Anyone else having severe difficulties at Intermediate level?

Auntie - I'm very heartened by your messages. Qing Wen is fine, but a little on the "light" side. For example, the episode on when to use 'bu' and 'mei' was, dare I say it, too elementary ! I had already picked up the information there from the podcasts I had listened to. What it didn't explain were other instances for the use of 'mei', or it's nuances. Some cases had puzzled me for a long time...for example, 'mei' may be used, it seems, in the present tense to describe a state to describe things as they are, without any personal feeling for the state or implication about anything or anyone else.

eg 那个男人没有戴帽子 just informs us that the man doesn't wear a hat, but 那个男人不戴帽子 might imply that I know him well, or that he doesn't like wearing a hat, or that his head is too big to wear a hat, etc.

This simple sentence bothered me for a long long while because it seemed to break the rules. I couldn't find an explanation for it, and found myself in the position of "reinventing the wheel" in trying to understand it. In the end a Chinese friend was able to explain it to me. But I had spent literally hours and hours vainly struggling with it....looking online, in books etc. My time is limited, and I could have used all that time more profitably learning further Chinese. At that rate I'd be at Intermediate level in no less than 5 years ! Haha!

I'm still not sure about this usage, but at least I have something to go on now. If I submitted requests for help on everything I didn't understand I'd be writing questions forever.

I absolutely agree that Grammar-focussed learning is not the way to go, but I strongly believe that the finer points of grammar should be discussed through examples. I, for one, feel all at sea without a map if I can't understand the reason behind what I hear and read, and am far from confident in what I say when I want to convey something.

ChinesePod is the best at what it does, but for me it is only one tool amongst many.

One of the greatest contributions to ChinesePod is in the discussion section where Mike in Ewshot adds his list of much of the new vocabulary found in the lesson banter. If you go to earlier intermediate lessons, before August 2007, you can usually see his list near the bottom (most recent) of the entries. This makes the work of listening much easier, and you can decide how much and when to learn the additional vocabulary.

Well, people who've weighed in to the discussion already are far more skilled at Chinese than I - I'm about the same level as the poster - but I don't know that any one resource would ever be sufficient for language learning. Certainly classroom lessons are not for me (even with the homework). Neither is working a traditional textbook through, though that's good for writing and reading ... What ChinesePod offers is a vast volume of practical conversational content so I can get the same words from a different angle and repeat phrases on demand .. I cannot get this from even the most tolerant of my friends.

Maybe my studying abilities have been destroyed by tv but having to drill on the same sentences over and over bores me to tears. I would rather listen to a new lesson that I understood 80%. The fixes are also good for this as they hit the same vocab a different way. The syntax thing has never bothered me particularly but I am learning from traditional textbooks.

As for how I attack the lessons - if I don't understand some of the Chinese banter I ignore it. I'll go through the dialogue a number of times if the content interests me. Am still listening to all of the Elementary lessons, and getting new vocab. The appeal of the medium is you don't need to drop earlier lessons to move on to a new level, you can just adjust the mix of time you spend on each. I am now finding some of the Elementary lessons a bit easy, but this merely reassures me : )

Yikes, that sounded harsher than I had intended. But seriously, I think it would be fair to make it clearer in all the promotional stuff ("Mandarin on Your Terms!" "Community of whatever!") that CPOD is NOT a "stand-alone" learning resource, simply because it doesn't teach the most basic syntax in any systematic kind of way. You can learn 10 new Chinese words a day for a year and still be "unintelligible" if you don't have a decent grasp of Chinese syntax.

Having said that, the Qing Wen podcasts do go a long way towards teaching syntax. And CPOD is a great supplement to formal classes, because you can find a lesson on just about any topic covered by your teacher/ coursebook and give it a good workout. But this is really more in the realm of "enrichment", than actual teaching of core rules of syntax.

Hello. Dear OP, I really wish you all the best. And for what it's worth, I do think that a lot of the blame for the "transition pain" can be laid at the door of CPOD's "grammar lite; zero calories" approach.

If it were possible to teach Chinese without covering some very basic Chinese syntax, or to jump in at just any lesson, we wouldn't have so many (very valid) questions each day from learners who are at sea because CPOD has somehow sold them the notion that "Mandarin on Your Terms" means that you can/must be your own teacher.

Not true. CPOD's great weakness is that "getting" a grammar/ syntax point often depends on being able to catch something that Jenny, John, or Ken said during the podcast. But I'm sure that CPOD is working on this...

Marchey...What you suggest is what I plan to do. I will stay with the new elementary casts and attempt the occasional new Intermediate cast, working backwards. I agree that it's a pity CPod isn't as comprehensive as it could be.....I'm focusing on other resources for more detailed English explanations of grammar, and to fill in the gap between Pod Elementary and Intermaediate lessons.

I didn't find the jump between Newbie and Elementary difficult, but I need to go elsewhere to bring myself up to Intermediate level.

Thanks for your advice and suggestions everyone !

A lot of useful things have been said already by others.

I have finally managed to latch onto this intermediate level. This is how I did it:

1. By using other resources than CP, which is a shame really because that means CP is not a one stop shop and the drop-out rate between elementary and intermediate must be big because of this.

2. By focussing on the latest lessons in the series. They are a lot more accessible than the earlier ones. I feel that in the earlier lessons the difference between intermediate and upper-intermediate was not so big.

3. By continuing to pay attention to lessons at a lower level. In the beginning of the transition, just pick a lesson here and there and try to understand by listening to the podcast and glancing at the dialogues. For real vocab study and writing I continued to focus on elementary lessons.

4. As soon as you hear a lesson where you have the feeling that it is something that you could tackle, either because the subject is interesting (for you) or maybe because it seems to be one of the easy ones, just work at it thoroughly. Expect to spend maybe 4-6 hours on it if you want to master it completely (including writing the characters). It is by spending this much time and effort that one day you will be able to make the jump...

I am still convinced that CP is the best resource for learning Chinese out there. And all my Chinese friends seem to agree on this. So keep up the good work. I just hope that one day someone at CP will come up with some sortr of objective grading system that will allow people to choose lessons that are really at their level within the existing levels. I have some ideas about how to do this, but I would need to increase my programming skills to do so. But that is another story.

Today as I hiked up to Victoria Peak in HK, I reviewed a lot of my old intermediate lessons. And it is my opinion that the newer ones are easier than the older ones because somewhere along the line there was a change in format. This is when John and Jenny started doing the lessons together and Jenny spoke in Chinese while John spoke a lot more English than he did in the earlier episodes. So I highly recommend that this may be a way to attack intermediate lessons, starting with the more recent ones and working backwards. By the time you get to the older lessons, which are almost completely in Chinese, you will be ready.

Some excellent advice from Henning. I have adopted a very similar course of action and jumped straight into Advanced after a few dozens of Intermediate lessons.

Due to my current schedule, I actually struggle to do more than just listen to Advanced podcasts in a loop on my iPhone but I have found it to be very helpful, too. I tend to only look up the absolutely necessary (i.e., otherwise impenetrable) words, trying to get as much as I can from the context. Listening to the same material over and over again and hearing the same words come up in different contexts greatly helps to infer their meaning. (And some character knowledge helps to take a guess at the word's component characters, too, from the pronunciation... :-) )

With virtually no look-up and lots of attentive listening, I have actually been able to go from 10% comprehension on the first listening to about 85% comprehension after a few loops. I am not advocating this as 'the most efficient method' to study and am partially doing it out of necessity but it actually does work!

One thing that does help enormously is knowing WHAT is actually being discussed (the famous top-down approach by Ken). I have found that I can listen to something with 10% comprehension and still struggle to define the subject. Then I would look at the podcast's title, translate it if necessary and be instantly enlightened! And the second listening would actually get me about 40% comprehension - THROUGH NOTHING ELSE BUT FINDING OUT WHAT THE TOPIC IS! This is weird but it really works. I also believe this is rather unique to Chinese: knowing the topic helps you nagivate the sea of omonyms.

RJBerki, it is never old news to someone who is new to Chinesepod and it is important for us to keep sharing things that work for us. I got some good tools and suggestions on this thread. Thanks, everyone.

I also recently purchased the "integrated Chinese" textbooks which are used widely in college classrooms. Cpod has been creating a fix file for each chapter this year at the same pace as the college classes are moving. The books are available in simplified or traditional. Two books cover the first year and there is one larger volume for year two that combines trad and simplified. I have found this to be a good review and additional learning resource.There are corresponding flash card sets on the internet (yellowBridge) and grammar lessons are presented in each chapter. This is probably old news to most, but I thought I would mention it.

-RJ

Henning, thanks for sharing your approach...excellent advice. I'm going to use this going forward. I think using the backwards approach is really smart, even starting as a Newbie.

This is great advice. Thanks Henning and RJBerki. I will try it out for the Advanced, which really should be the level I am working at. I have just been too lazy. Intermediate and Upper Intermediate are just so comfortable...

Thanks Aunty68 for the nice resource above on parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.).

If anyone can recommend some of these specific "early" intermediate lessons that segue nicely between elementary and intermediate, I'd appreciate it.

Henning gives solid advice. I often use the backward technique. I would also say forget about identifying with any "level". They overlap and you should be doing several levels at any given time until you notice an improvement - then you can add a more advanced level into your overlapping studies and perhaps drop one at the low end (although I never drop one). And yes- vocabulary vocabulary vocabulary. This makes it easier to break new ground and you have less work to do. Hanzi of course does lead to vocabulary and aids word differentiation. I worry very little about what "level" I am. Listen repeat re-visit.

RJ

The very early intermediate lessons seem to me to be between the current elementary and intermediate lessons.

Listening repeatedly seemed to help me.

Some lessons are easier than others. You have to listen to a lot of them to find ones that will be more suitable for you. I've found more recent lessons easier to understand than some of the much older lessons. Eventually, it sort of just slots into place. I'm not fully at Intermediate yet, I can cope with easy ones, but the City lessons have been too hard for me.

user21377:

The way I fought myself into Advanced was as follows:

1. I did the lessons "backwards". Meaning: I started with translating the Dialogues, continued to the Expansion and Exercises and listened to the Podcast in the end. That way I knew what was going on even when the banter was above my head.

2. I used electronic and online dictionaries and regularly stopped to look up words I overheard (using Pinyin), e.g. "tidao". This works surprisingly good for the banter, as the vocab is high-frequency and usually pretty straight-forward to find. Soon (after looking them up only 1234 times) vocab like 提到 (tídào "to mention") began to stick.

Nowadays I can reasonably follow the Advanced banter (although I still have gaps that are filled over time)

3. I relisten to podcasts in cycles. Usually with each relistening I discover more meaning, e.g. because vocab from the dialogue has been introduced in other lessons. Even in very old Intermediate lessons I find new treasures, and that is always excing.

4. I forced myself to do this for the Advanced even if I still was not at all at that level. This catapulted me forward rather than bobbing up and down in shallow waters.

The main "trick" is vocab. Vocab. And more vocab. You cannot be exposed to "too few" vocab. I never tortured myself with memorizing, but rather looked up frequently and conciously, words as well as characters.

For the jump to Intermediate I highly recommend learning to read Hanzi as this opens up bridges to breaking down and remembering tons of new words.

Grammar helps, but it does not bring you forward level-wise. I also benefited from Grammar only after Intermediate became cozy.

For Intermediate it also helps, that Jenny's sentences are always translated by John so you have a double-check.

Please don't get too frustrated with intermediate lessons. They require a different set of expectations from elementary lessons. First of all, I can spend a week or more on a lesson averaging 50-75 new vocabulary words a lesson when I include the Expansion vocabulary. For me it is too much to memorize, so I try to be content with just familiarizing myself with the words. I think one of the hardest things for me to learn about learning Chinese in general is not to expect to understand it all right away. First try to listen for the new vocabulary words in the dialog. Then try to listen to the new grammar patterns. Try to get hear a few details of what they are talking about. Each lesson you will hear more and more overlap. You will say to yourself, "I know I've heard that before", and one day you'll say to yourself, that word is "fen1shou3", they must be talking about a break up. In this way you will be able to piece together more and more. I suggest you just listen first for the idea of what they are saying and then work towards the details. It takes time and I don't profess to be able to do it well. But one of my Chinese friends who I feel speaks English quite well has told me that she only understands 70-80% of what I say. Yet we communicate well. So if I could get there I'd be happy. From all your work in elementary you must have at least 25% already. I know your frustration. We want to understand everything just like we understand our own language. But I'm not sure that is how learning this language works. Be kind to yourself. You are doing a great job. We all applaud your efforts. Keep going. You are ready for intermediate.

Thanks for your input, everyone. Chinesepod is a resource, and has it's own strengths and weaknesses. As luck would have it, I think I've solved my problem away from the Cpod, and I reckon I'll be back fully armed and able to handle Intermediate exchanges in a few months time.

Don't strain the brain in the name of the game !

I agree, it just takes time, and it's always good to look at other resources (although Chinesepod is the best, *wink wink*, hehe). I had a hard time also once I started doing intermediate lessons, but after awhile, it got a lot better. It's good practice, especially for your listening skills.

And no harm listening to a lesson a lot of times, you'll notice stuff that you didn't catch the first few times that you listened to it. It's like a light bulb moment - "aha, i didn't get that before!"

Good luck!

I'd agree with both of the above, most of all to learn from a number of different sources. In particular, find some good resources for learning the grammar - for me, that's been the hardest part to keep up with on CPod.

I recently graduated to Elementary, and even that wasn't a cakewalk. I've heard a number of users say the leap to Intermediate was rather painful. So you're definitely not alone.

Yea that's how I felt when I started Intermediate. I still can't understand but keep at it, you'll be suprised at how fast you'll pick up! Good luck!

And another mistake, sorry:

实用 shi2yong4 = practical/ useful

Sorry, finger trouble again, the tones here should have been:

讽刺 feng3ci4 = to mock somebody

Hi. I'd like to second what dennisliehappo wrote above.

And I'd like to add some additional encouragement:

I think I know exactly how you feel, because old-time posters like xiaohu, henning, and changye may remember how plaintive (even desperate) my postings sounded when I was having great difficulty getting any sort of a grip on "Advanced".

Breaking into the next level up will ALWAYS leave you feeling as if you might drown. But after a number of lessons -- for me, it was something like 15 "Advanced" lessons!!! blush!!! --, suddenly it feels like "your" level. You may not feel like you are making any progress now, but you are.

Here is some high-frequency vocabulary to help you catch Jenny and John's explanations (NB: the hanyu pinyin is not double-checked):

形容词 xing2rong2ci2 = adjective

动词 dong4ci2 = verb

名词 ming2ci2 = noun

书面 bi3jiao4 shu1mian4 = formal

口语 kou3yu3 = "spoken"/ colloquial

实用 shi3yong4 = practical/ useful

贬抑 bian3yi4 = negative, perjorative

讽刺 feng3ci3 = to mock somebody

Hope that is useful to you in some way. Another thing I can recommend is to listen to every single Qing Wen, because if you have Chinese syntax under control, you will be in a better position to guess the meanings of what you hear in the "banter".

Good luck!

Hi user21377, having read your message I think that you are definitely ready to tackle the intermediate level.

Here are some suggestions that might help you.

Use more than one resource to learn Chinese.

Don't try to learn the entire language,but just the portions of the language that are most meaningful to you as a person