That is, speaking as someone who spent a lot of time talking to his dog. But then she died. Now I talk to the cat. It's not the same.

I guess I am starting to wonder more forcefully if Cpod is going to cover new, or relatively uncovered territory for lessons. Like for example, another lesson about life in the village or in rural China. Granted the strong business focus of mandarin learners on the site, i'm thinking that the marginal value of another business lesson (given there are about 40-60 or so already) is less than the marginal value of another lesson about life in the village (less than 5).

Another way to ask: If Cpod is planning on having 2000 lessons, should we subscribers expect another 25 or so to cover business, 25 covering friendship, 20 or so covering romance, 10 or so covering relationships?

I'm really wondering if we'll get really new topics with new lesson vocabulary, rather than well covered topics.

Working in China this is relevant stuff - 我也要加薪。 but I don't have a dog to practice with.

Apparently a lot of people with jobs in tertiary education institutions in my province got big pay rises this year; I am guessing part of the financial stimulus. A bit late you could say but I guess these things take a while to get through the system. Unfortunately the rises did not flow on to foreign staff, and we don't have a union. :-)

At the newbie to intermediate levels, we focus on high-frequency language. This means language that learners at these levels will need to know to communicate effectively in Chinese. So in many ways it's not just about the topic of a specific lesson. It's really about the language covered. In the case of these two lessons about asking for a raise, the content of the dialogs is quite different, despite the very similar titles. Learners will be able to take parts of the language covered and use it in other situations (rejecting flattery, for example, is not business specific).

So to answer your question, no, we're not just going to cover the same things over and over again. We're trying to diversify our content, to reflect more news and current events, to delve into the murky realm of dialects, and to take more user suggests in producing new content. You can find more about our immediate plans in my recent blog post here.

Please continue adding your own suggestions to this community section post. Thanks for your input!

Sorry for nitpicking, but Chinese dogs' bark is “汪汪” (wang1wang1), but not “旺旺” (wang4wang4). The “旺旺” in the dialogue section should be a typo.

P/S. My chubby dog says, "I don't care!"

The imaginary boss sounds like a robot

..is that the old lesson,or can we expect a new one on the Shanghai Expo?[he asked eagerly]

"murky realm of dialects"

...I know there was the lesson dialect party mix,but does this comment signify there may also be more along this line? 'twould be interesting,esp at a higher level that the newbie level the last one was on so more territory could be covered.

Anyhow,thanks catherine for insights into the CPod lesson devt philosophy.

I couldn't help thinking about you during this dialogue...I almost thought it could have been written for you.Actually I would have loved to have heard you and Patty given it a shot....a special guest appearance.Are you going to practice this dialogue with Patty? Good luck..I hope you do then go and get a 加薪.

I love that the dog was given it's own dialogue tab as C,but a bit disappointed that while it was a star in the dialogue podcast,it obviously got axed for the play button on the dialogue tab in favour of a human.I wonder what it's agent/union has to say about that.

This lesson has got me thinking about how sense of humour varies between cultures. Did the Chinese staff at Chinesepod find this guy rehearsing with his dog funny too? The Panda joke in The Panda's Secret Wish is still lost on me.

Reinforcement is required in language learning, and multiple situations are required to add flavor, context and nuance to highlight appropriate/inappropriate language use. What I question is how much is enough. We don't have just one lesson that discusses (for example), relationships in various forms. For example, if you type "Friend" into the cpod search engine, we come up with 15 lessons. If you do an advanced search using the cpod search engine, and click to include lesson dialogue and vocabulary, and search on 'friend', you come up with 97 lessons. Or at least that's what I came up with. What I am saying is that 97 lessons that have friends/talk about friends and so on is a lot of lessons. I also don't know that anyone on this board, or at cpod knows that's enough lessons because I don't anyone has thought through in theory all the situations that people encounter day to day, and then discuss the dialogue necessary for it. I am also not saying that 97 lessons is enough to discuss friend/friendship. I am saying that given 97 lessons that include/discuss/allude to friends, or the 106 lessons that allude to love, or the 128 lessons that cover/allude to food, that maybe other lessons can be discussed that talk about less frequently used dialogue/words that are around everyday, but don't seem to merit focus; doorknob, corn, steel are relatively common terms/objects, but there's not as much on them for valid reasons.

I know i'm not the only person on this site with an IT background, and for laughs, I put in 'server' in the cpod search engine, and all I got back were food lessons.

Another way to say what i'm saying is that I'm also not clear about, for example, what is deficient in the existing set of 128 or so food lessons that food needs to be covered addressed/alluded to/hinted at in a 129th lesson. Catherine's point about "flattery" is well taken, as there isn't a lot on flattery that specifically comes up in a search of cpod lessons. But i'm not looking forward to more lessons with/about/alluding to flattery in them either.

In any event, I take Catherine's comment to mean the official Cpod position is that they're going to head in Catherine's discussed direction regardless of my argument. We can expect more of the same around what I would consider to be somewhat redundant lessons.

I do agree there should be more 'nuts and bolts' stuff, in lieu of some of the more esoteric lessons (and despite my personal interest, I count Evolution amongst the esoteric). I'm sorry, lessons on Pirates, Jewish Holidays, Chinese Idol, Zombies, Zodiac, Beauty Pageants, Godzilla, Ninja, Drug Dealing and Wii just don't cut it with me. Oh yeah - and religion.

For starters, I would like to be able to point to anything in my home, name it, and be able to describe what it is used for, how to use it, and how to fix it. The following words may have been used in lessons, but not enough for them to sink it: (turn the) doorknob, paint (the ceiling), (lay the) carpet, (see my reflection in the) mirror, (threaten the neighbour with the) carving knife, (clean the) oven, (play the) stereo, (lay in the sun on the) balcony, (punch the) wall, (tip a bucket down the) drain, (stack the) telephone books, (circle the) calendar, (cover the) frying pan, (ignite the) gas, (check the) electricity meter, (go back out out wipe your feet on the) doormat, (wake the neighbours with the) lawnmower, (slam the) front door [I'm guessing qiánmén, but I really wouldn't know], (raid the) medicine cabinet, and the list goes on.

As I said, some of those words may have been covered once, but how many times have we seen chòu dòufu, something I am certain never to touch in my lifetime.

Lets leave the esoteric stuff to UI and beyond.

If you actually study the content of most of those lessons though, (simply with a view to increasing your knowledge of the language), it's my opinion that there's very little truly 'esoteric' language to learn, that you are in fact learning common words, expressions and patterns which just happen to be presented in a colourful 'frame'.

Anyway as to your list of desired vocab, I'd say that you've definitely learned (or had the chance to learn) ways to say just about every one of those, (in a way that Chinese people would actually say it I mean, rather than as a kind of literal translation from English.)

As I go through, the following occurs to me: paint the ceiling, (err... how often do you do that? Anyway Chinese people almost never do that. They're not into DIY.) Lay the carpet, (very few Chinese homes even have carpet.) Clean the oven, (they generally don't have them either. Or telephone books.) And in every Chinese home I've ever been in you're expected to remove your shoes at the door. Only rich people in China have gardens, so you don't hear chit-chat about lawnmowers much. And most homes only have one door to go in and out anyway, so no need to say 'front door'.

I don't plan to eat 臭豆腐 either, but it's an integral part of Chinese culture! You need to know what it is, don't you?

...my thoughts exactly but I couldn't have expressed it so eloquently as tal can [I love the colourful frame bit ..well described].I think the point of having some whacky or out there lesson titles/themes is to make it interesting/entertaining so the language learning is fun and not like some older methods of teaching.I think it still delivers all the common language for the level...all the language glue...connectors,and common stuff.Really specific stuff can always be looked up in a dictionary,and I don't think some of that stuff is likely the key to fluency.But hey,I'm all for having a lot of diversity.I'm not saying pretzell doesn't have a point here.And CPod have been masters of making any mundane topic into something highly entertaining.

Yes, sentence patterns are repeated regularly, and that is the value of CPod. But what they don't do is give us a grounding in everyday 'concrete' vocabulary, as I've described above. There is no point in knowing sentence patterns, if I can't fill them with things I would choose to talk about.

The words I had in brackets were only sample situations - you can change them if you don't think they apply. It was the un-bracketed vocabulary that was important. Chinese houses still have ceilings, don't they? And presumably at least half of the objects in my list. Surely there are other things happening in Chinese homes that don't involve food, friends and family.

Personally, i'd like to be able to tell Chinese friends/acquaintances that back in the US, i've painted about 6 houses, replaced a roof on a house, replaced a water heater, changed the oil in my car, replaced the starter motor, driven about 400,000 miles in my lifetime, rebuilt a carburetor and other estoreric things. But the fact that something can't be done in China, or that Chinese don't do some task, doesn't mean that I don't want to bring it up. I agree that UI lessons might be best to bring this up, but I also think that with a little creativity, some of these esoteric things can be mixed in with the mundane in a Intermediate lesson.

Glad I learned something new today :-)

In return, I'll teach you what Dutch doggies bark:

waf waf / woef woef (translation: 汪汪，汪汪）

If you look at our upper intermediate level lessons, for example, you will find content about remodeling a house, ultrasounds, zombies, photo editing software, etc. These are fairly specific to each field.

To your point that "But the fact that something can't be done in China, or that Chinese don't do some task, doesn't mean that I don't want to bring it up," I'd like to just say that we don't limit our content to only things that the Chinese do/only things that can be found in China. Our lesson on Jewish holidays is a perfect example. This was a user-requested lesson (not surprisingly there aren't many non-foreign folks in China who celebrate Rosh Hashana)!

We are not planning on covering the same topics over and over again. In fact, the staff here try very hard not to do this! We listen to users, we review our own content, we brainstorm all the time. We will continue to try and diversify our content, while still adhering to our language guidelines. I encourage you to email us with your own suggestions. Doorknobs? Servers? Painting houses? Check. Just let us know what you're interested in and we'll add it to the list. Believe me - it's not an easy task coming up with thousands of lesson topics. I'm extremely proud of what we've done so far, and I look forward to your input!

Hi Catherinem,

So in reply;

1)I agree 100% that you, John, Jenny, Ken, Aggie, Clay and the entire production team that goes unannounced and unheralded have every reason to be proud of what you've accomplished with Cpod. My favorite lessons are Formula 1 in China, and the Bachelor Party, topics which Cpod's competition doesn’t cover. You've even done a lesson on Number 2! What other language site gives us necessary potty dialogue? Most other language sites/services wimp out at "Where is the bathroom?"

2)I think we're in agreement on the lack of esoteric topics in newbie through intermediate; I was talking about topics across all levels. I didn't say from Newbie to Advanced, and Media as well, but that 's what I was referring to.

3)I'll give more detail around my redundant comment. An example is this: on March 9, 2010 you posted on the Lesson Topic Suggestions thread that cpod is going to have a lesson around a situation that xiao_liang finds himself in, namely, meeting parents. It happens that there is a lesson similar to this already available.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/introducing-a-friend

Is the new March lesson exactly like previous one? Probably not. But my questions are:

what words will be introduced in the new March lesson that haven't already been introduced in the previous lesson? Parents, meet, nervous, sweaty, geezer, psychopath, calm down, shotgun, (ok, maybe this is what I'm hoping its about :)) ?

What new phrases will be introduced in the new March lesson that haven't been introduced in the previous lesson? Is it "please sit", "come in", "what did you do to your hair? Bian…..bian…? Lian…..dou…."

What new sentence structures will be introduced in the new March lesson that haven't be in previous lesson? Verb/object? Object verb? Time object verb?

Now in this example, there's likely a lot different in answer to the three questions above, especially if its an intermediate or above.

But my broader point is this: when you use the cpod search engine, you get 45 lessons that have "meet" in them, 76 lessons that have "parents" in them, and 21 lessons that have "introduce" in them. Out of all those lessons, what new words, phrases and structures are being taught that haven't already been taught?

I do want also to mention that on the lesson suggestion post that was created June 2009, there are approximately 400 lesson suggestions. A number of them are redundant, but some of them were on new topics (like Star Trek, Dinosaurs, and plumbing). I've made more than 20 suggestions there. But i've haven't seen much come from that long list, maybe other than 3-6 lessons. If there have been more lessons created that came from that list, I would love to know that.

1) that I have given up using the CPOD search engine - it does not work for me. (same with "related lessons", as it never shows up related lessons anyway)

2) that every lesson where I finally can figure out the content from the first listening gives me a feeling of accomplishment, as it indicates I have learned something. It then allows me to focus on the certain aspects of the dialog which Jenny and John (and the academic team) will point out in the following few minutes. This is the real magic behind CPod- and the 126th lesson on food will in the end just encourage me to jump into an higher level.

Recently, when I come across a lesson with a dialog with familiar vocabulary, I try to speak along with the dialog.

whenever you have to laugh, something that you saw was not predictable.

I'm laughing often about CPod dialogs and it makes me happy.