Elementary --> Intermediate

My personal preference would be that the banter would remain mostly English until the upper intermediate level. The fact that Jen speaks almost entirely Chinese makes these lessons harder than they need to be, but that is just my personal opinion. Sink or swim doesn't work well for me. At least not yet. I do agree with your assessment regarding active vs passive learning.

I can only comment on the great elementary transition to intermediate debate by analogy, because I was already at intermediate level when I started listening to Chinesepod. Every next level has its challenges. For me it was the advanced lessons that seemed insurmountable for a time. My advice would be:

1. Keep at it. 2. Be an active rather than passive student. 3. Remember, you don't need to understand everything to benefit from a lesson. If that were my criteria, I would still be listening to exclusively intermediate and below lessons. A few mysteries to crack, is a good thing.

Back when I couldn't understand most of the lesson banter that was in Chinese, I felt that the English portion of the intermediate lessons was sufficient to understand them. I think John does a good job of explaining the important points Jenny makes, and now that I do understand what she is saying almost entirely, I can promise you that you aren't missing out on anything required to understand the lesson, maybe just some color points and listening comprehension practice. It is not like she is off conducting some whole other lesson, really.

what do you do in terms of revising lessons? (if you even do) Like if you studied a lesson like a few months ago, does it retain well?

RJ, I agree with you. Jenny's mandarin only was a challenge for me at first. But I got used to it after about 10-15 lessons.

darkstar, as you might guess, I retain some lessons better than others. So lessons from a few months ago are dependent on how much I liked them, or worked with them. Ultimately, i'm treating this like a class at school; i try and devote as much time with the class when i'm assigned it, then move on if I test at 70-80% of the knowledge of the lesson. I don't do formal reviews, but I have about 1200 flashcards in cpod that I use when the cpod ipod touch app works. I partly benefit from the fact that there are plenty of cpod lessons with the same theme (Lao Wang and others), so I don't have to do a deep individual lesson review to get the benefit of a review. But no doubt, I should be doing better. If I were to grade myself as if i'm in school, i'm probably getting a B-/C+ right now.

One thing i've started to recently re-learn is that I need to work more with writing out sentences and working with sentence patterns. At the intermediate level, sentence patterns are getting more complex, and if you don't know/work with the pattern itself, you start putting words you know in the wrong order, and that really is what confuses Chinese people the most when I speak, not my atrocious tones :-)

yeah that's a reason why I'm reviewing a bit more now is that I understand sentences but then I try to think of them myself (as in patterns) and I just completely blank out. The only positive about that is that I always remember what lesson I actually learnt it from haha, if only I wasn't as dependant...

Thanks for the advice, I should take advantage of the flash card function, been taking advantage of the glossary function which I didn't realise was so helpful.

Mark

I guess I have more trouble with the banter than the lesson. It overwhelms you to such an extent that you just feel left behind. I have learned so much, but I know so little.

' I have learned so much, but I know so little.'

Hee hee, absolutely! In terms of what we know we peaked at age 14; we knew pretty much everything then. We have been steadily declining ever since.

Hi Paul,

I have no great insights, but Mike Tyson did have a pet Tiger at one time. Thats one mystery I can clear up for you :-).

RJ, I just listened to the show again, and yes I should have caught the meaning of 'lau hu'.... must be the jet lag having just got back.

Re: Ken v John in the Ele shows, I agree that there is more substance and depth with John. However, the problem remains in that the Ele shows are too simple, and they keep using the same range of vocabulary but in different scenarios. I like to see them raise the bar in the Ele shows, have more new vocabulary, and thus narrow the substantial "gap" between Ele and Inter.

Also I think it is time for Cpod to review the show formats. This is the same format since day 1. Surely this manner of delivery should not be cast in stone as the one and only effective way of delivering the shows.... triple repeats in Ele, Jenny only speaking Chinese in Inter, and both John and Jenny only speaking Chinese in Upp Inter? Instead of spending all that time and money this year messing up the Community sections and inventing a convoluted and unnecessary system called the "Dashboard", I think Cpod should have researched on improvements to the show formats. After five years of maintaining the same formats at the various levels, isn't it time to review and ascertain whether there could be improvements? Surely there are improvements that should be implemented, for example, closing the gap between Ele and Inter. Also, I don't see why Jenny or John cannot slip English in for certain words or phrases in the Inter and Upp Inter shows, especially when Jenny is responding to John's grammar questions. Since the dialogues are already in Chinese, why is it necessary for Jenny or John to speak all Chinese in the Int and Upp Int shows? It is already difficult to catch all of Jenny's Chinese dialogue (without first having to spend years self-study on the Intermediate lessons), why is Jenny giving answers pertaining to grammar in Chinese? I think English should be used in all explanations pertaining to grammar in the Int and Upp Int shows.

Anyway, these are my thoughts after just joining back as a subscriber this week.

All good points. No disagreement here.

peonyer,

not sure if it's been mentioned above , but just a few tips.

Firstly, I'd reiterate what Mark says....John just basically translates what Jenny says, so you pretty much have the essential stuff if you just hear what John says and can't understand any of the Chinese ...the rest is just practice to see if you could follow what Jenny said before John translates it for you.

Next...there are some QW's on podcast language....some stuff just crops up all the time...like 接下来。。。meaning next, ..moving on in the lesson

Also, as has been mentioned, this discussion comes up reasonably regularly, so you may find some other useful tips if you can track down those threads. I'd suggest using google to help track 'em down.

Finally, there is a group called Transcripts with Tal where many of the Intermediate lessons are translated by fellow poddies. You might even want to have a go yourself at some stage. I think it really helps your listening comprehension. Good luck :)

peonyer, I was also a 90 lesson pimsleur graduate. My problem was that when I got to Beijing and I had to get myself around, Pimsleur didn't really seem to have an answer when the taxi driver turned around and said (what I think was) "mind if I take 3rd ring road?' to the hotel I requested. When I desperately needed Chinese, all I could remember of pimsleur was "do you want to drink something?"

If you are planning to come to China, as you know, Pimsleur is not enough, and no one else does Pimsleur. Unfortunately, Pimsleur doesn't seem in danger of coming out with Mandarin IV - XXX, which was what I needed them to do to learn enough real-world Mandarin, if I was going to come to China for any length of time.

peonyer,

Let me say first that everyone learns differently, but I have to disagree when you say the elem lessons are not done well. In fact they have improved immensely since Ken left. Ken had a pretentious, patronizing style that I didn't care for much. Jen and John sometimes play "smart cop dumb cop" where John assumes the role of the learner and Jen the teacher. I think they learned this from Ken, (only he wasn't pretending). John, I know is smarter than that, so its a little silly, but no big deal. Anyway I wont pick on Ken any more since he is not here to defend himself and some of the quirks of the presentation have nothing to do with the lesson material itself. I find that the elem lessons are good for hearing/speaking practice where a higher level lesson is needed to learn new vocab, reading, and sentence structure. Some other folks pick up the hearing and speaking part straight away and the other skills lag behind or in some cases, keep pace. I should be so lucky. I also started with Pimsleur, which is the best CD course out there, but I got so sick of those lessons, and there is no written back up. Big problem for me. At Cpod you have fresh material continually so words are heard over and over in different contexts and their meanings become clear as they lock themselves in your memory, just as is done in learning by immersion. I don't think there is any magic answer to the transition problem. Just keep at it. The ice will finally melt, or so they tell me. To this, I am looking forward.

Peonyer, your query about the difficulty transitioning from Ele to Int again confirms the one big weakness in the Cpod's program which have till this day not been adeqately addressed by Cpod... namely very poor lesson content planning to facilitate progressive learning. The Ele lessons are too simple and repetitive using a narrow range of vocabulary, while the Int lessons are choked full of new vocab. I've studied the over 300 Ele lessons and about 100 of Int lessons and yet looking at the vocab in the Apart Renting, many of the words and phrases are new to me. Unlike text books like Integrated Chinese and unlike college courses (yes, there is a college here in Toronto with progressive levels of courses in Mandarin, if I recall up to 8 levels) Cpod's lessons are planned ad hoc and somewhat whimsical. There is insufficient planning and no gradual progression of difficulty levels in the lessons and so there is this sudden shock and huge gap when transitioning from Ele to Int. Thus, the basis of my suggestion that lessons should be selectively picked and that planning one's one progressive levels of study is necessary. For example, if you are planning to visit China for the first time, then study all the lessons pertaining to travel, food, and health. If you are planning to develop relationships in China, then study all the lessons on relationships, which by the way, has the biggest share of lessons in Cpod's inventory.

I agree that Cpod's lesson dialogues are very practical and can't be found in text books... this is its great strength and attraction. I got by OK in China by just being able to understand the gist of Chinese spoken by hotel & restaurant staff, and vendors; and by just being able to speak a few key words to get my message across. Ha..ha.. I recall the first day checking in at the Beijing hotel... the hotel bellboy was very diligent (after receiving a tip) and was over-showing me everything about the room, except the safe. So I asked him "Safe, 在哪？" He didn't understand "safe" and I didn't know the Chinese word for it. So I said "Vault, 在哪？" He didn't understand that either. I was scratching my head trying to find the right word. Finally it dawned on me to say "箱，钱箱，在哪？”"Oh, oh", he said, "保箱". Then he brought me to a broom closet where there was a small safe sitting UNBOLTED on top of a small old table. I lifted the safe under my arms and we both laughed.