More Natural Speech!

Hi John, "people just don't often use a lot of high level vocabulary," I found this quote of yours very interesting. I won't read too much into it, but it seems to hint that the definition applied to "advanced" at Cpod relies a lot on vocabulary. Where would you place 'fluent'? As in a person has a solid interlanguage that doesn't create odd grammar, excellent pronunciation and such? I think a huge part of the challenge and frustration of learners outside a Chinese-predominant language environment is that they don't have enough exposure and variety in the speech they hear. It's as if there is some 'need' to hit those high vocab numbers. IMO it's much better to add variety and flexibility into one's speech and lexicon that continually adding words. But traditional academic approaches seem intent on the 'push the vocab' mantra. If one builds a nice small base, whether at a newbie or intermediate level, it's much easier to retain and pickup the new vocab as it just comes naturally with additional exposure. BTW, transcription is a lot of work! I realize this from my earlier efforts to transcribe the banter before and after the dialogues. But many people have found it very very useful.

What is "ChinesePera-kun"? I don't use Firefox, will it work with Internet Explorer?

Lantian, I think you jumped to the wrong conclusions here. Only because "advanced" (= not so frequent) vocab comes with a lower densitiy in everyday speech doesn't mean it doesn't come up at all. And when it comes it ofte carries the core meaning, because it is distinction that carries information (Shannon...). More than that some people use "advanced" stuff more than others. My wife for example heavily applies Chengyus and Suyus. They can be used as true weapons of mass comprehension destruction, demonstrating how "advanced" ones skills realy are. So - although I like this kind of lesson - I would plead to keep up those "dense" scripted lessons also. Yes, I indeed do want vocab, vocab, vocab.

This is a great discussion. What exactly is 'high level vocabulary'? Some people think of it as 'difficult', 'obscure', etc. To some, learning classical vocabulary might make sense. This is indeed a laudable/valid aim that would offer penetrating insights into Chinese literature and philosophy, but little in terms of practical value. It might be for some, but I suspect not for many. A word-frequency count doesn't help much here because there are tens of thousands of equally low-frequency words out there. Which ones do we choose? My view is that the world is becoming more complex and specialized. The advanced level vocabulary development that people seek, will depend on what they wish to do with it. It wouldn't be possible to learn all the classical stuff, all the new scientific stuff, all the economics, etc. A classicist's high frequency items might be hopelessly obscure for the economist. It's becoming something of an old saw, but once again, it comes down to choice.

I think what we call "Advcanced" vocab here is still all pretty basic and everyday stuff (with some natural exceptions once in a while) and has a pretty high fequency of occurence. I often rediscover vocab introduced in new Advanced dialogues in the *banter* of older Advanced or even Intermediate shows. Now for the scientific and business vocab: I found that most of those expert terms are pretty straightforward translations that can be derived more or less directly. Reading websites on the subjects I cover at work are by magnitudes easier for me to decipher than most entertainment news items. I always find it really troublesome if classic stuff leaks in or if (as sometimes in news articles) sentences become compressed to the size of a black hole...

Great! I can't wait to listen to the podcast. I'm finding that recently the words that I pick up from the banter of the advanced lessons are fewer and fewer. Usually the new words in the dialogues are new to me, so I am always picking up new vocabulary, but it just seems I've gotten used to Jenny and Xiao Xia's way of speaking. I think for lessons to be truely advanced they should come from a variety of people. That way you get a variety of pronunciations and a variety of word usages. It's always humbling when you're used to having full conversations in Chinese then you meet someone new and you can barely understand them (and not because of their accent). I want to re-post a lesson idea: How about and Intermediate-Upper Intermediate in which one of the characters teaches the other character a card (or some other type) game that many people know how to play? I think this would be incredibly useful.

What I find missing in most Chinese Language are the large array of sentence patterns. "shi...... de" is one of the simplist as well as resultitive verb compounds. However, few go into the more complex sentence patterns. Perhaps one way to use the Upper Intermediate or Advanced lessons is to have a discussion on these topics all in Chinese. Using Chinese to teach Chinese Sentence patterns. That would be sweet.

非常有用 我喜欢流动讲话 very accessible vocab 许多感谢您的坚苦工作

I liked it a lot. In scripted lessons, it seems like every sentence tries to be vocab or grammar significant. Conversation is great for context which is great for retention.

lantian, I use a definition of fluent that i found in a book about learning languages. He stated that he calls him self fluent when he was out last night and when he wakes up he can;t remember what language he was speaking but only what he was speaking about. It seems to work for me. I speak Chinese all day long everyday but If I am telling a story to my parents about something it dosen't seem tedious because I am not giving them a transcript of what happened but I am remembering the ideas and explaining them in any langauge I see fit.

I like it. For those of us who will eventually be testing for the HSK it's good for listening skills. In real life, I've only had a small percentage of people who would 'slow down' or adjust their speed of speech to help me follow the conversation. So, it's good to try to follow a natural speaker's pace.

Lantian, First of all, sorry to be slow in getting back to your original question. Let me explain my philosophy on vocabulary. I'm by no means a "vocab nazi." I rarely review flashcards, and I don't like memorizing vocabulary lists. I much prefer to learn new words "in context," as Ken puts it. That's a big part of the reason I moved to China in the first place. I'm also an advanced student. I've lived in China a long time, and I can comfortably listen to native speakers without much strain. What does give me strain is when there's a lot of vocabulary I don't know. I can guess and make inferences, of course, but the more unfamiliar vocabulary, the more guesses I'm making, and the less certain I am that I have understood everything. Thus, for me, as an advanced student, vocabulary acquisition is important. If I'm just hearing people talk and I'm not learning new words or phrases, then I don't feel I'm getting a lot of value, considering how many words there still are that I don't know. So I want to learn from materials that have the right balance of new vocabulary (preferably presented in such a context that I can pick them up by inference). This applies to advanced lessons, and it applies largely to Upper Intermediate lessons as well. In the 学农 lesson, most of the vocabulary is quite simple. I don't feel that it's appropriate to make an Upper Intermediate lesson by just making a really long lesson with familiar vocabulary. I don't think it helps out all the Upper Intermediate students that are working hard at expanding their vocabulary (and there are certainly a ton of agriculture-related vocabulary that we COULD include in an agriculture-related lesson). Students of Chinese have all kinds of study goals, and when you get to the higher levels, many of them are academic. That said, this lesson is far from worthless! It has a great speed, it presents interesting information that is probably new to most listeners, and it does have some great vocabulary in it. However, to me, the ideal lesson is the full package. And then means the right amount of new vocabulary. That's just a little harder to do with natural speech. (But I'll keep working on it! This entire lesson was my idea.)

Hi John, I'm interested in what techniques you have found best helps you to retain your new vocabulary. My friend, who is Chinese, said one of the best ways is to memorize and recite dialogs. While somewhat tedious and boring, she said it's a very good tool for language learning. What do you think.

billybob, I think it can be an effective method, but it depends. If you really like the song and want to memorize it and sing it all the time, then that's great. You'll likely learn every word in that song and be able to use it. If, however, you're just randomly choosing songs to memorize in order to increase your vocabulary, I doubt it will be as effective. Another thing about learning songs is that if you only learn the song, you won't know the tones. Those have to be studied separately from singing the song. So in some ways you have extra work. Everyone learns differently, though. The more you love Chinese songs, the better it's likely to work.

I think another useful tool is to write your own compositions. Start writing e-mails, text messages etc. to your Chinese friends making it a point to use 7-10 new words from your current lesson. Use them repeatedly in different contexts but ALWAYS about a subject your interested it. Because like John said, if you really like the song then you will be more likely to easily memorize every word in it! The problem that sometimes arises from set lessons is that the subject isn't stimulating the learner. You will learn when your stimulated, and by using your new language whether it's writing or just speaking it, in a context that your interested in then you WILL learn it, because it's coming from your own mind, not the mind of someone else. You are effectively, making it your own. I'm a particular fan of writing because it helps the new language sink in more, and you can always refer to it later. Make sure you recite what you've written because then it will make the connection between the words on a page and the spoken word. If you aren't very familiar with Chinese characters you can try writing in Pinyin and then reciting it. Just remember the best way to learn is by doing, and by doing this, your creating an enviornment of total immersion.

I also find that vocabulary is the limiting factor, both in reading, speaking and understanding. I am not a big fan of flashcards, never worked for me, learning songs neither but repeating dialogues or little chunks does help but best is when you have to produce your own sentences. Reading news is very helpful too, particularly as you can do it online and get assistance from ChinesePera-kun. But creating content is better, writing emails / posting messages is a good start, speaking even better. I have made much progress since embarking on the Practice Plan program where I am being drilled and of course spend a lot of time preparing and reviewing vocab. And with John being an Advanced, I am quite pleased being just an Upper Intermediate.

goulniky do you know if ChinesePera-kun is only for PCs? I tried to install it on my Mac (chrismandarinstudent's suggestion) and couldn't; i did install the trial version of LiveDictionary though and it works really nicely john i don't have much cogent to say, but i listened again to this lesson on my way home from work today, and again really, really liked this format; it's another form that the language is presented to the learner's ear: faster, with the natural ebb and flow of a native speaker's speech; for me, listening is my primary portal/mode of learning right now (not using pdfs) so hearing this interview with the vocab explained helps me understand it's complexity, and it's REALLY helpful when the vocab is explained in English; i realize that i am not learning new vocab nearly as well without working with the pdfs, but i rarely listen to a lesson while sitting in front of my computer; that is why i listen to lessons over and over and over again (inculcating myself!)

Chinesepera-kun being a Firefox extension, I would guess it's OS-independent and should work on Macs, but then I don't have a Mac so I can't test it.

ChinesePera-Kun does work on my Mac, using whatever the most recent version of Firefox 2.0.0.4. In Firefox, look under "Tools" and then "Add ons", and work with the ChinesePera-Kun preferences in there. I can't remember exactly how set up worked for me, but I had to mess around a little in the preferences. Good luck! (You may just have to choose "Toggle ChinesePera-Kun", which is under the Tools menu - that turns it on. I vaguely remember having trouble figuring that out.)

Hi Tianfeng, I think that's a pretty good definition. NOT ADVANCED, IS IT? - That's why I find it interesting that in the Agricultural Life podcast, the interviewee, who speaks in "spontaneous, natural" speech, we consider the podcast intermediate and not advanced. In this podcast John and Jenny also speak pretty much all in Chinese, so what's so different from when Jenny and XiaoXia do the banter? I'm sure it would be confusing to many learners, but I think Cpod could offer in all there versions "natural and spontaneous (like) speech" and have different "access levels." The access levels would be "All English", "A mix of English and Chinese", "Mostly Chinese". I think this approach would do many things, one it would take away some of the traditional teaching emphasis on harder or easier. It's still my opinion that every new word to me is...a new word. Two, it would also reduce the approach of "to make things more advanced" the model-input must be longer, more obtuse, and narrow. Lastly, one could take the same model-input and just approach it from the different 'access' methods. To give one last last example, I'm sure I would learn a lot if one of the very short, simple Elementary dialogues, was talked about by two hosts entirely in Chinese, where they described the hanzi, or talked about nuances in use, or gave some regional accents or other variety. It would be IMO much more helpful than the current advanced podcasts, which I listen to, but don't go over much of the vocab, etc., in a traditional way. Musings for a weekend. :)