Do the Chinesepod lessons have a western attitude?

IMO-they are heavily influenced by western culture. In some instances, this saddens me, in others, I write it off as the world is getting smaller and smaller.全球化

Oh that is so true Mark.. about shared experiences making up one's cultural background. I lived in London for three months a few summers ago and took a class about multiculturalism in England. It was fascinating. The prof showed us clips from old tv shows, talked about shared historical experiences, etc.. for example telling us about the time the pope came to England and what the increasingly secular population thought of that. By the end of the summer, I felt more in tune with the British than I thought possible in such a short time. I'm not sure if it would be possible to explain those experiences in Chinese at the intermediate level though. Perhaps for all you advanced folks.

I think the answer depends on the level. The Newbie and Elementry lessons seem to focus at the needs of a western traveler, desperatly trying to get along and find a coffee / hamburger / vanilla icecream once in a while - and maybe being able to following sports results during his holiday in China. When listening at the Intermediate lessons I always see the more serious business traveler or someone married to a chinese partner. Still a western angle, but with a deeper involvement in Chinese daily life and an urge to communicate his points of view. The Advanced dialogues however for the most part appear to incorporate a pure Chinese perspective. Just take 崇洋媚外 which never would have been written by a European. Even topics that are discussed in the West as well (gender issues, divorce, tatoos,...) world get their Chinese touch at this level.

Yeah, I think Henning is right.. and as an intermediate (married to a Taiwanese), I appreciate that my level is a bit Western in focus, unless the lesson is meant to be about Chinese culture. There has to be a transition with these things..

This is a good question. Jenny writes a good many of the lessons, which makes the perspective pretty much Chinese, but presented in a way that westerners can relate to. At the lower levels John and I have more input, though they are still written in collaboration with native speakers. There's no way John or I could escape bringing some western perspective to the lessons, no matter how hard we might try. I look at it from the question of efficacy: We know where the issues are as westerners approaching the language, and we are more likely to be able to point them out than someone who hadn't been through that experience. As for the cultural perspective, we don't dream up stuff or represent anything that we have not experienced ourselves. We discuss themes internally to verify that they have some basis in the cultural reality in China. I think those observations are valid, maybe even illuminating at times! (How's that for modesty?)

What is a "western attitude", anyway? Is it vanilla flavour ice cream? Is it taking a taxi to a tourist destination? I have the impression that the issue here isn't to point out that Koreans, Japanese, Australians etc. can't relate to the lessons, but that a Chinese feel is missing. Do you want lessons about water buffaloes, rice paddie ploughing and kormoran fishing etc.? Get over it: More than 50% on this globe live in urban areas these days. More Chinese live in cities with over a million than Europeans or US-Americans. Maybe, eastern ideas have had an influence on our thinking, hu?

I would have said "ice cream" in general is a western thing, although I know it must be more common now than when I was first in Kunming in the mid-90s (no ice cream). Cultural attitudes of course exist, but as a language learner, what I need, as Ken said (more at first, probably less later on), is folks to point out where I as a native English speaker might get stuck in speaking. C-Pod does a pretty good job of this. My husband sometimes listens to your advanced and media sections and he's never said anything to me about it not being Chinese enough, but he also partially grew up in the States, so maybe he doesn't notice some of the cultural influences. His issue is actually that in the media section, he struggles to understand it sometimes because the media grammar patterns are somewhat unfamiliar to him. For culture, I appreciate the video podcasts, showing me what it's like to go to a noodle shop or get my haircut in Shanghai.. if you all can also tell me how to better get along with my parents-in-law, I'd perhaps pay extra? :-) One Chinese cultural thing you could show is stuff like tapping your fingers on the table to show appreciation for when someone pours you tea.. or leaving the top open on the teapot to show you need more tea. Stuff like that. Or heck, if you all could go through a grocery store, pick a section and describe the items in it (candy/snacks, tea, veggies, frozen fish things, spices, drinks, etc..), I'd truly use that. Sometimes things are in English in our local Korean and Chinese "Oriental Markets" but even so, I don't always understand what items are used for or what is popular or fun to eat. I don't care too much about rice paddies or fishing, but you could do sessions (and maybe you have) on bubble tea, grass jelly, stinky tofu, night markets, all the foods that come on sticks, those sour dried plums, haggling to buy shoes, how to buy things by weight in a market, things to say to use the internet cafes, inside a 7-11 (or is that just a Taiwan thing?), the different styles of (actual, not American) Chinese cuisine, steamed rolls and how to tell what's in them, getting your laundry done when you're traveling in China/Taiwan.. anything that's fun, useful or unusual for non-asians, whether we're traveling or sitting home at our computers.

"Learn Mandarin on Your Terms" Supposily, this means that whatever is requested is how the lessons are geared, right? So, being that the majority of the listeners are Westerners, that's how the lessons are directed, right? So, it's Jenny writes most of the lessons? What happened to the other curriculm developers that were writing the lessons last year, like Aggie, Connie, etc? Has Jenny taken over their responsibilities? BTW, where is La Guan, the male moderator that showed up last summer? Is he still with Cpod? Or has he moved on? My friends and I think a lot of these lessons are oriented towards Westerners-Caucasians: Americans, Canadians, Austrialian and Europeans. There's definitely a lot of playing up to Westerners. But whomever is writing these lessons, It's kind of like being a banana. [smile] , because she is thinking like one.

I'd say that Henning got it pretty dead-on. Those practical issues as they relate to the most likely audience (in terms of level) are part of what determine a lesson's level. Jenny does write most of the dialogues, but Connie and Peggy also write some. Aggie is fully devoted to Practice now, and Le Guan only worked at ChinesePod for a short time last summer. Ken has mentioned before about how the brain filters out what is confusing or don't make sense. I think this applies to cultural context as well. If the source of information doesn't present the material in a way that you can connect to culturally, you will find it confusing or simply boring<.em>. I think this issue affects a lot of Chinese learning resources out there, and it's one area that ChinesePod is good at: staying culturally relevant to its audience.