vocabulary. If you enter real life you have all the complexity at once. What you need then is rather a broad grasp of what is going on than a precice understanding of individual words or phrases.
Drill: They tried time lags in some of the early Chinesepod lessons, highly annoying. If I need time lags, I just push the pause button. But have you tried translating the expansion phrases and comparing your result with the given phrase? That is effective training for me.
I also recommend to try out the level that is one above the comfort zone. There one is forced to understand and thereby learn more in less time.
Erica : I’d never heard of Pimsleur before that discussion so I can’t compare, but I too believe in repetition –that certainly works for me, provided it’s fun rather than brute force, much as repeating movie lines.
Actually, ChinesePod does provide a tool for you to practice, that’s the expansion section you get with the premium subscription. I do them all, repeating until I’m satisfied with pronunciation, and that’s also a good way to get exposed to sound and characters at the same time. Unfortunately, those sentences are embedded in flash modules, you can’t easily get them out as mp3 and take them on the road.
I’ve suggested that ChinesePod strings them all together and makes them available as a complementary podcast to premium subscribers. It would be straightforward for them to add a pause after each pattern/sentence for us to practice.
As to developing a fluency, yes you need to practice everyday but there’s more to it than speaking, getting the speech muscles trained up is a lot faster than absorbing the listening patterns, attidutes *and* vocabulary. That’s where I find ChinesePod dialogues and discussions across many levels very effective. I now practice daily with the top 3 levels from intermediate, and I do find the zh-advanced *very* challenging, but every time I listen to a podcast I get more, look up another word, pick up another expression, get back to the transcript. I know from experience that the path is long, often frustrating, and regularly goes through plateaux or what even feels like regression.
I’ve given up on every other learning tool but ChinesePod, listening for an hour, exercices and transcript for half an hour or more, and frankly there’s still lots I don’t fully exploit even though I’m gradually finding my way through all previous podcasts. I started this less than 2 months ago, but frankly it’s given me an incredible boost and I’m confident my “fluency” will be much improved when I go back to China for hols next year.
Yv
I share Henning’s views – funny enough, we posted them at the same time
Yv
Goulnik,
Way to go! You will be more confident and fluent when you get to China nexct time. And don’t forget to come and see us while you’re here.
Ken Carroll
Goulnik,
Sorry but I won’t pay extra for a “premium” service unless there is something that is transportable. I can’t be anchored to my laptop in order to get the practice in that I need. I want to be able to do it on the road like Pimsleur allows. I find Pimsleur very fun and challenging cause it makes me think–it is not just rote repitition but quizzes you to quickly translate, very much like you were immersed in a conversation and had to come up with a quick response. That is what makes the practice so powerful. I spent a ton of money for my Pimsleur albums but consider it well worth it. I can practice in the car which is otherwise wasted time. By the way, my long time Chinese teacher (I have been taking his classes for 4 years now) told me C-pod’s advanced lessons are very challenging for even native speakers so don’t despair if you’re having trouble.
Erica: I am convinced that is no way to learn Chinese all mobile – because at some point you need to seriously address written stuff (read advanced dialogues, write homework etc.). I did it much like Goulnik and progressed significantly (still not far enough). It does not come linear with Chinesepod, but rather in waves that build up unnoticed.
Regarding the difficulty: The Chinese persons I showed Chinesepod considered the Advanced level *not* at all challenging. It surely isn’t daily-street-talk, but that is mostly a result of the subjects (smuggling, IT-offshoring, etc.).
A benchmark for the “real stuff” is the Media-Level: For me those feel *a lot* more difficult than the “Regular Advanced”. And the texts there are taken from ordinary news websites – pretty standard stuff. So Media is where I want to go in the long run…
Long distance truckers and race car drivers both know the value of following a good leader so I think I will just tuck myself in behind Henning and Goulnik on the road to success
Bob,
不敢当, 不敢当!
Actually we have to be careful not to drive in circles, as I always considered you and Bazza as my role models here – regarding motivation and diligence you two are unbeaten. So I advice you do better not follow that weathered old truck of mine but stay on your expressway. (:
This is a test. My last post did not get through–are comments now being screened before they are posted?
Erica,
I looked in the back-end. I didn’t see your comments there. For some reason they didn’t get through.
We don’t screen comments, though there is a block that tries to detect spam. If the spam block had blocked your comments I’
d still be able to find it, but there’s nothing there.
Ken Carroll
MOVING N’ GROOVING – So what’s Cpod’s take on what Erica said,
“Sorry but I won’t pay extra for a “premium” service unless there is something that is transportable. I can’t be anchored to my laptop in order to get the practice in that I need.”
Is the content in the premium section, ie. the flash expanded sentences, is that Creative Commons licensed too?
Ken, I think the missing comment I made had to do with my being a mother of an 8 year old so my needs are a bit different and perhaps I have a bit less free time. I find it useful to copy the C-pod dialogues into my Wenlin program for further analysis so I get complete etymology, stroke order, etc. It may be that you provide this in the premium service but I am a big user of Wenlin so I continue to use it for this. It also has the flash card service built in to manage vocabulary and quizzing and even quizzing of the stroke orders. Yesterday I took a look at some of the videos C-pod has produced and while I find the a little entertaining I must say that I don’t have time to listen to a 5 minute video to be introduced to five words that I won’t remember the next day. The trip around the messy apartment was just not my cup of tea. Yes, you are using all this technology but is it really a wise use? I am now working on getting all my Pimsleur lessons onto my I-Pod so I can regain the rapidly eroding proficiency I had while it was still fresh. I used to go out to the Chinese market and converse freely but of late I don’t feel as proficient. Pronunciation doesn’t seem to be nearly as big a problem for me as construction and I’m pretty good with the tones. There is a lot of good free stuff on the internet to provide drilling with the tones and tonal transitions. I still love the fresh content that C-pod provides just need for it to be transportable and allow me the opportunity to practice. Also, the quality of the C-pod recordings are excellent–the sound effects are cute but certainly not critical. I think you could very easily provide what I need without a lot of additional expense for you, just need to reallocate your resourses.
Barry Lee rides again under another nutjob identity. Don’t waste any time responding to the fool.
on the subject of identities, wouldn’t ít help to have all registered users automatically logged in and posts flagged as such?
It’s a pity that this thread has become so long that many of us haven’t had the time to read it all, there’s a lot of very good advice and observations and I wouldn’t disagree with a word of it.
The only tip I can add is, for beginners, to consider pinyin as a write-only script. Read the characters if you’re into learning that too, otherwise just use them as eye-targets (after first REMOVING ALL PINYIN FROM SIGHT!!) while concentrating on listening. Then use pinyin yourself to write down what you hear, rather than for reading how to say it. Only aim to get half of it right at first, then gradually improve, though you might never reach 100% and that’s fine. This dictation exercise is the most intensely learning thing you can do on your own in a few minutes. Try it some time.
I don’t think Pimsleur-style podcasts is a real good idea. If you want Pimsleur, go to the people whose skills have been centred around that technique for many years, you won’t get exactly the same from anyone else. But I do agree there is a strong need for something less passive, it just shouldn’t try to be the same as Pimsleur, that’s not fair and it can’t work like we’d expect.
I don’t remember anything unless I do it, and I need to do it a lot. That requires repetition, in one sense, but not repeated presentations of the same material in the same form. I can spend a long time reworking a podcast and the expansion and exercises, and do it again, and again, and still remember almost none of it next week. I haven’t been processing it because there’s too little material, therefore it’s too repetitive, in that other sense of repetitive. I’m so desperate for non-passive activities that I’m not picky what format, auditory written etc, but what I want is about a hundred times the amount of action material that’s provided in the learning centre, or in any textbook.
A textbook incorporates all learning from prior lessons, so each lesson’s learning is revisited to some extent in all future lessons. Because we use a modular approach here, we need more activities than, for example, would be required in a textbook or sequential course. I don’t know how to do that when you’ve got a vocab of only two dozen words that are not the same two dozen words that your classmates know, and a lesson that is only four or six short phrases. Sometimes the lesson contains only three “new” words, not much eh, but unless I have the tasks laid out or the grammar knowledge to safely make my own, I can’t do enough different things to make those measley three words stick, despite dogged persistence in repetition.
Most of the time that I’m sitting at a computer it’s one that doesn’t have Internet access that I can use, so real time Internet is of little value to me. Since putting all of my Chinese studies on a Palm PDA I’ve been able to do a lot more study (often while sitting in front of a Chineseless netless computer but using my Palm!), and I’ve found various ways I can make the lessons more active for myself using the PDA – still not enough, but better than before. Over time I’ve been doing less of what ChinesePod offers and more of what I can either create myself or adapt from books and so on, while using the podcasts for daily listening input and entertainment. That’s OK, but it’s not going to make ChinesePod rich, nor get me out of the newbie ranks in a hurry.
← Previous Comments