As for the new content, I had planned today, Sunday (since I had a bit more time than usual), to include in my daily routine one of the new “enjoyable characters” lessons I had seen on the website, and was quite disappointed to see it was only for traditional characters, since I’m learning simplified. I think it would be a good idea to release simultaneously lessons in these series for both T and S characters, if that’s at all feasible for the CP team.
Hi MayHaNN,
Thanks so much for replying to me regarding your learning pattern and video/audio preference. I really you can come in with more comments and questions when you are listening and reviewing the ATWTI series. Making your own sentences using the lesson materials is a great way to play and reinforce memory of these beginning words and phrases. Send us some sentences to share!
I just want to make sure the 66 character lesson you mentioned is on “出口，入口，人行道，下次见”. These are all simplified and traditional characters, except 见 which is only simplified. If I am missing something, please let me know!
Cheers,
Elsha
Hi Elsha, thanks for your answer. I was referring to the series of videos called “https://chinesepod.com/lessons/66-enjoyable-characters-with-joy-1”, which, at least as it is described, includes only traditional characters: "In this series, we are gonna show you 66 traditional characters that you see every day! ".
I guess I still don’t know enough about Chinese to be able to differentiate between traditional and simplified for characters I haven’t encountered before, so I just went by the description of the series and decided not to watch them because of the reference to traditional. But maybe there are less differences than I thought.
Ha, I was just about to point out the fact that, for a Newbie, the difference between simplified and traditional is overwhelming. It’s easy for experienced people to see that there’s only ONE character that’s traditional rather than simplified, but a Newbie would have absolutely no way of knowing that.
It’s like what happened to a Chinese friend of mine studying at an American university: She wrote a paper, and lost a huge amount of points for a couple of “spelling errors.” Her problem? Sometimes she used British spelling without realizing it. She talked to the teacher about it, and the teacher told her that she needs to simply look up the word to see what the American spelling is.
The teacher had no idea that for a non-native speaker, that means looking up EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. in the whole document. How is a non-native speaker supposed to know which words have British vs. American spellings?
Hi Elsha I am in the Intermediate wannabe Upper Intermediate commuters group, with emphasis on the audio. I haven’t found a CP video that’s high yield for me. Agree that longer expansion sentences are difficult to learn during commute and easier to “zone out” on, while shorter ones are more memorable for those of us who are already driving distracted. I’ve turned back to the John/Jenny episodes circa 2009 for the best material for me so far. The current events series are hard for me just listening, better if I am sitting at the computer which is not often for CP. Thanks for your help.
Understood Jason, and thanks for your input. It is so encouraging of you to bring up the point that the lessons produced almost a decade ago are used! We will do our best to cover a range within a level. We understand that “Intermediate” is arbitrary, as within this level, there is still a range to refer to. Let us work on it, and we hope to really “tune to your channel”.
Newbie here. I’ll also chime in in favor of audio. I listen while driving. I do the extra material when not driving and when it’s available, but generally I have other learning methods I use for when I am not driving. I find that lessons made for video aren’t as effective when I only listen to them, so I prefer audio only. For now, there are plenty of newbie audio lessons, but new never hurts, especially if it includes more current topics that weren’t covered previously.
Hi Mellyagain,
Thanks for writing in. What topics you have in mind? We would love to explore something new together!
Elsha
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One thing that I’ve seen mentioned here and I agree would be helpful is electronic payment like with wechat or alipay. Also, I don’t know if any of the older lessons are out of date, since I’ve heard 10 years has brought about much change in China. Maybe most of my current level (newbie) is basic enough to change less, though. I’ll be thinking about this question the next few days, as I’m currently in China!
Yes Mellyagain,
I know that the IT team is working on many things including payment options. IT enabled services and conveniences are truly driving a lot of changes in and out of Chinesepod!
@ewilc773 made a great post in the comments of a recent intermediate lesson about Cpod levels / HSK levels / and international language standards.
One of the points he made is that Cpod levels were originally designed around spoken Chinese word frequencies, while the HSK seems to be more drawing more from written word frequency lists. From the comment by @ewilc773 :
"The ChinesePod method and levels were established seveal years before the HSK levels of 1 through 6 existed (those came out around 2010), but there is a rough correspondence, since both look to the European Common Framework. The level divisions were deliberately designed for spoken Chinese only, and some of that work is publicly available at AllSet Learning’s Grammar Wiki.
The corpus was taken, not from the most commonly used characters in general, but from studies on what words are actually commonly spoken. This makes it quite different from the HSK, which has a much greater emphasis on written Chinese - loaded with words that are often printed, and rarely spoken.
Like I said, ChinesePod had its system all laid out years ago, but in 2018 there have been a lot of cooks in the kitchen, mixing up all kinds of random ingredients for any level, without the strict guidelines of previous ChinesePod generations. It has turned into a regrettably confusing and frustrating situation."
There were originally 6 Cpod levels, now a pre-intermediate level has been added to help as a bridge . The Cpod library is deep with thousands of super useful lessons ( I think it’ more like 3000 lessons rather than 4000 as always stated, I think lessons #3000-#4000 were skipped? ) I agree language is a continuous spectrum, so level divisions are arbitrary, But some kind of standard may be helpful.
@ewilc773 's comment is a great jumping off point for thoughts/discussion on the truly innovative ’ learn to speak Chinese --> on your terms --> like a native ’ aka the Cpod Method:
There’s lots of test prep materials out there. There’s lots of reading stuff out there. But, when it comes to helping people “Speak like a native,” the options are far more limited, and quite frankly, frequently awful. Only the old ChinesePod will tell you the exact words a Chinese couple yell at each other when they’re breaking up.
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Spot on research and insightful post! Thanks for sharing. The historical bit was missing from my understanding of how the coursework developed. It is satisfying to know and see the developer’s rationale.
I’ve found a lot of solace for an overburdened curiosity and learning help at various times at the All Set site. Their link to the HSK system using grammar points has specifically been helpful to me. Here it is: AllSet Learning’s grammar point lists, by Level
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Hi Iamdazhou and Stevinsjs,
Your reply sounded like you have attended the conference call between myself and Ken (one of the original founders of CP) recently, It’s absolutely fascinating! Your learning success is a true testimony to the content developed (and evolved) over the years! Yes, language is an ever evolving thing, and since CSL is still a rather new academic subject and is taking its time to evolve, we are mindful that we need to continue to evolve by adopting new methodologies and content for our users.
While we are proud that CP is a standalone learning system that provides a through-way learning journey, we are now urgently working on how to make new introductions and content more explicit and easy to recognise, use, and be accepted by regular users. Your suggestions and comments are very welcome, and your continuous engagement in the forum really helps us a lot. Thank you so much!
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