Sentence Re-ordering exercises

bababardwan

December 04, 2010, 12:48 AM posted in General Discussion

I like the sentence re-ordering exercises, but let's face it, they're pretty easy when you've just listened to the lesson. I've not done this to date, but I've just realised they'd be more fun and challenging/interesting to do on a lesson you'd never listened to before. Has anyone done this, and if so, how did you go?

bababardwan

December 04, 2010, 01:48 AM

I guess my point/suggestion here is that it would turn it from a simple memory exercise into a whole other exercise from which I think a lot more could be learnt about Chinese dialogues and their structures. Perhaps in some dialogues there will be more than the "correct" answer that could be valid. But even within that dialogue I guess some lines are clearly going to follow others. Even something as simple as recognising that a question that has the word 有 in it is likely to be followed by either a 有 or 没有. I guess lines that contain a question are going to be the easiest to see what comes after. 当然 for example may be a common response to some questions. I guess such grammar patterns will be a little easier to see than perhaps reading the whole situation.

ouyangjun116

December 04, 2010, 08:20 AM

Hi baba, I've done this before. In fact, I do it all the time with Elly lessons. If I score a near 100 on the test, then I don't listen to the full dialog... i just take the test then I'll listen to the breif 30 second dialog and mark it as studied.

In my experience, there is usually only one way that the sentence ordering actually makes the most sense from start to finish. I think it is a good excercise.

Cheers.

bababardwan

ouyangjun,

oh, I see, that's a good idea. I guess I've taken the opposite approach. Listen just to the podcast or just to the dialogue only on the easier lessons.

"In my experience, there is usually only one way that the sentence ordering actually makes the most sense from start to finish"

I guess you're right. I wonder if this is always going to be the case in longer higher level dialogues. Do you enjoy doing the sentence ordering blind like this and have you learnt much from it? I think I'll give this a go next Ellie lesson that comes along.

bababardwan

ouyangjun,

I just found a recent Ellie I hadn't listened to at all...the toothache one. Yeah, that was easy...got the re-ordering right straight up. But I tried an Intermediate earlier...renting an apartment through an agent 4 and found that wasn't as easy to get the order right. Have you tried it in higher levels?

ouyangjun116

Hi baba,

I have not tried it in higher levels... only ellie up to now. But I think I will give it a shot with an intermediate this week as test. In regards to the question if it helps or not, I've found that the sentence re-ordering blind makes me think a lot more than just recalling what I've listened to, so for me it is useful mainly because it makes me think a lot more about the dialog and the sentence structures.

bababardwan

ouyangjun,

Cool, thanks for the feedback mate and confirming what I suspected. If I remember I'll join you in giving it a shot on the next Intermediate lesson too. Perhaps we can see what we come up with and what there was to learn. Jiayou.

bababardwan

糟糕，我已经忘了。我下一个应该记得

pretzellogic

December 04, 2010, 04:00 PM

baba, I was going to attempt this with a lesson i'd never heard, then realized that you were right, this just reorders sentences so they fit the cpod dialog. I've realized that my significant Chinese weakness is reordering words in an individual sentence. So for example, starting with:

Newark to flight Beijing leaves hour in an my from

then rearranging to read:

My flight from Newark to Beijing leaves in an hour.

RJ

have you tried bing xiang tie? This is a great game for arranging the refrigerator magnets to build expansion sentences from our lessons.

http://cid-cb841d691d9279ad.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BingXiangTie.zip

there is a group that addresses this

http://chinesepod.com/community/groups/view/b-ngxi-ngti--%E5%86%B0%E7%AE%B1%E8%B4%B4-221?page=1

and a screen shot here

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/6376

bababardwan

pretzell,

"you were right, this just reorders sentences so they fit the cpod dialog"

...I'm not sure that I'm right about that at all, and wouldn't go so far as to say that there are several possibilities. I suspect for some it may only be the one possibility [particularly shorter dialogues] and for others it may be only one or two extra possibilites [ a few at most]...as opposed to the hundreds of combinations you could come up with arranging the sentences in longer dialogues.

However, I do agree with you that it's even more useful being able to reorder words in an individual sentence. The old exercises [about 2 years ago] used to have sentences where you had to choose the one with the correct grammar which I thought was a good idea, though somehow they seemed a bit easy because I think they just put one word in an obviously wrong spot on some of them [mind you, back then I was probably working on newbie or ellie, so that exercise may have become harder and more beneficial at higher levels]. Still, I'd love to see that type of exercise again [perhaps they are still there on the older lessons...I guess I should go and have a look].

bababardwan

RJ,

Thanks heaps for reminding me about this. I always meant to look into that. Great to hear it's still going. Thanks for the link. I think it was our friend api who invented it, right?

pretzellogic

RJ, thanks for the reminder as well. I remember joining the BingXiangTie group after you and others discussed the post. Then I remembered that i'd have to install an executable file from people I don't know (although trustworthy i'm sure) and got all paranoid.

mark

December 05, 2010, 04:04 PM

For what it is worth, I gave up on the sentence re-ordering excercises. The mechanics of dragging the sentences around just took more time than what I seemed to get out of it justified. It may be that I use a small screen that makes it onerous. I'm not sure. Anyway, the last straw came when I got marked down for miss-ordering two identical short sentences.

I find the matching and bubble tests useful and quick, but I ignore the other excercises, now. The ratio of frustration to utility is too high for me.