John's Favorite Lessons
John
June 13, 2008, 07:45 AM posted in General DiscussionI put together a lesson set of some of my favorite Intermediate lessons. These are the ones I had the most fun doing with Jenny, I guess. Anyway, if you're interested, here's the direct link:
You can't comment on lesson sets, so if you have any comments, you can leave them here.
xiaohu
July 30, 2008, 06:34 PMI always loved "Girly Talk" especially because of John's dead on impression of the way Chinese girls speak, so often so very 嗲.
The Drug Dealer is my favorite of all because of the level of voice acting, the sound effects, the way they put the whole dialogue together to sound like a movie, and taking risks, being a little daring with the content. Hey why ignore the fact that people take drugs, we should know how to talk about that stuff. But MOST OF ALL because of Zi Heng...boy I sure miss that guy.
John
June 14, 2008, 05:01 AMchangye,
Yes, we know that many learners want more structure, and we are working on ways to do it. It's not going to be grammar-centric, though.
We don't want to just offer what other methods offer; we want to offer something that is consistent with our method and that works well for the user. Simply grouping a few lessons together so that it's more like an online textbook is not something we're interested in doing.
mayor_bombolini
June 14, 2008, 01:37 PMJohn,
Thanks for the lesson set. I've just started to really dig into the intermediate material.
I think most of us enjoy the offbeat lessons. Somehow the material sticks when there's a humorous mental image.
Regardng the text book thing. I'm guessing most of us have text books, so we don't need an on-line version.
You are (or were) doing something interesting with your "Integrated" Blog.
xiaohu
July 30, 2008, 12:34 AMJohn,
I don't think the concept of the "online textbook" is such a bad one.
Here's my suggestion:
If you're goint to do grouping, lets have a control panel that groups together all the most frequent problems that learners of Chinese encounter and the most useful aspects of the Chinese language together in an index, with links out to the lessons where we can access that information.
You can categorize it something like this:
Grammer/Sentence Structure
Pronunciation
Word Order
Chinese Only
Meaning ideas and concepts which don't exist in our language (IE: words such as 把)
Etc. (I'm sure there are alot more which I've failed to think of)
When people are learning a foreign language they often don't know what they need to concentrate on, this way we can build on the experiences of others and know how we shoud prioritize our study and in this way make the journey to fluent Chinese all the more 顺利 and 有意思。
The goal with this would be to give the users a shortcut to success.
John
July 30, 2008, 02:56 AMxiaohu,
I think you're onto something, but perhaps with the wrong groupings. (Every lesson has grammar; every lesson has pronunciation.)
The message is clear: more organization is needed. We have taken this message to heart.
sanptest111
July 30, 2008, 03:04 AMI like these lessons in your lesson sets
RJ
June 13, 2008, 08:51 AMJohn, you have hit on most of my favorites as well. I guess when you enjoy it we do also.
RJ
xiaohu
July 30, 2008, 06:30 AMJohn,
We may have to work on ther actual categorization, but I think there's a way to do it so that it's simple and can allow us, the users to not only steer clear of what's unneccesary but also help us concentrate on what's the most neccesary and also the most useful to us.
ping0000
July 30, 2008, 08:05 AMIt is a good function!
ping0000
July 30, 2008, 08:06 AMNow it is easy for me to set my lessons
ping0000
July 30, 2008, 08:09 AMi think it is easy for me to learn chinese well on chinesepod
sushan
July 30, 2008, 04:59 PMI've been offline for a while and have been reviewing older lessons. I have to say Girly Talk and the Drug Dealer are classics. Make you laugh and think at the same time.
sanptest111
July 30, 2008, 05:56 AM我喜欢这些lesson sets
changye
June 13, 2008, 08:31 AMHi John,
It’s about time that Chinesepod offered poddies some set courses for newbie, elementary, or intermediate lessons. Every course contains, say, 30 or 50 recommended lessons and learners follow the order (decided based on grammatical importance) indicated by Cpod.
Otherwise, a lot of newbie learners would become a herd of stray sheep. There are already tons of lessons here in Chinesepod, and that is just why you need a kind of “set lunch menu”. I don’t know if you already have such things for paid learners, though. Thanks.