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flameproof -

Looking at CPod's changes the last few month I feel like those guys are in love with computer
technology. Main focus now seem to be gadgets, rather then useful functions. And still nothing is
really connected and they don't explain well how to use it.

I did gave up on CPod, mainly because of the MP3 content. There is no beginners content only in
Mandarin. MP3 incl. intermediate are mostly in English, with a very short dialog in Mandarin.



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koreth -



Quote:

I did gave up on CPod, mainly because of the MP3 content. There is no beginners content only in
Mandarin. MP3 incl. intermediate are mostly in English, with a very short dialog in Mandarin.

But if you throw a 100% Mandarin program at a beginner, they won't understand any of it, yes? If
someone can understand an entire program with no English, is "beginner" really an appropriate
description of their level?

Try the upper intermediate lessons if you want lots more Mandarin. Those will typically have at
least twice as much Mandarin as English, sometimes much more than that; they're what I mostly
listen to and I find them satisfying. And the advanced ones are pretty much all Mandarin with an
occasional word or two of English to define a particular piece of new vocabulary. Typically those
are just Jenny and another native speaker, no foreigners involved. I'm not at a point yet where I
can get too much out of those.

The intermediate ones seem to have the most variation; some of them are very English-heavy and
some of them are very Mandarin-heavy.










csit -

I was doing a web search and came across this site CSLpod: http://www.cslpod.com
It has 50 episodes and seems to focus on intermediate and advanced speakers. I didn't find it here
under search, so I thought I'd throw it out in case readers of this thread were interested.










mirgcire -

Great question. But a little vague. What do you mean by "work"?

Maybe a good question to ask is: If someone started with no knowledge of chinese, and studied
chinesepod exclusively for one year - say 10 hours per week, how well would they function if
dropped off in some interior city of china. Better yet, if we compared this same person with
someone who spend the same amount of time with pimsleur how would their level compare. Actually to
be fair we need to take a random sample of (say) 7 people in each group and measured their
relative competence. I tend to think the pimsluer group would do better on most measures.

Of course a more realistic comparison would be with a class - high school, college, or adult
evening level. But there is lots of veriablity with classes starting with the teacher and the text
book.

I my opinion Chinesepod is great as an augment to some other study method, either a class or
living in china immersion. But as a single source is not all that helpfull. For example, I have
met very few chinese people that speak as clearly as Jenny. Her mandarin is not perfect - but it
is vastly more clear than 99.99% of other chinese speakers.

Several previous posters to this thread have noted that Chinesepod fails to address the gap
between "Elementary" and "Intermediate". The Eli level is 10% mandarin and the Ini level is 90%
mandarin. It seems like they just forgot a level. This must be a difficult level to address, as I
have found it difficult to locate any useful material. However, I think Foreign Service Institute
material is probably the best (http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/Chinese.aspx)










Luobot -

I agree with most of what Mirgcire (in post #52) said, except for these two points:

1 – If Jenny’s Mandarin is clearer than 99.99% of what’s out there (I would lower that to
just 99%), then Pimsleur’s Mandarin makes up the other 0.01%. From a listening perspective,
neither one is what you typically hear in the “wild.” On the other hand, repeating after
“perfect” Mandarin is a valuable strategy for improving one’s own pronunciation. It
certainly makes absolutely no sense to me to repeat after an entirely realistic but poor
pronunciation.

The obvious question that arises, then, is what constitutes good versus bad pronunciation? Isn’t
that relative? From the perspective of a native speaker, doesn’t that depend on what region you
come from? I’ll leave that for others to answer. In case you have any thoughts on this question,
I'd be interested in hearing them ... at this thread.

Where Pimsleur prevails over Cpod is in the fact that they give you space to practice your
pronunciation within the audio itself. This also adds to the repetition, which in turn enhances
retention. To date, Cpod’s podcasts don’t permit this; however, Cpod has indicated they will
do something Pimsleur-like in the very near future (already available at CLO from their first
lesson and augmented in their “Level 2” material with “Premium/Review Podcasts”). If Cpod
follows through, as promised, then this may finally fill at least one of the several holes in Cpod.

2 – Then there’s the gap issue, which I also mentioned in my earlier post in this thread
(#16): This is a fatal flaw for beginners who come to that point where the elementary level
podcasts yield diminishing returns, but the intermediate level podcasts are beyond reach. The
potential problem with inserting a level between the two is creating a new gap between the old and
new levels, which then needs to be closed, and so on. In fact, you need a level for every notch on
the radio dial, so to speak, with small, incremental increases in quantity of Mandarin used,
sentence length, structure, complexity, and so on. In other words, you need a progressive
approach, which starts at lesson 1 and builds brick by brick from there. The problem for Cpod is,
how many discrete levels can they simultaneously, profitably support? Hence, I imagine, their
current reluctance to add more levels. Given where they are now, their best solution may be to
have a well crafted, progressive series of podcasts that bridges the gap. A number of Cpod users
have been asking for this for some time. Cpod seems to be about a year behind listening to their
listeners, so this may eventually catch up with them. A half-way solution that may be easier for
them to implement would be to rebalance the levels between newbie, elementary, and intermediate.
Note that there isn’t such a huge difference between newbie and elementary as there is between
elementary and intermediate. Much of elementary is indistinguishable from and could be merged into
newbie. The most challenging elementary and the least challenging intermediate could form the
range for the missing “upper elementary” level that Mirgcire identifies. Note: To keep the
same number of levels as present (assuming that's necessary), this would replace the current
elementary level, which would, as indicated, be largely merged into the newbie level with the
remainder becoming the bottom range for the new elementary level. In other words, those three
levels need to be restructured and rebalanced if the gap is to be narrowed without increasing the
overall number of levels that Cpod needs to support.

It should also be obvious that there are a sufficient number of newbie lessons, without adding to
the existing sprawl. I’ve estimated that I’ve downloaded over 30 hours of newbie podcasts
(200+ newbie podcasts at an average estimated length of 10 minutes each). If it really takes more
than that to get past the newbie level, then that fact by itself proves the failure of Cpod’s
approach. Objectively speaking, refocusing on where the need is (the “missing level” and
beyond) would seem to be a smart move. I’ll guess that Cpod feels that they need to continue to
put out new newbie podcasts to attract new newbie’s, who constitute the majority of the market
at this point; and Cpod presumes this market wants to listen to the latest “hot” lessons
rather than a “cold” archive. Had there been a connection between lessons, then most of these
listeners would prefer to listen to lesson 1 and go forward from there. CLO, by contrast,
brilliantly provides a course outline so that you can get a pretty good feel for where you should
jump in, and you can always move up or down from there. Given Cpod’s present structure, they
will never be able to do that or take advantage of any benefit from knowing that they taught
“N” so next up is “N+1.”

I don’t want to be entirely negative. So let me add that for those who like to spend their study
time “discovering” or "exploring" (which is hype-speak for wondering around not knowing where
your going) Cpod remains your best bet. Other ways to make Cpod work include following a
structured course and using Cpod as an entertaining break. Sign up for their practice plan and
start handing over some real money. Live in rural China where no one speaks a word of your native
language. Get a Chinese wife (seems to be the most satisfied demographic at Cpod based on user
comments that I’ve “discovered” ... j/k ).










simonlaing -

To the profound Luo bot,

I think the issue of good pronunciation is important. I do think listening to standard dialect is
quite good but don't think the R hua ying (the adding of an R sound to everything ) is close to
what the majority of Chinese speak.

Sometimes it seems like DongBei northeastern people seem to have very good pronunciation (see tone
correctness) partly due to their complicated local dialects.

Also one drawback to Cpod and Pimsleur is the lack of verification. I think you need a Chinese
person, either a teacher in your classroom or a tutor (or a girlfriend with good chinese ) to
correct you and show you the correct lip position.

I found the Zhao and Jiao sounds hard to seperate and with the Zh sound I was walking around with
my lips puckered for kiss for a week just to get it right. Plus the Shi 4th tone the lips are
pierced sort of like a bird. I don't know if I could figure out how to make these differentiations
from just listening.

Classroom learning or tutoring with a model is necessary also correct a student when they say it
wrong but think they say it right. My mum is learning French and she can't figure the difference
between the j and the G as the sounds are flipped.

I wandered around trying to learn on my own for 3 years and I was in CHina. I argee Chinese pod
can be very useful in learning and the pods are interesting (unlike a lot of dry chiense books) .
But to use them solely can't give you great pronunciation just like watching a lot of Chinese
kungfu movies won't give you good pronunciation either. (though they're cool , yeah Jet Li)

Some two cents. Do you think Cpod could make a voice analyzer like they have on the english Tell
me more..?

Have fun, Study hard,
Simon










Luobot -

Dear Simon 老师,

On the question of pronunciation, I realized that I was spinning off on another topic, so I
started another thread to discuss what I was getting at here, but didn’t adequately explain.
Please see -- this thread -- to continue this part of the discussion.

On the question of verification, I agree with you entirely: Having “a girlfriend with good
Chinese to … show you the correct lip position” beats the pants off ChinesePod every time.
ChinesePod may argue that they now have their Practice Program, which offers verification, but I
still like your idea better.

To use your analogy about Kungfu, you can learn somewhat by watching, but ultimately you can only
master it by actually doing it yourself. To get back to whether ChinesePod works, the answer again
seems to be, not if you’re relying on their podcasts, because there is no practice opportunity
built into the podcasts themselves, as there is with Pimsleur, CLO, or possibly some other
resources mentioned earlier in this thread. In CPod, Ken does all the practicing, and you sit
there being passively entertained. The result is that after 6 months of CPod, I found that Ken had
noticeably improved, which is great, but I hadn’t. No surprise. If and when they come up with
something "Pimsleur-like" then I may reassess my opinion.

Regarding using computer programs, they have very limited usefulness, in my experience, for spoken
Chinese, which is my primary interest for now. For written Chinese, grammar, and recognizing
sentence patterns, they can be a great tool. I originally started learning Mandarin with programs,
and it was a waste of time and money. LanguageNow, for example, has a voice analyzer that you can
just hum into, and it will tell you that your doing a great job. Rosetta Stone was a complete
waste for me. The most useful program that I’ve found is ZDT, which is free. My dearest wish is
that ZDT would enable me to attach my own soundfiles to word lists so that I can integrate it with
the podcasts that I'm listening to. (Hint to Chris.) I’m looking forward to what GeekFrappa
(post #42) comes up with… Hope I answered your question.










furyou_gaijin -

Luobot-san et al.,

With due respect for the validity of many points made so far, I'm amazed by this discussion: is
this a particular feature of people who tend to actively participate in discussion forums that
they are more concerned with discussing technical aspects and devising a 'perfect' learning
resource than they are pragmatic in taking the best from what is already available?

No pauses in dialogues to allow for repetition?! Has no one noticed a pause button on their iPods
then?!

Not enough content? The banter too irrelevant? Well, there are over 500 highly relevant
transcripted dialogues out there for free, with thousands of vocabulary items - have people
covered them all before commenting on the lack of material?

Explanations repetitive? Who cares about them anyway?! Just cut straight to the dialogue to get
the vocabulary and/or learn the sentence patterns by heart.

No progressive study plan?! Those learning the language in self-study should be sufficiently
mature to work it out for themselves, it's more fun that way, too: I only listened to a few
minutes of Pimsleur before having to combat the urge to throw myself or my iPod out of the window.

No opportunity to practise speaking? Once again, learn the dialogues by heart and recycle them in
your conversations - you'll never make a mistake and modifying the known sentences to include
other vocabulary is a basic basic basic skill.

CPod is an excellent means to a goal. And I, for one, want to work my way through it in the
fastest and the most efficient way, absorbing maximum vocabulary from what is available so far and
moving on to applying this knowledge. And this implies that there is no point in dwelling on what
could have been presented better in Lessons 1 to 1305 when there are still Lessons 1306 and 1307
to go through. And no time for it either.










koreth -

I generally agree with furyou_gaijin (I am a paid ChinesePod subscriber and consider it money well
spent) but I will play devil's advocate for a moment and say that not all teaching resources are
created equal. Time is a finite resource. I can spend an hour listening to a ChinesePod episode
and studying its contents, or I can spend an hour with some other study material. If the hour
spent with other material leaves me with a firmer understanding of some new language point, or
with equally useful vocabulary but the ability to recall it more easily, then I'm better off going
with that material instead.

To me, the thread's title notwithstanding, this discussion isn't about whether ChinesePod is any
use at all, but rather about whether there are other resources that teach you more material (or
teach it more effectively) in the same amount of time. In financial terms, it's about maximizing
return on investment.










Luobot -

@ furyou_gaijin



Quote:

is this a particular feature of people who tend to actively participate in discussion forums that
they are more concerned with discussing technical aspects and devising a 'perfect' learning
resource than they are pragmatic in taking the best from what is already available?

Actually, if you read my earlier post in this thread, you’ll see that I’ve suggested using a
structured, progressive resource (such as CLO or some of the other resources mentioned by others)
and using Cpod as a supplement. I do advocate a best of breed approach. I don’t agree with you
about settling for what’s available, if by that you mean to say, “accept Cpod as it is and
shut up about it.” Regarding our “discussing technical aspects and devising a 'perfect'
learning resource” – speaking for myself, the answer is: Yes – and there’s certainly
nothing wrong with that. Cpod and all other creations wouldn’t exist if we were so
“pragmatic” as to only accept “what is already available” without questioning it and
trying to push the envelope.



Quote:

No pauses in dialogues to allow for repetition?! Has no one noticed a pause button on their iPods
then?!

Sarcasm aside, I’ve noticed that it exercises the wrong skill, i.e., finger reflex rather than
concentrating on the material. Constantly hitting the pause button is a distraction, especially as
Cpod’s style is a continuous stream of banter without pause. It also requires that you keep your
finger on the button all the time, which limits its mobility -- as in the gym, while shopping,
driving, and all the other “any time, any place” situations.

I could also use audio editing software to insert pauses, and in the beginning I tried that, but
it’s not a good use of my study time, especially when there’s other good material out there
that’s better suited to my needs. When Cpod started up, they were the only Mandarin podcast game
in town, so they could get away with this, but fortunately, now there’s growing competition.
Competition will force all these content providers to offer better and better content, while
keeping the price down. Competition in the Mandarin language marketplace is healthy and should be
encouraged. Also, having experienced a number of alternatives to Cpod, I’ve come to a better
understanding of what to expect and demand in return for my time and money.



Quote:

No progressive study plan?! Those learning the language in self-study should be sufficiently
mature to work it out for themselves, it's more fun that way, too: I only listened to a few
minutes of Pimsleur before having to combat the urge to throw myself or my iPod out of the window.

I couldn’t disagree with you more.

As someone who pursues self-study for the sake of self-fulfillment, I ultimately work out
everything for myself. Sites such as Cpod only provide study aids. They either succeed in aiding
or they don’t. “Aiding” is the operative word. I find that the progressive approach aids my
self-study far more effectively than Cpod’s random approach. You’re entitled to pursue and
advocate in favor of your own learning style and to argue the issues on their merit. But if
“maturity” is your concern, then you should be a little more grown-up about taking on board
the thoughts of others who offer alternatives to your personal preferences, and who have learning
styles different from your own.



Quote:

No opportunity to practice speaking? … Once again, learn the dialogues by heart and recycle them
in your conversations

Actually, I find this statement to be very UN-Cpod like. Ken Carroll, himself, is on record as
having come out very strongly against rote memorization. Here, I agree with Ken, and again find
myself disagreeing with you. Memorizing tons of stock dialogs has very little practical use, never
mind being mind-numbing, especially if “fun” is your modus operandi.

By the way, Cpod has finally admitted to the value of what I and many others have long been asking
for (as of yesterday) by providing a Pimsleur-style drill as a “Premium” feature. Notice that
their not giving away the Pimsleur-styled drill and selling the banter podcast (which I also enjoy
for its entertainment value). So in the final analysis, your whole argument has been refuted by
Cpod, itself. The marketplace has spoken.



Quote:

combat the urge to throw myself or my iPod out of the window

Famous last words.












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