New User Questions

Hello Meir, welcome aboard :) The fix is a new feature, so although it is being added retroactively to all lessons, only the recent ones already have it. The Fix is a kind of cognitive shot in the arm to help you consolidate new vocab delivered in the form of exercises on an MP3 file. As for the media section... I think the more advanced users can help you with that more than I can.

Hi Meir, welcome! The Media level is higher than Advanced. I don't have to know any more about it, because it's way above me for the next few years. "The Fix" is an audio (mp3) file containing rapid-fire exercises, which is available for the more recently published lessons. It's a relatively recent (2007) additional feature, but think they've gone back and produced them for some of the older lessons too. After studying all parts of the lesson, use this to check your memory and your ability to respond out loud to questions. Its two main advantages (that I see) are that you can pop it onto your mp3 player and take it with you, and that it gives you practice generating Mandarin words and sentences for yourself. The Fix is quite challenging, and fast, so you have to be ready to blurt out those answers. I like to avoid listening to it until I'm confident on the material, so that it helps my studies by asking questions that I'm not expecting but can probably answer. It's also useful to work through The Fix a few weeks later when revising the lesson.

The media level consists of some article in Chinese, from the press at large, and a conversation between the hosts (all in Chinese) about the contents of the article (or in the latest case a song). Often the articles seem to have more convoluted syntax than do the CPOD dialogs, and the word choice tends to be a bit more formal. For me, personally, I find most of these lessons to be a lot of work to fully understand. As a rough gage of difficulty: I'm fairly comfortable reading 汉字 and I usually can follow 95% of an intermediate lesson on the first hearing.

Thanks for getting back to me with your helpful replies. As I can barely limp along with beginner lessons, both the Advanced and Media lessons were...well...Chinese to me!! If I understand correctly, then the Media lessons are even a notch above the regular Advanced lessons. I have only listened to a couple of podcasts so far, none of which have "The Fix " as part of them , I noticed when browsing that some of the later ones do though. At least now I will know what it is. Thanks again for your helpful replies and your warm welcome.