Anyone else having severe difficulties at Intermediate level?

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

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.

Sorry, finger trouble again, the tones here should have been: 讽刺 feng3ci4 = to mock somebody

And another mistake, sorry: 实用 shi2yong4 = practical/ useful

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!

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.

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!

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 !

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.

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.

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!

The very early intermediate lessons seem to me to be between the current elementary and intermediate lessons. Listening repeatedly seemed to help me.

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

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.