- The Person Component

Hi poddies,

What other bodacious radicals would you like to see as guest stars on this rip-roaring new show?

Are you guys trying to bring back the 80's? Great video!!

This show is all about component parts, so the real value will come when more of them have been introduced. Coming soon...

My “favorite radicals” are 龠 and 犭 but I think it would be very interesting and useful to do them all!

Off topic: this morning I was in the waiting room of a Chinese dentist (first time and really nervous) and was reading a random magazine and there was an article about John’s (work) day. That was a pleasant distraction! CPod is everywhere ;-). Btw, nice show!

To say the least, there is so much room for improvement.

Maybe I just didn't get it because I am not a native English speaker. Too bad, the actual topic (lasting 30 seconds of the 5-minutes video?) could indeed be really interesting.

hmmmmm...still making up my mind about this one...

Looking forward to this series. I've hit a limit with character memorisation precisely because I'm learning them by trying to memorise their appearance.

This works ok when you only know a few characters, but I've hit the 60ish character mark and I'm confusing characters all over the place.

Downloading now.

All discussion and criticism is welcome.

A quick note, though: this series is meant for Newbies, presented as an alternate way to look at characters.

You'll notice we never use the word "radical" in reference to parts of characters (which are called 部件 (bùjiàn)). This is because both the word "radical" in English and 偏旁 (piānpáng) in Chinese are historically linked with archaic classification systems rooted in a need for dictionary organization. Computers are changing everthing, however. "Radicals" are no longer essential for looking up characters; we have copy-paste and handwriting recognition. This is where the 部件 (bùjiàn) concept comes in: deconstructing characters for understanding rather than for pure conventional classification.

And yes, it is sort of a radical concept.

好久部件！

每个录像一个部件吗？ 哇。。。This show will be the "Gone With The Wind" of Chinese character writing.

Onward!

It is  an ingenious idea.

但是，我好像没看懂，culture difference?

The instruction seems like it has some value, but the video itself? Well, Im not sure. If it is supposed to be funny, maybe I need to understand Chinese culture better to get it. Im not sure what to make of it right now.

Painful to watch 3 guys trying to be funny (but not at all). Wasted 5 minutes of my time.

Sorry, cannot be Paula Abdul here.

Simon C

Waste of time, could have been explained in 30 seconds. Why do you think this is funny?

Isn't a radical or sub-grapheme also called 部首 (bùshǒu)?

ROCK'N'ROOOOOOOOOOL!!! ;-)

OMG, what was that? I got the whole early 80's music videos thing you guys were doing. And it was kind of funny, like the kind of funny I would appreciate when I'm stoned. Oh, ummm, I mean, if I were stoned - so I've heard from friends who do smoke pot.

It was a great idea to introduce the radicals, but I think the content was too little for a five minute video. I wanted to see how the "person" radical is actually applied, for instance combining it with a phonetic component, to create a new character that relates to people. Kind of like the phonetic map that goulniky does.

I thought I was the troglodyte of Mandarin, but I think that was just too basic even for the newest of the newbies among us.

I found a glimmer of interest when the gentleman wrote  人 quickly， and it became unrecognisable!

I would like to be able to read characters that have been hand written so more of this would be good.

John,

我有点看不懂！radical部件？偏旁？

我不明白另外两个人的表演是要传达什么意思哦！

As henning humorously pointed out, learning only one part in a five-minute video is not efficient even for newbies. There are so many parts that it will take a very long time to complete this series.

For example, you can show some animal-related parts in one video, such as 马，羊，牛，鸟，and 鹿, with etymological tips or ancient forms of these characters. Even advanced learners would enjoy seeing them.

Is this too much for newbie/elementary learners? I don't think so. On the contrary, the videos would be worth seeing several times. I don't know how many guys want to see today's video twice.

xigua2,

部首 (bùshǒu) is a term used by dictionaries for classifying characters by 偏旁 (piānpáng). The term 部件 (bùjiàn) comes from a structural approach to character composition.

To all:

Consider your criticisms duly noted. The character-learning element will be more prominent in future episodes.

cassie,

Here are two relevant (Chinese-language) introductory articles: 偏旁 (radical), 部件 (component).

John,

谢谢你，你让我知道了一些关于语言学的理论知识，我要向你学习！我们从小就学习语文，知道什么是偏旁，但是对“部件”这个字比较陌生，一般只会联想到机器的部件，呵呵。今天知道它还是语言学的术语！不错不错，谢谢！

well cpod finally laid an egg. I will be direct so when I tell you something is good you will know I mean it. This sucked. Back to the drawing board. Please.I dont think this one can be fixed. Sorry.

RJ

I applaud the concept and efforts, but I really hope this is not taking the place of The Vocab Tour and What's The Story.   Those are so much more polished and professionally produced.

John,

I'm a newbie myself, and a big fan of chinesepod, but I've got to say that this episode didn't really strike me as humourous, if that was what you were reaching for. I felt the actual content though was great. It was a big help to be able to see the connection between Ren and the other characters, instead of just trying to memorize the shapes of all the individual characters.

One other small thing though that I would have liked to see on the content side of things would be the meanings of the characters that were made with the component (the ones flashing on the wall at the end), so that I could better see how the introduction of the component affects the meanings of other characters.

Either way, I'm looking forward to what I can learn from the coming episode,

-Salem

Too little content, even for newbies. It was more like an intro to Chinese characters for pre-schoolers. If I may make a suggestion, actually saying the name of the stroke while writing the character/radical, e.g. yìpiě, yìnā, yìhéng, etc., would help make it more engaging. I also thought that (perhaps for slightly higher level), it would be interesting to focus on one root character per episode and discuss how changing the radical changes the meaning and the pronunciation.

This was awful.  I don't know if I would even find this funny if I knew you guys.  And why would I be interested in knowing you guys?  I'm presumably here to be learning Chinese.  JP does a much better job of direct, polished, fast-paced language learning videos with La Clave at Spanishpod.  He is also actually funny when he intends to be.

The (brief) animated segments with characters that share a 部件 have so much potential for learners, but instead we have to watch guys in wife-beaters and baggy sweaters wander around the office.

When John says the characters will be more "prominent" next show, I think he is aiming too low.  Scrap the whole "host" concept and start from scratch.

Great idea, rubbish video. I assume the creators were themselves either stoned or having a big time off day.

My 老婆 tells me that a Chinese person would be confused if I asked them about a character's 部件 (bùjiàn). She's quite insistent that 部首 (bùshǒu) is the correct term.

I wonder if linguistic terms are so Newbie-suited if not even Cassie knows them...

In my opinion, video is just the wrong way to approach the subject. Video is not interactive. If you want to teach characters, produce applications which let you explore the concepts - from the basics to the deep background. And include exercises for character recognition and writing. Buy scritter.

Better flush the complete video section as a whole. Give us testing tools instead - costs you less ressources and helps us learning more effectively (because you can actively use them). More valuable for your (paying) non-newbie-learners also.

I'm taking down all the constructive criticism, everyone. So far I've got:

• Not funny at all.
• Too little educational content (to the point of not being worth watching).

This was an experiment and a risk, but I see it as an important learning experience for us on what not to do. Anyway, time to get back to more useful learning materials. This little experiment will not see an episode 2.

(I'm definitely not giving up on characters, though!)

VERY interesting timing :-)

(Sorry to be long-winded in my first post here...)

I dropped in here to see how much ChinesePod offered in terms of written Chinese, and here I find this.....

Many years ago I started to study Chinese characters (CC) in the disguise of Kanji, i.e. the Japanese version of Hanzi. This was nothing more than a recreational and aesthetic pursuit (since I consider CC as one of the most beautiful creations in the history of mankind).

As a mere coincidence I landed in the Japanese camp with James W. Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" as my vehicle to learn CC/Kanji. This is a strictly component based technique to memorize kanji with stories as the aid to learn and memorize all the primary 2000 characters used in Japan.

As another not planned extension I thought I might as well learn some Japanese while I am getting to know the script, so I started to decipher Japanese books just as some people knit or solve crosswords. After a couple of years I could READ not too complex Japanese.

Then a year ago I decided to REALLY learn Japanese for real - speaking and listening too - and hit the wall. Bang! I seriously doubt if there is any other language as hard to learn as Japanese. Boy, did I wish that I had picked Chinese back when I started to learn a language to complement the CC!!

So this summer I made a sharp turn and started to learn Mandarin instead. After learning the sounds, tones and pinyin, Mandarin is a piece of cake compared with Japanese. Even if I don't remember the key words for all the 2000+ characters I learned I find that almost every simplified CC just slips into my memory with no effort at all!. Great!

Since I had planned putting something up on the web for a while this comedy :-) prompted me to at once publish The Kanji Hanzi Hub at

http://kanjihanzi.blogspot.com

Does this seem like something of interest?

I mean: I am rather peculiar since I LOVE writing Kanji/Hanzi. It's a pure pleasure. Too me. Looking at what some students of Japanese - and even some native Japanese writers - produce as the (hand-) written language, it seems like a sinking ship :-) I haven't seen so much samples from China, but I have a feeling that neat writing is still more common in China than in Japan. Wrong?

I agree with Henning...better tools and exercises would make better use of subscription fees.

- Pay someone to design a better vocabulary flashcard tool (check out PlecoDict's version 2...amazing).

- Pay someone to design a character learning tool like Scritter, like Henning says.

- Pay someone to finish the grammar guide (please!).

- Pay someone to create better exercises and tests (real world applications for tests like the HSK).

Video seems to require a lot of time and resources.  I'm sure the above would require more immediate resources, but my guess is that the long-term profit to CPod would be greater.

Personally, I don't understand why CPod is putting resources into anything new while other major components of the site are unfinished (grammar guide).

Like any company, CPod isn't perfect.  The good thing is that they continue to innovate.

To leave my 2 cents here too: I for one like the video concept, though I have to agree that this particular video was really unfunny and the content unworthy of more than 20 seconds of time. So I'm for keeping the video concept, concentrating more on that cool character morphing thingy (that was cool and could be actually helpful :) ), and including something about handwritten characters (the above poster was right; that's *really* interesting and something you can't really learn in a lot of places). Don't feel down that it didn't work out this time ;)

And i would like to add this:

- Pay someone to improve the traditional character support in ALL areas/aspects of the CPod website (please, without Firefox plugins, with user option to choose simp./trad.)

John,

thanks for having the wisdom to hear your critics. I wouldnt feel too bad, you are still batting with a good average, but I would also take note of some other good suggestions given today by Henning, Brent Calkins, and yaq.

Yeah;the way ren morphed into a part to be found in other characters was an eye-opener for me [and the highlight].I didn't know that and won't forget it now.While this video has proved unpopular,I think it's great that CPod continue to innovate/experiment and then show that they're willing to listen/improve.I think with editing and more content [yeah..don't forget that we can watch these video's over and over till we get it all,so don't think we have to catch it all first time] this could have been up to the usually very high bench mark CPod set.I'm not worried at all that this one video didn't meet everyone's expectations [that's got to be expected on a first attempt at some point if you're continuing to experiment].My only concern would be if CPod got discouraged from taking risks again.Keep innovating I say.Onward !

btw I am subscribed to everything ,so always go to the me section to look for the new lessons.Because this was a new show [yeah ,I knew it was coming sometime soon] I was thus not subscribed so nearly missed it.Is there a way to have you automatically subscribed to new shows so you don't miss it ? No big deal though.

Henning, Calkins, yaq, RJBerki, bababardwan,

Thanks a lot. I really am listening to your feedback. I realize ChinesePod has lost some momentum lately in the feature/usability development department, but more development is coming.

And we can most definitely do better.

I'm a bit circumspect about this last Cpod production.

With the bad acting, the get-up, the funny faces,  不见 Vs 部件 , 骗庞 Vs 偏旁 I was looking for a crude final joke somewhere at the end of what I thought to be a spoof ...but nothing!  ;o(

Frankly, what sort of public would you attract with this type of video ? Shoe-throwers ?

Hi,

This first video about radical is ridicul(ous) not radical(ous).

The idea is very good. Just try an other method.

And go on!

Jack

I think leave the actors out.  Just use the character animations with background voice for explanation, with maybe some pictures of the characters in different fonts as used on billboards/ signs etc.

Nevertheless I look forward to seeing the concept developing.

And I really appreciate the fact that you do some experimenting.  John, don't stop experimenting!

Fellow mainlanders, I went to check out the Skritter site but the link Calkins gives above was blocked at the time. Here is one that works, weirdly.

http://skrit.appspot.com/

I'm with Bababadarwan and Chiongzibide. Just can say that it's great that CPod continues to experiment. Keep it on!

Hi,

i experimented a bit, and indeed,the content fits into 40 seconds (including the chinesepod starter)

As I like the idea of having a radical show I suggest, having the newbie vocab in the following animated form

1. character writing + pronunciation,  
2. translation (and/or picture of the object)
3. the very interesting morph from "learning at school" to "actual handwriting"

This would maybe not be funny, but useful.

Great! Great! Great!

I'm sorry to hear so many of you didn't enjoy this. I liked everything about this video lesson, the simplistic approach, the visuals and definately the great humour.

John, sorry to hear you say this format is coming to an end after only one episode.

I also am very interested in seeing how characters are actually handwritten. When it comes to reading chinese I recognize most printed material but when someone handwrites a note I have a difficult time reading it. so something on script like characters would be helpful.

Wow, that was a really poor effort. Five minutes wasted to write 人。The other video series carry way more content minus the infantile shtick. 

John

After watching it last night and sleeping on it...I have to agree with everyone else...the content seemed to be lacking and it just wasnt funny. I was waiting for the punchline that never really happened. My reaction at the end was like..what the??! So I cannot bring myself to watch it again!

BUT, i really appreciate the fact you are trying to experiement and explore new ways to teach the material.

So far, i feel CPOD is way worth the money...The community is great and I cant go one day without being on this website. Most importantly, the podcasts, Dear Amber, Qingwen, and Whats the story are all useful and produced very well. Now those are all things i enjoy listening to and/or watching over and over and over and over again!!

-Adam

Well, after reading all of the comments I didn't know what to expect from this video.

I think one should eliminate John's "side kicks" and discuss 汉字。

人 is a good starting point. It's worth about 30 seconds of discussion. It would be nice to compare "artistically" drawn characters vrs hand written too.

I've always viewed 汉字 as art. I enjoy writing them, and recognized immediately the components, and still do find radicals quite useful.

In fact I would argue that first trying to figure out what the radical is; next counting the additional strokes; and finally looking them up in a dictionary is an excellent way to learn 汉字.

Writing them by hand also embeds them in one's memory. I view that as a necessary and well tested part of the process even in the age of computers. I would recommend getting a brush, ink block, and plenty of paper and painting 汉字. It's a joy to do so !

So, I rate this attempt as 5 on a scale of 10. It's a good start. Less clowning around and more content is required.

Bill

But please don't stop doing video!  I really loved "What's the Story" and hope you can continue that (or something similar).  I also liked that you targeted all learners (newbie, elementary, intermediate) instead of just one group.

I like the idea of some sort of video medium for learning characters, too.  It was interesting watching the 人 start looking like an L when he wrote faster.  A week or so ago, a Taiwanese person showed me simple handwritten sentences like, 天气怎么样 and 你好吗 and asked me if I could read it.  I had absolutely no idea what she had written.  It looked nothing like typed characters look like!

saw the radical show today.  Can I say... WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT????   Are you trying to make fun of something??  Are you trying to do like a SNL take off or something?  Great idea...but kind of a dumb way of doing it.  Was that PETE in a WIFE BEATER???  hilarious... who was the other guy??  Strange idea with the eighties thing... John's the only role that was good because he was just himself.  Better luck next time.

Aloha, John and Team,

Well, the host is handsome, the sidekicks entertaining, and the subject matter essential.

Might want to have more educational content packed into the 5 minutes. Here are some things that might have been done:

1) An explanation, with enough examples to drive the point home, of how a man standing on one leg at the left of any character may impact the sound of that character.

2) Mentioning specifically the importance of stroke order and stroke direction. Even though this was demonstrated GRAPHICALLY numerous times, to a Complete Newbie it may not have been noticed, assigned appropriate significance, or sunk in properly.

3) Demonstrating how the combination, as a character and as a component, may be formed differently when drawn with different writing implements.

4) Demonstrating what sophisticated execution is required to form the character properly with a maobi.

5) Brief explanations, or at least translations, of some of the 25 or so characters that flashed by in 13 seconds.

6) Some examples of how and where the component may appear when it is NOT functioning as a 部首: 谁， 唯，

7) A mention of the fact that the occurrence of these two strokes in combination has been reduced significantly with the ascendancy of simplified characters: 離 (离),  護 (护)

8) And, since the show is, after all, titled "The Radical Show" a mention of the distinction between 部件 and 部首 could be appropriate.
http://epa.psy.ntu.edu.tw/EPA/members/publications/Yeh_Li02.pdf

All in all, The Radical Show is a pedagogical concept certainly worth pursuing, even if it does appear (which may be illusory) that computers are making "Radicals" obsolete. Humor, I believe, is also worth pursuing, but not at the expense of genuine educational content.

Looking forward to installment 2.

Mahalo for your efforts,
Indy
http://www.indyinasia.tv/

hwangd01  You wiggled out of your first paragraph so elegantly!

I'm fond of the Cpod humour. It get's you to respond to the lesson, making it feel relevant to you. I think the reason this one fell flat is because the humour doesn't tie in tight enough to the lesson content, it seems just a bit gratuitous.

I also like animated characters, but the chunky fonts generally used, though nice visually for recalling the character, don't resemble anything you can actually acheive with a biro. The balance (want of a better word) of the characters is also very different to any penned Chinese I've ever seen. It would be good to see some nice slow 'animated handwriting', without a hand in the way.

kanjihanzi:

1) Beautiful handwriting is still alive and well in Japan. Whenever my wife picks up what they call here a "Fude Pen", a super cheap cross between an imitation writing brush at the tip, and a cartridge pen in the ink-bearing body, I eat my heart out.

2) The Kanji Hanzi Hub at http://kanjihanzi.blogspot.com  certainly has MY attention!

Since being introduced to ChinesePod by Peter Galante from JapanesePod101 five days ago, I have been considering producing a video series with a working title like "Sino-Japanese Idioms", or "Two for the Price of One", or "You Don't Know How Much You Already Know", or something like that.

That's why, going back to "The Radical Show", I am sorry John is thinking of abandoning the effort so soon. I am keenly interested in that character drawing animation technology.

Does anyone know how that is done? How to do it? Or where to get the software to do it?

Aloha, calkins:

Your agreements with Hennings and other observations are insightful and illuminating.

Mahalo.

happy52, Instruction on reading handwritten Chinese is a great idea!

A course on handwritten forms of Hanzi would seem to fit in an Upper Intermediate range, wouldn't you think?

whatever happened to the idea of re-issuing / redoing early cpod episodes? Not that I think its the best use of resources, actually resources should clearly go into new materials, but just curious.

what makes cpod effective is that it is learning delivered in a fun, contemporary manner. However when the fun part runs away from the learning part there is a problem. Please keep education as the #1 priority, and making it fun a close second. Not the other way around as i think this video ventured into this no-go zone.... we are not here to be entertained, we are here to learn in an entertaining way. Big huge difference!

I'm sorry. That was totally LAME!

Chinese Pod 你好，

我今天在聼很久以前的一個課程的時候，聽到朱琦老師說一句話， “下一ji課”。 我一聼到這句話就覺得我應該聼錯了因爲我知道有一句話說“下一節課”， 但是我又聼了一邊還是覺得朱琦老師說“下一ji 課”。 我想請你們這是什麽"ji" 呢？我以前沒聼過這個詞。謝謝！

I like the idea that someone mentioned earlier to using resources to develop other parts of the site, like the vocabulary tools and the grammar guide.

Hello all again, and in particular indyinasia who added a couple of points

1) Oh, yes! I didn't mean to say that there is NO GOOD handwriting in Japan. There is and Japanese Penji is a very interesting art form to be compared with the traditional Shodo (brush calligraphy). Once again too little data, but my feeling is that Japanese Penji artists are more experimental and 'brave' than their Chinese collegues. What has strikken me is that there ALSO is so much really lousy handwriting to be seen almost everywhere, in particular considering the available tradition to write beautifully.

Yes, I have heard about these Japanese brushpens, but all I have is the PITT artist pen from Faber-Castell which is very much aimed at manga creativity. Still, it doesn't produce the results I am looking for. It's extremely difficult to write small characters - as in normal handwritten text - and it's too stiff to be flexible enough. My wife is going to Beijing in early January so she will be forced to go hunting for a really good fountain pen, which I think is THE TOOL.

Thanks for your interest in The Kanji Hanzi Hub! Will put up the first Component Analysis later tonight or tomorrow.

Also thanks for linking to the very interesting article at

http://epa.psy.ntu.edu.tw/EPA/members/publications/Yeh_Li02.pdf

I have only read the first pages so far, but I will print it out and read it later. As a student of Kanji I have never had any motivation to dive deep into radicals, but I guess there is more use of these when studying Chinese.

Re "Sino-Japanese Idioms"

Yes, that's very interesting. I have a nice little book called Kanji Idioms where it seems like most of the stuff is taken from Chinese idioms once upon a time. Nice little Four-Letter-Words :-) And I am sure there are many books on this in Mandaring too.

Hmmm.... seems like Kanji Idioms have stopped being printed and bundled into Kodanshas Dictionay of Basic Japanese Idioms, (and forget the Children label thay have added) which is one of the few books from Kodansha on learning Japanese that I don't own.

Let us know about the progress of your idioms.

I generally agree that this is a great idea, but could be a little better.

You could do something like a vocab tour, instead a radical tour. Overlay the radical over the image of what it is representing. Easy example could be the camera pans up to the clouds, and over the clouds you see a bunch of 云's, or 木's in a wooded foresty area and etc. Just an idea, look forward to what you guys come up with next!

still want more feedback? My opinion is its a good idea to teach radicals through a video, but this one was too long and silly

on a side note, when he kept writing 人 人 人 人

thats what i did many many years ago to doodle seagulls in the sky. Funny I didnt know i was writing in chinese

I'm really into the leather radical.

革

I must admit that I found the juxtaposition of the straight host and wannabe-retarded sidekicks to form a strange/dumb, yet titillating frame from which to deliver some light academic content, the cheezy editing and soundtrack seemed to suggest that it was indeed tongue-in-cheek.

I must admit that I watched a lot of Chinese movies during my first 2 years of Chinese learning in order to better immerse myself in the language, yet have fun doing it, although many around me preferred more serious methods - different horses eh!

Keep up the experiments guys!

中文字 are indeed radical!!!

I am a newbie and it seemed pretty RADICAL.

Now I am never gonna forget what the character for 'ren' looks like.

BTW the 80's theme was totally awesome but not funny.

As a 1st show it was pretty decent.

Somewhat curious that I'm posting here after gulam... I'm guessing he's the CP employee who's had to field my numerous criticisms, most of which have to do with the plethora of English mistakes around the site that have allegedly been passed on to the "academic team" and hence ignored indefinitely (e.g. the "pour" that should be "pore" on the tour, which I pointed out a month and a half ago).

Just when I'd though I was developing an unhealthy trend of being overly negative in all my posts here, for once I had something good to say and it seems that everyone else disagrees! I thought this show was quite entertaining, albeit a little lacking in content. Of course my voice is being drowned out on this particular front but I'll still say that the format doesn't need to be abandoned entirely, and if you were simply to pack in one or two more radicals into each show then things would be fine.

user19008 says that education should never take a back seat to fun here, but I think people who have that opinion are taking themselves to seriously. As has been said, this is geared to a Newbie level, and if you can learn two or three radicals in five minutes through repetition and a bit of silly humour then where's the problem?

The funny thing I've found about some hardcore language learners is that they often aren't really as intelligent as you'd think they'd have to be to have so much linguistic success (i.e. much more than me). And dumb people who think they're smart are unsurprisingly reluctant to get off their high horse to appreciate a little simplistic humour.

What kind of drugs are you guys on? Whatever it is, don't stop taking it. This lesson works for me.

What was that??

Amen, chas.

changbiyuan, yeah I pretty much agree with you, this show is a great concept, and you gotta have fun when learning, with a little bit of fine-tuning, this will be great. I think what happened was 人 is not a complicated enough character for a 5-6 minute long episode. 

I really would hate to see ChinesePod scrap this idea/show. Another suggestion, when the construction vehicle's arm ( I have no idea what it was, I guess I'm not your man's man...) was made in the shape of 人, it was kind of hard to tell. If I didn't know what ren2 was already, I would have had no idea what I was looking for. It wasn't revealed until after this what ren2 looked like. No biggie, but If the radical was overlayed on top of the arm as we see it written, then you would get the "ooh I see it!" response. Or at least, if the arm was revisted after revealing what the radical looked like.

Everything else I really enjoyed about the show, how 人 looks different with other characters, quick view of other characters it's in. And I personally enjoyed the sidekick's transforming ability. He can be coffeetablebot!

Thanks, jushuars (I was fearing I'd strayed a bit far toward the negative again, as is my wont), and good comments. I agree 人 was a bit simple, especially being the only focus.

I also liked mikeinewshot's comment about the contorted handwritten forms that arise... That would be a worthwhile subject to address in this show as well.

I should add too that I also liked the repetition of the metavocabulary in 部件; I may have learned the word before at one point but it's definitely stuck a little firmer in my brain now.

changbiyuan,

humour? pray tell me where so that i can fast-forward and not waste another 5 mins looking for it.

frankly, 20 secs of chinese lesson in a 5 mins "comedy?" video (6mins if you include buffering) is not funny at all.

This series is named "The Radical Show", and the title of this video is "The Person Component". To make matters more complicated, John uses the word "part" in his comments. I don't know which one is most appropriate in English.

John,

As far as I'm concerned, this was a great introduction to the new "radical" video series.

Since joining CPOD from its birth in 2005, I have focused only on the listening / comprehension and speaking skills. I have only now decided to study the characters and so the explanation of the "ren" radical was just right for my level. Once you explained that the character appears on the left and somewhat bent, it was one of those moments in language learning that suddenly became clearer. I've seen this common component many times, but it never occurred to me what it really was.

And so as a Newbie hanzi learner, it met my expectations. But I can see why more advanced learners of the written language would not be too impressed. As others have noted, a bit more time spent on the actual radical itself would be good.

I hope you continue with this series.

joshuars, sorry for misspelling your name in my last post.

leeht, if it's not to your liking, just don't watch it. No one's forcing you to. (I think it might be time to get over the tragic loss of your five minutes. Though surely it's up to ten or fifteen now once you count the time you're spending bemoaning it publicly.)

Like I say, if it were to include a couple more radicals per show, as well as some supplementary vocabulary like bùjiàn (along this vein we could get 部首bù shǒu—assuming that's correct; I haven't learned it yet and just looked it up—and then perhaps even the stroke names 横héng, 竖 shù, 撇piě, 捺 nà, etc.), then it's certainly more than 20 seconds' worth of lesson.

People on ChinesePod are here with a wide variety of existing and target levels of Chinese, as well as different learning styles and general desire for what they get out of their time with these lessons. I may be outnumbered but I'm not alone in finding some amusement in the admittedly somewhat juvenile format here, so surely it's a show worthy of consideration for adaptation rather than cancellation.

John

    Teaching Character is the right direction for Chinesepod now. We need to learn the 3000 characters eventually. Look at all the posting on this!! There is an urgent need. Show improvements will be appreciated. Young from Atlanta,USA

Good observation, Changye. Surely an explanation of the distinction between "radical" and "component" is ideal material for a future episode!

I still think this show was nice and could even be great with a little work. The topic is fascinating! Please do not abandon this idea. Moving to writing / understanding characters is a good thing :-). Maybe a merge is possible between vocab tour and the radical show?

I have been behind the art direction of all Praxis Language video series so far.
With this show I knew we were going to do something that could not be easily appreciated by everyone like the Vocab Tours, What's the Story and SpanishPod video series.

At the same time I am happy we took the risk and did experiment a new approach for this show that has much more personality. The editing style was intended to be this way, not polished, awkward and running parallel to the didactic content.

I hope that even if you didn't appreciate at all the result, you will help and support us experimenting different visual approaches applied to language learning.
I personally try to give each series a different personality exploring different formats, styles and expecting reactions and inputs from all of you guys.
In this sense the Radical Show has shown to be more powerful than any of the other videos I've done for Praxis. On the other side, you broke my heart...sigh! ;)

marcod ,

Broke your heart? Mate,if you are the man behind the art direction of all Praxis videos then you need a huge pat on the back.Even in this apparently least popular one,in my opinion there was still plenty of good stuff in there;it just needs a little fine tuning which can be expected when you're exploring a new style.I think it's a great idea that each series has it's own personality and style.And even if I didn't completely get the humour here [rare, because so many of the lessons are so funny],I appreciated that you were trying once again to make the learning fun.Didn't bother me that I didn't get it.Show me a comedian who is universally appreciated all the time.

I think the two extras look like they need about twenty shots of expresso, before they will look even remotely interested in the topic.  Clever once, but I think it will get old fast.

Reading over a post of John's above, I see I should have said 偏旁piānpáng rather than 部首bùshǒu.

Anyway Marco, I hope you're also taking in the numerous comments here that are in support of this show, including some suggestions as they may be!

Following belatedly from almostwinter's overly callous remarks, asking why he would "be interested in knowing you guys": I think the personable element is a definite part of ChinesePod's charm. The lighthearted note of many of the lessons, as well as of Dear Amber and Qing Wen, makes listening enjoyable and almost like you're learning from a friend. And that's really important in maintaining motivation when studying something that takes as long to learn as a language does.

The new video channels are great at providing more varieties of opportunities for learning, and this one is no exception.

John, I really hope you'll reconsider the decision that this show will never see a second episode. All the negative (and other) feedback has come within the first day of this being available which means it's surely coming mostly from the keener breed of listener, i.e. the type of person who's accustomed to the existing forms of content and may be a little less inclined to take to a new format (especially a beginner-level one like this).

If you want to see a nice way of introducing Chinese Characters, have a look at the animations in http://sonicnovel.com/kanji.html.  There is a commentary too.

I would like to see more on radicals, but I think a straight on show would be fine.  There are lots of interesting things to say, I'm sure without having to add extranious bits.

Boy.. they ripped you guys apart...

I personally found this pretty funny especially when Pete and (don't know how the other guy is,) pulled the arms up of the man writing 人, his reluctance was hilarious! There where actually quite a few funny things in this video, whats wrong with all the Cpod users? No sense of humor???

But to be honest this really reminds me of something a high school class could have done (if they were studying Mandarin.) I'd say its not bad for a first version but needs some work, and more content, it was funny but maybe making the humor more relevant to the subject would be better received. But I am really glad you guys are trying more things! Thanks!

The thing I am most annoyed by is why wasn't this automatically added to my subscription? I am subscribed to everything so I never look at the channels. I almost didn't see this.

Yeah... high school class sort of thing... I think that's what was endearing about it. I suppose that made it appeal only to those of us who haven't outgrown that kind of humour.

If you want to learn characters:

人 ren2:

http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/resources/1101

More:

http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/resources/search?series=18

(more than 430 characters available, for free)

If I understand it ,what John is trying to do is fresh and innovative. Sure there are programmes that animate the “Radicals” and give you the stroke order- but this is not the concept that John has in mind for this series. Like he says , that approach is rooted in the need for dictionary organisation.

John expresses it very  clearly _” the deconstruction of the characters for understanding” . I am not interested in learning how to write the character ( although I can appreciate some people find it very satisfying to do that ) because I am ALWAYS going to be inputting Chinese on the computer.

So for me, this approach is what I am looking for. Something that helps me to recognise that  lots of different characters have locked into them, a thread of meaning, and how I can recognise that.

Some people complain that ren is too simple a character for a whole video, but that misses the point. This video is not to be thought of as a “stand alone lesson” but part of a cumulative approach to introducing many different “Radicals” that will eventually enable us to look at a complex character and “ deconstruct” it, to extract its meaning.

It’s disappointing to read so much negative criticism, because true innovation like this is all too easily extinguished by those who are unable to think “outside the box”.

So my advice to John and Marcod is press on. No we don’t need to spend more money on  more boring grammar .Give me creativity every time!

Hi Folks ！

We will not comment on how good this video lesson is.

What we want to say here is that every time we have to learn a new terminology before we even start.

To us "Radicals" is always known as 部首

Now 部首"部件"了，we guess this is for the sake of the 计算机 吧！

Of course we have to move with the time.

Chenboshi

在下想, 若通过较顺畅的剪辑方法与成熟的幽默方式联合此系列肯定会成功了。请别误会，在下想此次的实验非常成功，归功于诸位的努力工作而创造性。不过完美的显示会更受欢迎。总之无论教育方式如何，研究中文字的课就是好主意。

承蒙 Chinesepod!

I think the Queen is using ChinesePod and has called herself wchan. ("We are not amused" would have fit well with the tone of most of these comments...)

changbiyuan,

There is a saying: "When the horse is dead, get off".  Don't stay around beating people to death.

You may not have noticed it but we have posted our views and moved on happily.

陳博士

請問，您什麽意思呢？我搞不懂。。。

I beg your pardon, leeht? My last post was meant to be a light-hearted chuckle about wchan apparently using the Royal We.

I don't see how I could have been read as "beating people to death." You might do well to keep your bitter negativity to yourself. Perhaps you've heard a saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say..."

Maybe an addition to the Comments Policy below would be in order: "We recommend against writing anything at all subtle because someone will undoubtedly misinterpret it and attack you for it."

One area that theres some room for development in all of the chinesepod lessons but particularly this series  is the PDF transcripts. You could do things like putting in characters with all the components in different colours to help people see what they are make up of or something to indicate stroke order for the people learning to write them. The current format of just listing a few vocab terms isn't particularly helpful for lessons of this type.

Hi changbiyuan,

Those "royal we" are typical mother tongue influence often seen in English written by us East Asian people, namely Chinese, Korean and Japanese. I also sometimes feel like using "royal we" when writing in English. Conversely, you are required to use "我们" instead of "you (= people)" when writing/speaking in Chinese, for example, "我们应该尊敬老人/You should show your respect for elderly people."

I just had a brilliant idea for a movie.

"Revenge of the Nerds: Shanghai style"

LOL!

Touche!

Im not taking myself too seriously as was suggested in the comments. Nor am I smart person who thinks Im dumb or a dumb person who thinks Im smart. Im just a guy struggling to wrestle this language and life is busy. So when I come to cpod I am in learning mode. If you want to look at goofy videos then youtube has millions of them for your entertainment.

I recognise that the series is geared towards the beginer level. But look at the beginner audio episodes. They are focussed on learning but delivered in a spirited and entertaining way. The equivalent of this video in a newbie audio episode would be Ken and Jenny goofing off in English for 80% of the lesson then talking about 1 or 2 Chinese words.  This does not happen, good thing, and that is why cpod works. Even the old lenghty cpod introduction was axed to cut out the fluff and get to the meat of the lesson earlier.

I really like the idea of using video for something as visual as learning characters. I think John and the team should push forward, after hearing the community.

When wchan used the word 'we', I read it differently. It did not occur to me the 'we' means 'all of us'. It is a polite way to represent 'I' or 'me' in Chinese. Using I or 我 can sometimes be offensive towards somebody from the Asian community. Perhaps a better understanding of Asian culture will avoid unnecessary outburst.

Hi wchan,

I fully agree with you. I also don't like to use the term "部件" instead of traditional "部首/偏旁". I don't think there is enough reason to use a Chinese word that makes no sense to native Chinese speakers.

Kesirui

I agree, a VERY funny lesson, and yes, we're all being a little hard on these guys.

It was interesting to see 人 transform into handwriten style.

If only more were like this. I look forward to seeing future experiments.

Thanks guys

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2szNKnsXo

John, I love your humour !!!

But to tell the truth, I am the one who laughs when others don't ! And vice versa... Too bad !

Every Friday as my boss talks about stuff that is mildly important to me but painfuly boring at times I write Chinese characters (If I keep going over the next 20+ weeks I'll know how to write about 200 of some of the most common characters allowing me to write most of the rest if I ever need to).  From now on everytime I learn to write one of these characters I'll never forget the ren radical part.

It was kinda Napoleon Dynamite funny...weird and laugh in my head funny but not side splitting.  

Increasing the grammar guide sounds like a good idea too... 

You should have taken a more complex radical from the start, like 钅, 犭 or 纟. Now it looked like some high school students doing a project called "REN2".

As most other said: You can do WAY MUCH better than this.

If you want to learn the radicals, read Fazzioli's book.

After that you may read Lindqvist's great book.

Then buy Harbaugh's dictionary or visit his website and learn the other/phonetic character parts.

And as yaq123edc wrote, confuciusinstitute.net has a great character series.

There is no need to sit in front of a computer "learning" from videos like this one - there are good books to learn from...

Just do it!

I like the concept of using video for characters. I have usually skipped over the audio lessons that tried to explain characters, but think video would be a very good medium for this.

Here's the kind of information I think would be interesting and useful in a radical show:

1) Explain how to write the radical when is part of another character (and show examples). The best part of this lesson was when we SAW the person WRITING the character by HAND. I liked how the character progressed from formal to handwritten form. This helps with character identification in real life. Showing different modern writing and font styles would be helpful too.

2) Explain useful memory aids to remembering the meaning of the radical. Show how the radical originated from the original form (only if this aids in memorization). Show how we can relate the shape of the object to a picture/animation that can aid memory (for example see: Tuttle: Learning Chinese Characters (Matthews), Fun With Chinese Characters Set (Tan Huay Peng)).

3) Discuss how the radical adds meaning to other characters. Show them being written out as you are explaining the components. Show variations of the radical when it is written on the side/top/bottom/inner part of a character (with examples)

4) Highlight and show any differences between the simplified and traditional radical. For example, hua4 would be a good exploration of this aspect. Especially since the traditional form is kept when it is a stand-along character.

5) Use humor only if it enhances the educational content or acts as a memory aid. For example, I really enjoyed the first what's the story with Jenny and the wolf. The picture humor was directly connected to and enhanced the content of the lesson. I also enjoy the banter found in many chinesepod lessons because incidental, it is not made the focus of the lesson.

6) Have a few intro lessons that do NOT concentrate on radicals, but rather show:

a) How to write characters (stroke order, balance, etc).

b) How to enter characters on a PC.

The radical lessons could assume this base knowledge (it does break the lessons in any order rule, but it would be extremely useful information to the Newbie).

Talking of "squiggly lines" you guys need to deinterlace these videos before you upload them. They would be much less destracting to watch - web video should always be progressive. Let me know if you need a pointer as to how ;)

oh, nice idea for new lessons BTW

i have to say that the ridiculousness of this video definetly stuck in my head and made an impression..

there are well over 100 posts about this now within a couple days...

maybe that was the point...to freak people out!

i think you did accomplish something "radical" cpod!

Friendly advice for the Cpod "marketing team",

With this video, which could be available on Youtube soon, you aimed for a potential young public/customer. But I don't think it's the most clever decision today.

Thanks to the actual economic conditions, you've got a huge reservoir of customers with people between 30-45 who just lost a job in the last few weeks or think they will lose it soon.

Someone who just lost his job is full of energy, has money, has lots of free time, is looking for education to develop new skills, is looking for something to stand out.

Don't lose time on a small and immature market. Just make acceptable chinese initiations for the strongest market today and you will get lots of new customers soon.

Wow, over a hundred posts so far must be a lot of interest in radicals...

I like to use this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kangxi_radicals

There are 214 radicals on this list, which includes the Kangxi number (1-214), character, variant forms (really interesting!) as John pointed out for the character 人 (ie. 亻) and including simplified v. traditional variants, pinyin, English meaning, and example characters containing the radical.

I've used it by writing it all out once, printing it out, and continuing to refer to it.  I feel that learning the radicals helps me modularize the writing and memorization of characters themselves ie. its pretty cool.

jiarenlun

John,

Having seen how you can morph the characters means I can see you have the ability to bravely go where no one has gone before [to my knowledge] and demonstrate how the characters have morphed from their origins.This video format would be perfect for that and would be so much better than books etc.I'm specifically referring to those characters that were originally pictographs but have morphed over the centuries so it's no longer easy to see what they were originally representing.Having the original character superimposed on a pic of what it is representing and then showing how the character has changed to its current form would be awesome and I think would really help understand them.Please reconsider scrapping the show and take this into consideration.Thanks :)

Wow, so many comments...

I'd just like to clarify a few things.

1. I still believe that video is a good medium for teaching how to write or how to understand Chinese characters. As some of you recognized, we did (very briefly) try some new pedagogical approaches in this video. Most Chinese and Japanese character learning resources are stuck in a very deep rut (Heisig's Learning the Kanji and the movements he inspired are huge exceptions), and I'm not at all interested in jumping into that rut. If you want to memorize the 214 Kangxi radicals, you certainly don't need video to help you. Actual Chinese handwriting is one of the areas outside that rut worth exploring. There are others, as some of you have pointed out.

2. When I said we're discontinuing The Radical Show, I meant it. But I didn't mean we're abandoning all efforts on teaching characters. We're abandoning the name, the style, the theme, the silliness. Hopefully not all the fun... but definitely with a much stronger educational focus. I'll be re-working the concept and launching a better video series on learning characters. I'll be working with Marco once again, because however you feel about this video, the man does excellent work. Those of you that know SpanishPod's La Clave series on grammar know that. JP is the pedagogical content mastermind, but Marco created the style and intro (and even the intro music!). They're easily the best videos to come out of Praxis Language so far. (And I personally feel that Chinese characters have greater entertainment potential than Spanish grammar, so there are huge possibilities.)

3. You're going to start seeing more improvements on ChinesePod soon. I know you hate that word "soon," so I will say this: The Grammar Guide will be updated with new entries next week (Merry Christmas!), and we will begin following a regular updating schedule in January 2009. I will continue developing my ideas for a character writing show (it really is a very time-consuming process), and in the meantime the videos will take a more community-oriented angle.

More announcements next week (but not in this thread).

Hi John,

If you want to memorize the 214 Kangxi radicals, you certainly don't need video to help you.

Just out of curiosity, please let me know how many radicals you were planning to show in this series of videos.

Changye,

As I mentioned before, the purpose of the video was not to cover a list of radicals. It was to cover the most useful component parts (whether or not they are technically classified as radicals/部首).

So the plan was to start with the most useful/high-frequency component parts, and base further development on user feedback. In a way, I guess you could say the abrupt end to the Radical Show was following the plan. I'm listening to the user feedback! :)

I agree with most of the constructive criticism.

One thing I did find interesting however was the use of real objects to create "ren", specifically, using people to make the "ren". The image of the people slamming chests was memorable, and I think if I was a total beginner that image would stick with me. I think this type of imagery is worth further study/videos.

John, 

You're taking all this with a lot of grace. I couldn't bear to read everything, so sorry if this is repetitive. My thoughts: 

Your focus on 部件 is the best way to learn characters. For me, understanding each component is the easiest way to actually remember what the overall 汉字 means.

I spent a lot of time grilling my tutor on 部件 and it helped a lot. By contrast, my teachers spent very little time on this stuff and just wanted me to memorize. But I'm terrible at memorization and prefer to analyze and understand. 

So, I'd say, your overall approach is on track. 

Memorizing 汉字 is the 800 pound gorilla of learning Mandarin. This is because it's boring. If you can make it just a little bit more intersting, you will be providing a tremendous service.

Of course, making Mandarin interesting is precisely what chinesepod does best! Your dialogues with analysis are the best tool I have found to learn with. I'm sure in time you'll find the right formula for teaching 汉字. Video is a sensible place to start. 

One thought is to include more detail. Your first episode was lighthearted and sought to appeal to newbies with humor. Consider doing a longer episode that starts out with the basics (for newbies) but then examines some examples in detail. You may lose some newbies after the first 5 minutes but I think that's fine. You have to be really dedicated to learn 汉字 so appealing to the nerds is ok. Your enthusiasm will be contagious. Just a thought.

Good luck! :) 

Hey, maybe i'm an easy public but I laughed..it was so surrealist. and when you're having strong emotion (as fear, burst of laugh, of sadness or whatever), you remember.. so the idea is not so stupid, it should just be more develloped. and the radicals are in fact no big deal to learn, you should try to adapt the idea to entire words.. for exemple a video like this one would be great with some words or phrases appearing on the background like "oh it's so cheesy"  "i'm not laughing" "what the hack are they doing" etc...hey seriously, when you're able to make comments while watching tv, your're half way to fluency. i had a good time watching it anyway, go on looking for new concepts!  (and sorry for my poor english)

john

At the risk of sounding callous, and I most certainly AM going to sound callous, Marco's work on this video was far short of "excellent".  This was some of the laziest, editing I've ever seen.  I hope Marco didn't run the camera because the camerawork was quite underwhelming.

In fact, the entire production quality felt quite underwhelming, characterized by bad lighting, uninspired visuals, and lack of a coherent style.

The good point of the video was the titles and graphics, but there wasn't much beyond that of note.

Marco was credited as the "Director", my best advice to you is, 换一个导演吧。

Sorry for my callous, ranting remarks.

很抱歉

xiaohu,

Marco knew exactly what he was doing, and the elements you mentioned were all a deliberate part of the style.

It has been made very clear that this style isn't appreciated by most ChinesePod users, but this style certainly does not represent the limit of Marco's abilities. (I'm pretty sure you haven't seen SpanishPod's grammar videos.)

I have every confidence in Marco's abilities, and look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.

i liked it  a lot. Vaguely reminded me of 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!' with some of the arbitrary editing and remarks.

I'd live to see more videos like this, granted the style would be refined as the series would have gone on. Unfortunately we won't get to see the fruits of something new. I guess the masses demand something more academic. 耸肩。

i might add, you may want to check out a book: 'Fun With Chinese Characters' published by the Straight Times Collection. I bought one of the books a few months ago at the international book store in Shanghai. That's ‘有趣的汉子’ -- 海峡时报丛书。 Check it out and you might get some inspiration, but, it's probably one of the more expensive books in the store @ 100 人民币。

PS The last thing I want from a Cpod video is some Sport Chinese Clone. I'd rather not pay to watch CCTV 9. As much as I admire Mr Rowswell's achievements and hope to emulate his success to whatever degree I can, his 15 minute segments are stale.

snater

Sometimes Sports Chinese can be as stale as a day spent sitting in Geometry class, but Sports Chinese is full of educational content.  I think from an educational perspective, it's far more important to have valuable content for the viewer, rather than concentrate solely on "experimenting with different visual approaches applied to language learning....different personality exploring different formats, styles" etc., leaving out the most important part of the equation in the process.

As far as a show that has personality, try taking a look at a show on 北京卫视 hosted by 姜华 called 学汉语到北京.

Each show consists of a 小品 concerning a group of friends with names taken from both Chinese and Western classical literature and current pop culture like, "卓别林"，"乌比", "武松" and "孙悟空".  In each 小品 they focus on one 成语 or 俗语, like 一根筋, 泼冷水.

The content of the dialogue explains and expounds upon the meaning of the central word to be studied, while at the same time raising many new useful words and phrases.  All the repetition and support of one advanced word really helps to drill it into your memory.

The writing is clever in a lot of ways, the acting is very good, and there is always a story going on.  The characters have back-story and their relationships to one another and the back-story is explored in each episode, so the show serves the purpose of being educational and entertaining, with characters that you care about.

It seems to me that the high concept of "The Radical Show" traded one brand of dull for another.  John explaining a 部件 with two guys next to him posing, surrounded by slow, clunky editing, amateurish lighting and camerawork and cheesy cutaways can hardly be taken as brimming with personality.  What's worse, is that the overall presentation is more detracting from the educational process than in support of it.

I suspect the radical show is going to be like Marmite (or vegemite if you will) - you either love it or hate it.

Personally I think it's a great format and very amusing. We need something different in terms of presentation style as a memory aid.

True the content was not too taxing, but you have to start somewhere...

Keep it up John, maybe with a few tweaks you can get most people onboard!

( Heisig has put the first few chapter of Remembering the Kanji online for your free-of-charge perusal.  http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htm , link at the bottom of the page. It makes fairly radical reading. )

Maybe some support from Spanishpod will help. I really enjoy "La Clave" and "Cooking with Tabasco".

John said replying to xiaohu that the elements you mentioned were all a deliberate part of the style.

Now I think I know what Chinesepod was aiming at in this video. They wanted to intentionally/deliberately make it look amateurish, in other words, they tried to make a parody of one of those typical amateur films.

I think the idea itself is not so bad. Actually, there is a very successful example in Japan. It’s the first episode of a famous Japanese anime “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya ”, where you can see a lot of (intentional) amateurish mistakes, such as bad lighting and camera angles, clumsy cutaways, and car noises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Melancholy_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_(anime)

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=RcNkyPXYPc8

I liked the concept, but not enough content for a 5 minute video.

Well, either this show was too subtile (see Changye's comment above) or was too purile (see most comments).  I favour the latter.  I fear that it was conceived to apeal to American high school humour which seems not to travel successfully to the rest of the world.

I watched it again!  It was not as bad as when I first watched it, but then I had high expectations the first time.

There are lots of encouraging suggestions to make a show with more learning content, and which appeals to a wider range of ability, a wider age range, and a wider geographic demographic.

But your forte is making learning interesting, not being funny.  Best wishes for the former

Mike,

subtle or puerile it didnt travel well anywhere. Please dont blame this on American humor. It did however remind me of a television sitcom we had here called "the 70's show" in which the completion of each act was punctuated with short slow motion videos of characters dancing or jumping into the air. There is where the similarities end.

The educational intent here was fine and it was not Marco's fault. I have seen and heard enough of him and his work to know better. It just didnt work out. One character a week is too slow and less importantly, the humor here too clunky. Its not even "camp" (so bad its good). It just doesnt work. I believe they should just try a different approach to present the same material. These guys  have done plenty of very impressive work in the past and Im sure they will again. I for one am looking forward to it.

I guess what is happening here is that cPOD is trying to be innovative in the market place. When it first started it was the only show like this and that was innovative.. now that we're almost to 2009, it's like cPOD is looking for a fresh perspective.

I suggest to go back and look at the learning model and work from there. It's an awesome learning model and should be at the core of anything you do.

Yes this idea bombed but I think that it was just an offshoot idea rather than an idea based off the core principles of the learning model.

xiaohu,

I agree with your above suggestion.I just hope they haven't been too discouraged.While I thought WTS was great,I would love to see something that involved some interaction so you could see how people respond to each other in Mandarin.A soap opera type thing would be perfect [not that I'm normally in to soapies;quite the opposite...but somehow I would find it instructive and entertaining when trying to learn Chinese].Something like the diary series,but when they were actually dating/interacting [not the diary part obviously].

Im sure the video stuff is a huge resource drain. Its not like they have a separate staff that does video full time. These guys did it while they continued everything else we are used to. I for one was impressed but concerned that it would prove to be too much long term. I guess we should keep this in mind when making suggestions.

RJ,

Good point.I see what you mean.But even something like an interview,or shopping and talking to a vendor;anything with a bit of interaction.

bababardwan,

It will grow, Im sure.

Our 好朋友 a Mr. Peter Galante Sama from Japanesepod101 produced and directed quite an impressive series, a soap of sorts just utilizing the teachers and podcast voice actors he already had at his disposal. 

The story was about a beautiful girl who for some reason has trouble finding a date, so she goes to an Internet dating company that will help her shoot, edit and upload her video personal ad.  However the owner of the company falls for her at first site, wanting her all to himself. 

They produce the video and she gets quite a few responses back.  The two view the responses together and decide who she'd like to contact back, shooting a video response to be mailed to the lucky recipient.  However, because of his feelings for her, he only pretends to send the response.

The dating company owner keeps trying to put the moves on the girl, but she continually tells him she's just not interested.  However the two become friends and he often visits her at her apartment.

Weeks pass and the girl checks in with him wondering if he'd sent the video, he assures her he did and suggests that she contact her second choice.  She shoots another video response, which he promptly throws in the trash.

Weeks more pass.  We pick up the action from the point of view of the second choice, a good looking young American who just happens to speak perfect Japanese, though some magical "connection" he manages to get the girls personal cell phone number, attempting to contact her. However our deceptive dating company owner happens to be at her apartment and intercepts the call.  He knows who the boy is by having previously viewed his video response, and knows instantly why he's trying to contact the girl.  He tells the boy she's already found someone else through the dating service and has already gotten engaged, and suggests he'd better concentrate on finding another girl.

What I liked about the series was that it put into play a lot of the language that they teach on Japanesepod101.com.  They covered the formal, informal, masculine and feminine forms of language, introductions, often used vocabulary and grammer points, while putting it together into an enjoyable story.

When Chinesepod announced they were going to concentrate on video, I had hoped this is the direction they were planning to go in.  When Video Vocab and What's The Story debuted, I was still excited, but still had wished that Chinesepod would at least attempt to try their hand at drama.

Since Praxis now has Marco, and if Marco is as talented as John says, then this would be a wonderful opportunity for an artist to put his ideas to celluloid.

I guess we shall wait and see what's in store for us when the next series debuts.

i am going out on a limb, though fearing for my life:), and knowing the videos wont go on like that unfrotunately, i thought it was pretty funny, i learned a bit about bujian and ren and it kept my attention. 

i think maybe the only thing was i could have learned a few other radicals and then all would have been good. 

but again i thought the video was different, unique, funny and it taught me something. so I am happy. 

i think with a bit of humor you can capture evryones attention so I like the new spin on it. and i hope the series does not take forever to take off. more please.

chinesepod you cease to amaze me in all of the great things you do. thanks

Great analogy, mickeytoon. I love Marmite. Though if overly vocal naysayers like the ones on this thread had their way the world over, it would have been off the shelves ages ago.

God forbid them just not eating the stuff, and keeping their thoughts to themselves on how gross they might think it is.

Ha ha, changbiyuan...

"overly vocal naysayers like the ones on this thread"...

"keeping their thoughts to themselves"

A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?

Maybe I've got a weird sense of humour (I am English after all) but I thought it was quite funny. I certainly won't forget how to write 'ren' now - isn't that the main thing?

Do you need a sense of humour bypass to learn Chinese?!

Wow, lots of feedback. I'll keep it short.

It's takes me a long time to load videos, shorter videos are better. Five mins is no problem but please make it worth while.

Show me the meaning behind the radicals, for example: If I see a character with a specific radical, what can I infer about it's meaning. Anything? 提手旁 - Something with the hand perhaps? .. Hm..

I though it was pretty funny though.

Well that was the funniest thing I've seen this week. There is clearly some humour equivalent of the Great Rift Valley at play here.

Keep it up guys. My only criticism is the gaping lack of moustaches.

146 posts and counting...

中文怎么说？ beating a dead horse

呵呵

Yeah cpod, where were the moustaches?!! :)

Yeah cpod, where were the moustaches?!! :)

@Urbandweller,

鞭打死马，徒劳无益。

I'm glad that Cpod is making an effort to help with reading. As a podcast that's obviousy tricky to do, but I applaud the effort. I've just recently started to focus more on reading and using flashcards and I've found that it makes a huge difference with understanding the spoken language and the way different words are put together.

Well, after viewing the video, here's what I have to say.

1) I like the "theme"song

2) I thought the part near the end where John was standing by a white wall and the radical was static while the rest of the character changed was a very cool and useful way to highlight the radical's use

3) The video reminded me of the sort of thing I would have made in college with my buddies. That's both a good thing (because it made me laugh) and a bad thing (because it made me laugh)

But, listen. It was a great effort and I totally applaud the idea. I understand leaving in the awkward spaces of you three just standing there because it's funny, but at the same time, obviously, as I'm sure others have mentioned (I haven't read through all 7 zillion messages), it "wasted" a lot of time.

I think, in the future, utilizing the white wall technique and maybe explaining how a radical can either imply the meaning or the sound of a word like with the word ba4ba4 and the 父 radical (not sure if that is a radical actually) implying the meaning while the "ba" in the character for ba4ba4 implies the sound.

So, showing the ren2 radical in different words and explaining how it has something to do with a person. Like a the animal radical in gou (dog) and mao (cat) and the metal radical in qian (money).  That sort of thing.

Keep on trucking.

A good start, a lot more could be put into the segment, eg 

1 -Write the one character several times and demonstrate it - already covered - but far too slow

2- show the many forms it can take as part of other characters - the topic is introduced but not carried through

Actually calkins, no I don't. Overly vocal, perhaps. But I'm not naysaying; I think this show should keep going. People seem to have taken a liking to vilifying me though, so my vote probably counts for -1 by now.

hmmmm....i wonder why.

One of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

changbiyuan, on this thread you're a naysayer of the naysayers, therefore I say you are naysaying.

;)

Hi 同学们！

" We" have found you a polite version of 汉语equivalent for

The pot calling the kettle black......

五十步笑百步，又称 五十笑百

Perhaps, somebody would like to tell " us " the Chinese equivalent of

"Overly vocal naysayers like the ones on this thread"...

Chenboshi

PS We are holding back the rude version of 五十笑百

智者千虑，必有一失。子曰，过犹不及。

愚者千慮，必有一得

我一直认为Chinesepod的工作人员都是智者，但是偶尔失败是难免的。我只希望他们以后不会过分地小心起来。中国有个成语“惩羹吹齑” (cheng2 geng1 chui1 ji1)！

Fair enough, calkins; touché. (Though I'd say most of my vocalness has been in, um, yeasaying.) wchan, thanks for throwing in some educational content. (No need to hold back on the rude version though!) To clarify my prior comment (since you are accentuating the "we" now), I was not making an "unnecessary outburst" and I understood perfectly well that the reason was some manner of Chinese polite form. I just found it amusing, because it sounds odd in English. I think using "we" for "I" might translate poorly and possibly even have the opposite to the intended effect.

Thank you last three for typing full thoughts and not just pointless jabs like urbandweller (and possibly millionnairenow...? Not sure if he's speaking about the episode itself or not...).

长夜老师您好！

哗！真厉害 老师您的学问已经达到最高境界了。

佩服 佩服！

你说我可以用"亡羊补牢" 对答"惩羹吹齑"吗？

陈博士

Hi Changbiyuan!

Its great to exchange ideas.This is one of the best ways to find out about things around us.

By the way, I thought ( I am avoiding using we now 以防万一) changbiyuan is a gibbon not panda?

陈博士您好！您说的两次当然对。我们（可以说吗？）很高兴您不想跟我们吵架。对那个照片，我们没有长臂猿的，还有我真喜欢这个熊猫。

陈博士, 你好！

Thanks a lot for your overestimation of me! To tell you the truth, there is a trick. “惩羹吹齑” is actually not so commonly used here in China, but its Japanese version "羹に懲りて膾を吹く" is relatively frequently used in Japan, and that is the very reason I know the Chinese chengyu. FYI, the 四个字 means "Once better, twice shy" / "A burnt child fears the fire", or something like that, in English.

失败是成功之母！(Failure is the mother of success.)

changye,

Were you after the English expression "once bitten,twice shy" ?

Hi bababardwan,

Gee, looks like that I mistook "n" for "r". It's a bitter mistake, haha. I should have used a magnifier when I looked it up in a dictionary. Recently it's really hard for me to read small type. Thanks for correction!

P/S. The "e" in the "better" is a pure typo....

长臂猿老师您好！ 可以这样称呼你吗？

我们不打不相识 现在雨过天晴

能退一步 海阔天空！

我们也很喜欢大熊猫

祝 您们2009安康！

Changye,

我只希望他们以后不会过分地小心起来。

不会，我们脸皮很厚的！哈哈！

wahh, wahhh, wahhhh, John didnt teach me 100 characters today, this is terrible. John, Marco and the others, thanks for this nice introductory lesson to learning characters. The humor is so nice to add in and turning learning chinese into this dry, bland lets learn 20 dialogues today and 1000 characters is just stupid and not the way to learn in my opinion. Keep it fun and it will be a much more enjoyable process to learn. I find if I can enjoy the little bit I learn I never forget it but learning a bunch of stuff out of obligation or feeling I have to I end up forgetting and regret the process of learning. Great job guys it was funny and the pace was perfect for a starter episode for newbies! Forget about what the others say because they are upset they are not fluent in a day.

"Ripped from the chinesepod website" by Mister AS Queen himself ? Really ?  ;o)

interesting how similar these two videos are, huh?

I'm disappointed Cpod...

HELLO. A few quick points here:

1) I pitched that show to the CPod folks back in February. I hoped it would turn into a job offer, but it didn't. That's how these things go.

2) There are similarities, yes, but I talked with John when his Radical Show aired and I don't believe there was any intentional theft involved.

3) I've dropped nearly 40 pounds since I shot that video. Yay! :)

4) I am flattered that people come to my defense on this. I was a bit peeved when I first saw John's show, but we're cool now.

Nothing to see here, people. Move along, move along.

Frank, just wanted to say great show.  Simple yet very effective.  I hope someone picks up your project.  Keep us posted if it does.

calkins - Thanks very much! I remain sorry that I won't be working with the fine folks at ChinesePod, especially since I'm moving to Shanghai in February, but they've already got a talented bunch of people over there. I think maybe they hit their quota. ;-)

wow Frank...you are quite talented...cpod would be lucky to have you

Frank, am definitely going to remember how to write 胖 now :D

urbandweller - Aw, thanks! 谢谢你。你过奖了。:)

sebire - Hehe. Then my diabolical plan is a success!

Point of interest on that lesson... John informs me that the first radical, which I identified as 月 (moon), is actually 肉 (flesh) as a side radical. Either way, it helps me to remember what the character means, so I'm just happy to hear that I wasn't alone.

That makes a lot more sense to me, actually. I learnt a whole bunch of body vocab recently (脸，腿， 肩膀，脚 etc) and was wondering why 月 kept turning up. It makes far more sense as 肉!

Frank - your show was good, and the one they went with, well, sometimes there is justice in the world.

sebire - Yeah, when John told me that I had a kind of V-8 moment. I slapped myself in the forehead and went "D'oh!" Either way, the mnemonic helped me a lot. I'll never forget that character.

RJ - Hehe. I wasn't going to say it, man. :)

frank

If you're open to finding a place in Beijing instead of Shanghai, there's always going to work with Dave (AKA Peter the Canadian Hammer Importer) at Popup Chinese.

BTW: great show! 

xiaohu - Dave and I are actually good friends! I'll definitely be spending some time with him in Beijing while I'm in-country. The beauty of what I do is that I can literally do it from anywhere. If Dave wants the show, I can produce it from Shanghai just as easily.

Of course, if you hear Dave tell it, he's convinced that Beijing is right place for a wandering Bohemian like myself anyway. ;-)

Glad you liked what you saw!

frank

我看好了你的网站，你为什么从来没直接告诉我们你是制片人和导演呢？ 说实在的你的短小电影我觉得它们很有意思不过我能更胜一筹！（开玩笑）。

我也导演过电影，其实我正在剪辑我自己拍的电影因此我根本就不能常常挂在 C-Pod 上聊天。

因为我只去过北京而没去过上海所以我不能来判断北京和上海这两个城市相比之下那个地方更适合你这个波希米亚人，但我觉得北京的生活节奏和气氛都很有意思的。

我认为对于你这个很有才能的人，找到一份高薪水的工作一定没问题！我希望你在中国出名儿啊！

保持联系！

小虎

if ur going to do videos at least but some hot chicks in there..not a bunch of dweebs.

Ha ha, classy canalbar.  Maybe cpod can produce some Chinese porn...that might burn some vocab. into our brains.

yea,  I have a pornographic memory. That should work out just fine.

just being honest..ur welcome.

Only a small comment to Frank's video, where he tries to explain "胖 [pàng] fat, plump".

胖 [pàng] fat, plump
has two parts:
left side: 月/肉 [ròu] flesh, not moon!!
right side: 半 [bàn] half (phonetic)

Mnemonic:
to be 胖 fat: i.e. the 月 flesh has grown by one 半 half of the original size...

Radical trivia; in some traditional fonts, the flesh and moon radicals are distinguished by the 'bars', which are parallel for moon and close in to the right for flesh.

xsw234rfv - Yeah, I know. John had already pointed out the error to me, but it's a great mnemonic nonetheless! Thanks!

xsw234rfv

I like the mnemonic of "the 月 flesh has grown by one 半 half of the original size", and it makes more sense than "half moon", but you have to remember that Frank's video was just a demo he put together to pitch the idea of teaching Chinese characters through video to the good people here at Chinesepod.  I don't think Frank was ever claiming to be an authority on the subject of teaching Chinese Characters. The main point of the demo video was just to show how easy and inexpensive it is to bring high quality video content to Chinesepod and that the perfect application of that would be to teach Characters.

xiaohu -- Yes, exactly. Thank you for that. I'm just an Elementary/Intermediate learner, but I had hopes that the academic team there could provide the content for the lessons, but allow me to produce a show that brought that content to their subscribers with a little entertainment thrown in.

Better luck next time! :)

frank

I would love to see you be the man to head up video production at Chinesepod, too bad it looks like it wasn't meant to be.

By the way, I'm a Producer and Director as well.  I'm working on editing an independent film I self produced and directed.  Though I'm not very good in the way of special effects or sound, if you have a free moment, maybe you could give me a few pointers on how to remove 60 cycle hum from audio via Final Cut and how to do color correction that looks natural?

xiaohu - Yeah, I managed to eke out that we were in a similar field from your reply to me in Chinese. Took me a while to get through it, being an Elementary learner, but I got there. :)

Feel free to contact me offsite at newbabel at gmail dot com. I can't help much with the hum in FCP, but I use After Effects for my color correction. Anything having to do with sound I bring into Soundtrack Pro. A tool for everything. You can't hit everything with the same hammer. :)

Okeydokey. It's seems like the storm has ended here. Not a single comment in two days!! :-)

Anyhow: I have added the first more comprehensive post to my own Component Show. Its' silent, it's long, totally video deprived and it can possibly be boring too. As I am totally unpredictable - even in my own eyes :-) - it came out as something entirely different than what I had planned: A Bloody Kanji Lesson! For student at JapanesePod101. But of almost 100% equal relevance for students of Chinese/Hanzi and ChinesePod.com.

The Hanzi Kanji Hub

direct link to Kanji Lesson One

I am all ears re: comments, but I think it would be intrucive to add the comments here so use the blog (or email) for your thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks and Happy New Year!!

Kanji Hanzi

Yes, the storm seems to have passed.  It would be smokin' if this was the most commented post.

Hey guys, we are awaiting for the new one...

Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I thought it was pretty funny.  I also like the fact that it's in the video format.  Sometimes, I find it much easier to focus on a video rather than just audio.

I feel like the video didn't work that brilliantly as a comedy show - but the content was fine.

I think with charcters - the video would have to bare repeating - and this would grate with me after an inital watch through.

On the plus side - it was excellent to 'get outside'. It wouldn't hurt to see characters in their natural habitat as deformed as they sometimes get.

The humour idea works in one way - it makes it easier to recall things, but clearly it has been hit and miss. So I would hope you could come up with something as stylish as the vocab tours - with as much insight as possible.

I am pretty sure ll decisions have been made  on how to progress - but I love my own opinions almot as much as I love voicing them. :P