Dialogue structure
jbowes
January 03, 2011, 12:49 AM posted in General DiscussionAny thoughts/possibilities of having a dialogue section (possibly the last three readings of the dialogue) as a chance for us to repeat after each sentence? I would find it very helpful to be able to hear the sentence and then repeat it a couple of times within the dialogue. Just toss in a 5-10s pause? Or add a third dialogue option?
I posted similar question on a different discussion....but Im not sure where and I have thus lost it. So, if anybody has already answered me im sorry!!
matthiask
hi, what's the replay feature?
chris.k
If you go into the Dialogue tab, you can see a transcript and listen to each sentence individually (the red 'play' buttons). I think that's the one pretzellogic was talking about.
pretzellogic
yep, that's the one I was talking about.
matthiask
oh.... I see. I thought of a loop function.
Btw. am I the last one who saw that you can switch between full lesson and dialogue in the chinesepod player? (those tiny little white labels on the left side)
jbowes
January 03, 2011, 05:02 AMYeah...its tough to rewind an mp3 while running or doing other stuff. It would be so much more useful if we could have a "repeat after me" dialogue option. The dialogues are usually too fast anyway, which is good for real-world applications but the overall educational aspect of more speaking and less listening is what I am after.
I dont usually use computer time to study, its on my own with the dialogues and the mp3 files on the go.
matthiask
at least for the expansion sentences, the Audio review should serve your wish.
bodawei
January 03, 2011, 05:29 AM'The dialogues are usually too fast anyway'
Well, not really. Generally, few people in China speak Chinese this slowly.
In my view the dialogues are slower than real world, but useful for learning because they are exceptionally clear.
jbowes
January 03, 2011, 06:17 AMYes, and no.
Im saying that from a pedagogical perspective, it would be better to start slowly enough to catch all the tones, phonics, then work up to a real-life conversation speed. Dont get me wrong, I love the stuff I get here...totally love it....just thought I would opine on something that I felt could be improved.
pretzellogic
At various points in its life, Cpod has offered a way to give users an area to express their desires for specific improvements. Maybe there's a way to get that started.
paulinurus
This "slow down the dialogue" battle has been done and lost by various poddies in the past, including me. Cpod is a pedagogue when it comes to the issue of dialogues being slowed down for poddies to catch pronunciations and tones. Even in the premium sections, dialogues are speedily done while fans still claim not naturally fast enough as spoken in the real world.. The hope is that someday this pedagogical method will change just as it has on the issue of "grammar" which two years ago was a pedagogical 'no no' at Cpod. (recall what Matt, Pete, and Ken said ?)
I found my pronunication has increased by leaps and bound (so says my Chinese friends) after over a year listening to ChineseClass101 and practicing at Livemocha. At ChineseClass101, the dialogue is natural speed first time, slowed down second time, and repeated third time by the teacher with reinforcement on the pronunication of selected words and phrases. A year here and a year there is my personal solution to this problem.
ouyangjun116
I have to admit, I'm a fan of not slowing down the dialogue's. I've found that maybe a slowed down speed at the very bery beginning is okay, but if you get reliant on that slowed down speed, then you will never be able to get into the real world conversation. I can't even listen to some of the older lessons where it was Ken and Jenny because they talk soooo sloooowww in the dialogue. It doesn't seem to help at all because it's nothing like it will sound in real life. Just my experience.
chris.k
Yeah, hearing the dialogues at a fairly realistic pace is the most important thing for me as well. It might be nice to have a slow version and a fast version available, but if there's only going to be one, I'd rather have the faster one. Since transcripts are available, and everything is explained in detail at the lower levels anyway, I think hearing realistic speech is more important than being able to pick up each word when first hearing the actual dialogue.
What the original post suggested, with pauses to repeat, is a little different- could be useful as another audio-review type thing, but not a high priority for me personally, since it's not too hard to get the same effect by pausing or by replaying individual sentences on the website.
jbowes
January 04, 2011, 12:33 AMI agree with all these thoughts, but the fact remains that to start you need to know the basics. And to listen to even the newbies is much too fast. the dialogue is read three times, so why not slow one of them down, then creep up to the regular speed? Its not an issue of making it less work for me, its a pure pedagogical issue. Full stop. I came to Chinese pod after studying for two years, and if I had started straight with cpod I might not have found it as useful.
Im not too sure I agree with you on the fact, though, that the regular speed cpod uses is much slower than real life. I live in Taiwan and I am daily interacting with the chinese language, and most of it is on par with the speed of the dialogues. Maybe the Taiwanese are more articulate, I dont know.
Anyway, thanks for throwing some ideas around. I stand by my first assertion that a gradual increase in speed within each dialogue would be more applicable to learning.
cinnamonfern
As someone who had no formal classes before CPod, I have to disagree with you about the usefulness of the lessons. I had no trouble learning from the Newbie lessons. Now, 2-and-a-half years later those same Newbie lessons seem painfully slow. None of my Chinese friends talk that slowly. The only time someone did, I could not understand them because they spoke too slowly! :D
The Elementary lessons are a bit slower than people speak naturally (except when they aren't being really kind and purposefully talking more slowly for me as a foreigner). The Intermediate lessons I'm studying now seem much closer to normal speed. Who knows how I'll feel about the Advanced lessons when I make it to that level.
I personally like starting out at full speed the first time I hear the sentence, because it tests my comprehension. Do I understand what the conversation is about? How much of it can I make out on my own before I get the explanation? I would hate to lose this by slowing the dialogue down.
While I disagree with you on the need to slow down the dialogue, I do agree that hearing the sentence over again and having a chance to repeat it could be useful. And this is hard to do with the current setup if you're just using an MP3 player and not all the fun website tools.
mark
January 04, 2011, 05:10 AMI have been in the habit of editting the lesson dialogs to insert pauses so that I could repeat each line while I was commuting. I never quite got Simon Peterson's shadowing method. Listening and speaking at the same time doesn't work for me. Anyway, I have a few hundred I and UI lessons editted like this, and a handful of advanced lessons. It would be nice if Cpod spared me the trouble, but until I saw this thread, I thought I was the only one who seemed to what this.
pretzellogic
January 03, 2011, 01:25 AMI probably misunderstand what you mean, but I'm curious why you wouldn't just use the replay feature on the website (if you're a premium subscriber) to play an individual sentence over and over again. Or if you've downloaded the dialogues down to your mp3 player, just repeating the sentence over again?(I know, this last one is a hassle because a sentence in the latter part of a dialogue is hard to get to. I do this also).