Beyond Dialogues and Toward Academic Formats

470310098 · May 17, 2018, 9:19pm

Suggested Difficulty: Advanced (or higher)
Video or Audio: Both formats are fine
Lesson Idea: I would like to see more exploration into lessons that go beyond a simple dialogue presentation. This has been attempted before with Media and monologue (usually narrations of literature or political speech) lessons. I feel like more advanced audio should better reflect what native speakers actually listen to.

Consider using a college lecture-based format on a given topic. Rather than dumb it down (as in some of the past lessons, especially with Jenny’s team), keep it at the advanced difficulty. There are a lot of topics to explore: History, Philosophy, Politics, Society, Culture, and International Relations. Personally, I think the best lessons I ever listened to on ChinesePod were the four-part series on Diplomatic Terms (外交辞令). I would encourage similar lessons in the future.

I would even suggest lessons on controversial topics of interest. Most conspicuously, a lesson on Tiananmen or other democracy protests has been disappointingly evaded. ChinesePod should not shirk away from any topic of major interest to students or that offers major insights into the Chinese cultural and political landscape. Lessons on Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek have also been insufficient in discussing their catastrophic failures: Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, White Terror, and martial law. As an educational platform, ChinesePod has a responsibility to present all aspects of Chinese culture – positive and negative, controversial or not – in an objective and informative manner. If it fails to do so, eventually another platform will arise that does not refrain from broaching tough topics and it will have the potential to overtake ChinesePod as the premier Chinese language learning online service.

Along those same lines, there are so many great topics that have yet to be explored: the “national humiliation” narrative; US-China Relations (including concerns of US hegemony); the Chinese Internet (the Great Firewall, the five-cent party, etc.); Xi Jinping and other leaders’ many proposals and initiatives ranging from the Chinese Dream to fighting corruption. I believe Fiona and Constance were moving in this direction with some of their political lessons – all of which I loved – but there could have been so much more. Jenny’s team also had a few lessons (especially Media lessons) that addressed these topics, but again they were comparatively few and far between.

In sum, I think ChinesePod could improve its services by breaking away from its over-reliance on banter-style dialogues and modeling itself off of more academic formats that explore issues comprehensively and objectively. There could even be a new category of lesson, call it Informational, in which lessons explore a specific subject of interest in-depth in Chinese.

GraceWong · May 17, 2018, 11:57pm

Wow! What a great suggestion! Thank you for sharing all this with us. You got me interested! I will see what we can do!

MisterXia · May 18, 2018, 10:57pm

Yes! Yes! I support this 150%! On the advanced level, having news reports or lecture style text conveying knowledge about some real world topics, current social trends, politics, history etc. would be awesome.

Confrontational topics: That would be very, very interesting and helpful indeed, I would like to add the social credit system as a current example here.
However, I can understand that Chinesepod is careful. I am sure there are many listeners in the mainland and the risk of having the service blocked there is not a minor issue. After all, Chinesepod’s main mission is teaching Chinese…

If you need or want to go beyond that: On an advanced level, the choice of available sources becomes more varied. I for example like the Chinese service of the New York Times https://cn.nytimes.com/, VOA https://www.voachinese.com/ and Deutsche Welle http://www.dw.com/zh/在线报导/s-9058?&zhongwen=simp for a balanced view along with the necessary Chinese vocab. I use the online version in the Pleco web reader, which makes even harder texts quite accessible.

podster · May 18, 2018, 10:57pm

I don’t think you’d be clamoring for subject matter offensive to censors in China if you lived in China and relied on them not not blocking your access to CPod. That’s the reason CPod has always given for carefully trying to thread the needle.

470310098 · May 21, 2018, 3:52pm

I know the reason, but what you’re suggesting is self-censorship. Many listeners are not in the Mainland and would appreciate more balanced and critical exploration of topics related to China—and from a Chinese perspective. (When I say objective, I mean with an awareness of conflicting perspectives and presented in an educational way.)

Imagine a service comparable to ChinesePod that did push the boundaries and explore those issues. My guess is that many users outside Mainland China (and even those in Mainland China who bypass the censors) would consider switching over. Food for thought.

MisterXia · May 31, 2018, 4:44am

Here is another source. I just discovered it, but it seems really good. RFI (Radio France International), a rather French, but certainly not censored perspective. The whole thing is like a news page, but under 专栏检索 you can find radio broadcases with transcript.

That basically is a real world media lesson. The material is meant for natives, so quite advanced, but I think the combination of audio and text makes it quite accessible:

From there you have to choose which topic interests you: Economy, world outlook, China affairs (or studying French in Chinese maybe…?)

stevinsjs · July 17, 2018, 6:14am

Your post really struck a sympathetic chord when I read it. I may be an Elementary learner, but I suffer when I see great lessons being dumbed down. CPOD’s advantage to me is has always been that it is tougher than the other pablum-like language learning sites. I want and need and thrive on a meaty academic lesson. Even as a Newbie/Elementary learner, I don’t want CPOD to ever dumb down lessons: Friendly, but demanding academic instruction is the best value for the money.

As far as changing the format, with so many existing lessons I’ll always have the dialogues I love. CPOD’s format is so standardized I always know what I’ll get and I’m very comfortable as a learner with this standardized dialogue approach. Your needs are arguably and justifiably different than a beginners.

What about CPOD actually formally partnering with Chinese universities? Advanced students might pass exams and earn equivalency credits. This might be a “win-win” for students, CPOD, and any institutions involved. The new HSK training template aside, it’d be way cool to get collegiate equivalency credits for passing a CPOD exam (and the ““CPOD SchoolZone”” exists as a jump off point).

While any online lecture may be interesting, I can’t actually attend MIT or Tsinghua. Still online at EdX you can take their classes for free. See EdX Languages link.

MisterXia · July 18, 2018, 6:43am

Wow, thank you for posting that link. Just had a glance, but there seems to be a wealth of interesting courses, for free. I even found one on finance in Chinese, with transcripts of the lectures obviously…