My first ever comment on ChinesePod

Messed up the links as usual: http://chinesepod.com/learnchinese/colors/discussion http://chinesepod.com/learnchinese/paying-the-bill/discussion

OT: I'm a newbie as it comes to Chinesepod membership. my first comment was only a few months ago, a few days after I subscribed to Chinesepod. unfortunately, nobody else made a comment on that lesson (人体本善) :-(

Wow. Did they all salute you when you visited the CPod headquarters? ;-) What level have you made it to (if you don't mind my asking)?

I think I'm about midway between elementary and intermediate.

sparechange, you have to add a few modesty points to Bazza's last post.

Ah, those were the days, when everyone here was a newbie (only one level), when writing in pinyin with or without tone marks was high cool, when Jenny and Ken both had plenty of time to get down close to the newcomers, and everything about the place was so cautiously experimental. It was very well established by the time I found it about six months later.

AuntySue: ... and we all knew each other by first name ...err ... IMHO henning among others didn't start as a newbie, else I'd like to know how he went to advanced level that quickly. And: Isn't it still experimental around here?

I entered about the time AuntieSue did. Yes, I did not come as a newbie, but it is hard to define what I really was. I knew a few phrases I overheard and quite a few isolated vocab items (context-free). I also brought a bit more than 2000 characters with me (reading only), which I am still profiting from. However, I couldn't form even a simple sentence and also did not understand much. A grammatical newbie so to speak. To be fair I am still not at all "Advanced". I would consider myself (Upper?) Intermediate by CPod standards and Upper-Elementry in the wild. I think none of the current (real) Advanced students came as Newbies. Bazza will probably be the first pure CPod-grown Advanced student... Oh, and I like it here, exactly because it is *professional* (instead of amateur-made) with some experiments strewn in once in a while.

I joined last year September. I was strong basic. Henning's assessment is right on (I like that 'in the wild' phrase, btw. It often does feel like that ;-) A solid technical approach with great personality. They are way too structured in their teaching structure (Jenny/Ken Newbie, Ellie; Jenny/John Intermediate; Joy Expansion etc.---No Exceptions!). But all in all, very impressive and a very solid foundation for my learning.

I'm not very different from Henning (minus a Chinese wife, but 6-months of practice plan ;-) according to which I'm half intermediate, half upper! also came in later in Oct.2006

My account history says I first subscribed on 21 Oct 2005, which if I remember correctly was about 3 days after I first discovered it.

Henning, I always wonder how people can first learn hundreds of characters before learning the language. What about all those zi, that alone make no sense, like e.g. 以, as in 可以 ? Did you learn them in combination or as singular units ? I have a hard time learning a single zi, if I am not already familiar with at least one of the corresponding ci yu, e.g. from a text or dialogue.

Nitrox, I can't talk for Henning but I also knew a good 2000 characters before joining this community. The way I learnt them was just regular learning with textbooks mainly, with only little audio support. So I did a lot of language acquisition through reading, allowed me to get decent HSK rating 3 years ago, and very useful background stuff, I just wasn't able to utter a single word, or at least didn't have the confidence, and had extremely limited oral understanding

Nitrox: I became frustrated at some point between 1997 and 2000 when I found that I could not acquire the language beyond a very, very basic level without characters. So I decided to run against this wall, head first. I bought a set of 1375 German-Chinese flashcards which had the character on the front and about 2-3 example words on the back (I still recall the highly relevant example 老骥伏枥志在千里). I learned with those for years, about ca. 10-20 minutes a day [pausing between 2001 and 2003 because of the dissertation thesis]. With the beginning of 2005 I switched to a flashcard-program on the PC which included about 4000 characters. I descendet into absolute rote learning with that one, 60-90 minutes each day. Pure character recognition, didactic nightmare, not designed for my spongy brain. To motivate me I tracked progress and "high-scores" . No context, no word examples. The fascinating thing was, that everyday texts already revealed first lightbeams of meaning and that I began to recognize written vocab I knew from the precambrian "asking-wife-audio-only-mode" times. Then came CPod and within 2 months I stopped that rote learning. I cannot really recommend following my withered tracks.

Goulniky and Henning, I really admire your dedication and efforts, starting learning Chinese with the characters mainly. I am sure that in my case, was it not for the great audio ressources nowadays available on the web, i wouldn't have started learning Chinese. Character learning involves just too steep a learning curve for me to stay motivated for long enough. This may be because my visual memory is not that great and my listening skills are better. Although I wish I could read more Chinese, I get much more of a kick by being able to follow a spoken conversation than to read a text, so for me characters are secondary. Still, I envy you guys that you already did the "hard work" prior to starting here on Chinesepod.

I find learning to read characters much easier than just listening to the dialogues. I find that when I listen to them, I often can't make much sense of the dialogue on the first listen, even if I have come across most of the words before. However, if I were to read the dialogue first, I'd be able to understand most of it without any problem. I'm always like that though - my excuse for not going to lectures at uni was that I couldn't listen, and I'd learn more by reading the lecture notes in half the time :D

I am totally new here but looking forward to getting to know you all better. From my teaching experience ( not language teaching) the multi modal approach is always recommended, i.e. get the information into your brain in as many different ways as possible. Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing etc. Unfortunately it is hard to find the time (motivation) to dedicate yourself to all of these modes. Obviously some people manage to find the time and motivation more than others. I hope I can.

javcau, What subject did you teach?

I just found myself a study buddy. I'm hiking once a week with a Chinese-American woman, who is helping me develop my skills "in the wild" (I love that phrase, too--it just so happens that in my case, it's literally true). So maybe one day I can join the ranks of CPod-grown Chinese speakers. I'm definitely not as quick a learner as I was when I was younger (I'm only 37 now, but I think we all know there's a difference between learning as a teen and learning as an adult!). But I have about 3 or 4 times as much motivation and persistence. Maybe that's the payoff of this adulthood thing. :-)

16th Oct 2005 was the actual first day I started I learning Chinese as I bought an audiobook for my ipod on that date.