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Saving Dashboard search settings

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#1

Really enjoying using Chinesepod, but there is one niggle that it would be great if you could fix?

I am working my way through the Newbie lessons doing one a day, starting with the oldest. Every day to go to the next lesson I have to search for it on the Dashboard anew by setting the Levels to ‘Newbie’, Sort by to ‘Oldest first’, and Options to ‘Non-Studied’. It would be great if these ‘search preferences’ could be saved so that they are automatically there, so only those lessons that are suitable for me are shown?

#2

Hi strahankristian!

That’s awesome that you’re learning some of the older Newbie lessons. “Hot Soup.” Love it! I never forgot the difference between “hot” and “soup” after that. I give all credit to any capacity I have with tones first to Pimsleur, then to hearing those Newbie dialogues over and over and over.

Do you ever bookmark lessons? What I do is bookmark the lessons in the order I want to do them. Then on the Dashboard I click the triangle next to my username, then click “My Self-Study.” (Or, you could bookmark https://chinesepod.com/dashboard/selfstudy in your web browser.) Then I go to the last page. In my case, that’s page 9, since I have about 175 lessons bookmarked (20 lessons per page).

Incidentally, something you may want to consider is to fast-forward to the Newbie lessons starting in 2007 or even 2008. During 2005/2006, ChinesePod was kind of stumbling around, trying to figure itself out. The quality tends to be a bit inconsistent until 2007. Some of the early ones (including the very first - “Good Morning”) were so bad that they were re-recorded years later.

If you go all the way back to the beginning, you’re likely to “graduate” from Newbie long before you get to some of the best ones. Some of those 2009 Newbies (“The Broken Chair”) are downright hysterical! You don’t want to miss them.

ChinesePod recommends doing about 50 Newbies before moving to Elementary, but I think I did about 100.

Good luck!

#3

One more thing: The easiest way I know to Bookmark lessons in bulk is to go to the Dashboard, then look at the menu options along the left side and click “More.” Under more, click “Library List.” You can do your search there, then go down the column hitting “Bookmark” on all the lessons you want.

Another benefit to bookmarking lessons is you can control which audio files automatically download into iTunes. On my personal blog I’ve posted a video on how I keep ChinesePod files organized in iTunes. The further you go with ChinesePod, the more useful it is to keep things orderly.

#4

Nice catch with the bookmarks and “My Self-Study” tactic. I’d been opening individual browser windows for each lesson. Now the whole bookmarked list is right there. This is great improvement. Xie Xie ni!

#5

Great thanks - really useful. I will use the Library List to do the bookmarking and then the My Self-Study page to work through them.

Interesting what you say about the best ‘quality’ lessons. My situation may be a bit unique in that my spoken Chinese is intermediate level in terms of vocab, but I have forgotten all the characters and a lot of the tones (I lived in China years ago and am a bit rusty, but going back to Beijing soon to work, so trying to get back up to speed!). So I am re-learning 10 characters a day adding the Chinese pod lessons to Scritter (the Key Vocab and Supplementary Vocab generate about 10 new characters each lesson). So my assumption was that the earliest Newbie lessons will start with the most commonly used words and characters, so most efficient to start with them. How interesting the dialogues are is less important. Also I’m not listening to the discussion - just the dialogue. Given this, do you still think it is better for me to skip to 2007 and 2008?

#6

Thanks, Elijah! I had bookmarked several lessons and couldn’t figure out how to actually take advantage of them. The bookmarks seemed to not be useful until I saw your tip about My Self-Study!

#7

Yes thanks. I replied to you straight away but as these are my first posts on ChinesePod the moderators are checking everything before they are posted, and for some reason they haven’t let it through, so will repeat it again and hopefully it gets through this time!

So yes this is great advice. I have now queued up my bookmarked lessons as you suggested using the Library, and am using the Self Study link.

Interesting what you say about the early lessons not being so good. But I wonder whether my case is a bit unique, in that my Chinese vocab is already intermediate level, but I have forgotten most of the characters and tones. I worked in Beijing a while ago and have just got a job back there, so am keen to get back up to speed. So I am working through the Newbie lessons adding them as word lists in Skritter. I thought that the oldest Newbie posts would start with the most commonly used words and characters so it would be the most efficient way to proceed. I’m not listening to the discussion - just the dialogue to save time. Given this situation, do you still think it makes sense for me to skip to later lessons?

A related issue is that maybe there are too many Newbie lessons? If we are only recommended to go through 50, what is the point of 443? Isn’t the most logical thing to identify the most commonly used vocab and focus on that for Newbie lessons?

#8

ChinesePod has a unique design - instead of progressing from lesson to lesson, each lesson within a specific level is of roughly equal difficulty. ChinesePod was created to address an enormous shortcoming in existing curriculum: Its inability to stay in touch with current spoken language in Mainland China. ChinesePod’s brilliant main architect John Pasden has written a post about it here.

Without being confined to a first-this-lesson-then-that-lesson progression, ChinesePod was free to continually add new lessons that ensure perpetual up-to-dateness. Since the lessons aren’t connected, you can easily just keep creating new ones, without hitting revision problems that can stall conventional curriculum for a decade - or more. The old lessons become a bit of a historical snap-shot of language 10 years ago, while the new ones keep everyone speaking like a native. Paying subscribers keep the system going. It was a stroke of pure genius.

Unfortunately, since production hasn’t occurred in the Mainland since the end of 2014, that purpose has pretty well been frozen. China moves fast, and there are a whole range of excellent Newbie lessons that should happen (such as WeChat vs. AliPay, bike sharing, DiDi - things Newbies in China MUST know these days), but I’ll bet those are now unlikely to ever be made.

Another benefit of this model is that the people doing it get better and better over time - which is why I always recommend the lessons produced between 2008-2014. 2005 through 2007, ChinesePod was just beginning to find its way. By 2008, it had an amazing crew, perhaps most notably XuZhou (David), who was a genius with sound. The voice actors were also first-rate. The dialogues from that era are a delight to the ears.

In 2015, ChinesePod lost the people who had done such an amazing job on the dialogues. It did gain some different talent, but I felt it never recovered from the steep drop in dialogue quality. Like you, I put little emphasis on the Full Lesson. It’s the actual language in the dialogues that matters. For that reason, I especially recommend focusing on lessons between 2008 and 2014.

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