New Exercise Iterations
John
December 28, 2007, 10:00 AM posted in General DiscussionWe have heard your pleas about the exercises, and we are responding.
You'll notice that the exercises are a bit different for the newest lessons. The main things you will spot are:
1. Larger font sizes
2. Switching between simplified/traditional/pinyin will not reset
3. Matching now comes first
4. The buggy ex-exercise #3 has been replaced by a new multiple choice exercise.
Try it out and let us know what you think!
There will be more changes made in the coming weeks (the matching exercise will be greatly improved, for one), and we are looking for user feedback. Once we make enough of the necessary changes, we'll be replacing the exercises for ALL the old lessons.
Feedback is very welcome.
John
June 02, 2008, 03:49 AMman2toe,
Thanks, and I totally agree with you. Exercise 3 was originally designed to support either pinyin or characters, but there was a bug which prevented the input of pinyin in many browsers which we could not resolve. I still hope that we can, as that would be a much better exercise for various levels.
John
December 28, 2007, 10:30 AMHenning, Yes, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that point #2 only applies to Exercise 3, but it will also apply to all future exercises, including the new version of Exercise 1, which is coming next. What we are working toward is a better mix of automation and editorial control. Going forward, expect more changes which will result in better exercises. (Currently, I'm not a big fan of Exercise 2. It's sort of on my hit list. Is anyone a fan1?) We have plans for MORE exercises (not just 3!), which will make the exercise selection menu in the beginning more relevant. If everyone finds it annoying, though, we can remove it. Other thoughts?
wildyaks
December 28, 2007, 10:47 AMLooking forward to further developments. So far the changes do not do much for me. They are useful to reinforce vocab and sentence structures. But I don't even have to think much to get them right. Too easy for me
bazza
December 28, 2007, 11:11 AMI still miss those grammar points thingies, they were fun.
lunetta
December 28, 2007, 12:52 PMI'm with Wildyaks. After a while the exercises just get too easy even though I keep using them to reinforce my character reading skill. Especially the one where you have to pick out the right sentence annoys me. Even without understanding most of the characters it's too easy to pick the right one when the only difference between the two choices is the position of 吗. It would be more fun and challenging if we were just given a mix of characters from the lesson and told to put them together to make meaningful sentences.
AuntySue
December 28, 2007, 12:59 PMDo you mean those flash animations of a lady at a blackboard? They were cheap, they were silly, the Chinese accent was hard to understand and annoying, they didn't cover very much, and what they covered wasn't always clear especially for a newbie, they hogged my bandwidth for little data, and their pace flipped from hey-what to boringly tedious, mostly the latter. But they got me in. At that time they made me feel really really excited about learning Mandarin, more excited than anything I've seen before or since. You see, it wasn't about Grammar at all, it was about showing me what I can do with the language by myself, and I kept wanting more of that. I still do.
AuntySue
December 28, 2007, 01:06 PMI too have found the exercises too few, too easy, and finished once and forever real quick, so they seem more suitable for later review than at the time of that lesson. With the introduction of The Fix, I didn't have much use for the exercises. Well that sounds like it's about to change, and I'm holding my breath. It's very important to be challenged, but it's a thin line with no safety net. Occasionally, more so in the cpod dark ages, a question seems to be testing something I haven't been taught, which makes me put knuckle blood on the wall rather than humiliate myself by asking a question in a newbie discussion area that's drifted into long foreign scrawls of Tang poetry or something. And then after all that, if I discover later that it was a typo that caused all that angst, it makes me... you don't wanna know what it does. ;-) So please, especially for Newbie(/Elementary) students who will slavishly memorise without evaluation, don't let accuracy slip down from the number one priority spot that it currently holds in order to get new features out. Anything less than 100% correct is a big turn-off.
lunetta
December 28, 2007, 01:06 PMOh, and the new selection is nifty, especially when you add on more exercises. It just needs to be a bit more clear what each section is. As it is now it's a bit difficult to see which is which. It might be a good idea to use different colours for a quick identification of the exercise you want to go to.
lunetta
December 28, 2007, 01:20 PMAunty Sue, you're absolutely right about the need of accuracy for the newbies. It's no use to be challenge if you don't know whether your attempts of putting someting together by yourself in Chinese are correct or not. That's my other beef with that exercise as well. Sometimes the computer has generated two sentences that are both correct but you can only choose one of them and it just makes you very confused.
henning
December 28, 2007, 10:27 AMI know how you think of the HSK. But in my opinion, the typical types of HSK test questions would actually fill a gap here.
wildyaks
December 29, 2007, 08:06 AMthe pretty exercise selection menu takes a while to load. i could do without, 但无所谓...
John
December 29, 2007, 08:55 AMwildyaks, It's not actually the menu that's taking a while to load, it's all the exercise content that's loading at the same time.
henning
December 29, 2007, 09:16 AMI like the idea of a menu. My problem with the current implementation: You need to use the horizontal scroll bar to move along. And I did not expect to see something on the right here. Besides horizontal scroll bars are evil. Why not use big, visibile back and forward buttons? Regarding the effect: Actually I do not care. I am not that stylish. I can also live with a plain menu.
wildyaks
December 29, 2007, 09:53 AMI sure appreciate the effort that is being put into developing this section!
John
December 29, 2007, 04:51 PMHenning, Actually, you don't need to use that ugly horizontal scroll bar. You can just click on the "pages" of the exercises.
earls
December 30, 2007, 02:52 PMThank you for the continued development effort with the exercises. * The larger font sizes are much easier to read, but still a little pixelated. * I think that the sound effects are gratuitous. * Exercise #3 is much improved.
jane
June 02, 2008, 02:19 AMJohn
I really like the new excercise section.
I have one request! Is it possible to adjust section 3 to accept traditional characters with the tones 1 2 etc., because I don't use pinyin?
Sorry to cause problems
man2toe
June 02, 2008, 02:48 AMHi John,
There has been some critizism of this new change, and some of it is constructive. From my chair, having gone through past upgrades, I have found this one refreshing, intriquing and painless. As a team, I think you have all learned from your growing pains and we as users are benefiting. In short, thanks.
Like Jane above, the exercises that require fill in the blank pinyin (from Intermediate lessons and up) is under shooting the learners level. As a learner very interested in characters, I would like a fill in the characters option. For those who prefer not to learn the characters, I can see the need to maintain the pinyin option.
Just some food for thought. Peace,
John
December 29, 2007, 07:19 AMLet me just reiterate that the latest new exercises are just the first part in a multi-step process. We are already developing other exercises which will do a better job reviewing the lesson content. The new exercises are also being designed to be more flexible so that our academic developers can get more creative with them. I think it's also important to note that there are multiple ways to use the exercises. Some examples: 1. Do them after studying the Vocab and Expansion sections to test your grasp. 2. Do them after looking over the Vocab, then go to the Expansion section if you run into trouble. 3. Do them as a review of a lesson you worked on last week or last month. 4. Do them for a lesson you think is probably too easy for you just to make sure you have no problems (without even listening to the lesson). If you have problems, look at the Expansion or Vocab, and possible listen to the podcast itself, if you need it. I appreciate the feedback. So how many people want us to drop the pretty exercise selection menu on the front? Does anyone think it's a good addition?
henning
December 28, 2007, 10:24 AMad 1) Fonts are better. ad 2) Most important update, but does only work for #3. #1 and #2 do still reset. #1 used to be my old Pinyin-checking Excercise (as the actual matching is usually not that tough). ad 3) does not make a difference for me. ad 4) Exercise 3 is a lot better. New entry page: The effect at the selection pages looks nifty, but is not needed usability-wise. When I did the lesson this morning I mistakenly assumed #2 and #3 had been cut away. Content-wise the exercises still show that there is a good part of automation behind them which reduces the challenge. They are good for seeing the Expansion sentences and vocab items once or twice again, but not for actually practicing sentence composition and grammar points. What I would love to see would be more mean exercises, directed at the typical mistakes a learner makes: including or omitting a 了 or a 的 or chosing between prepositions. Or selecting the most fitting Chengyu. At best with a short explanation I know that those kind of exercises would be really labor-intensive. But on the other hand they would not need to come bundled with the lessons. Rather with Qing Wens or the Grammar Guide...