Ele - Intermediate gap. When will this issue be addressed!

Lower intermediate level lessons is a good idea. After all, there are now "intermediate" and "upper intermediate" already. From the customer service point of view, if there is enough interest for a new product, the company ought to seriously consider it.

BRIDGE SUPPLEMENTALS - How about 'bridge' podcasts. These would fit into the Extra Tab and consist of 'bridging banter' for previous old lessons. For example, an Advanced podcast might have an additional 'directors comments' supplemental podcast that uses mostly English to go thru some points and highlights. Similarly, several Intermediate podcasts would get a supplemental podcast with more specific focus or English breakdown of banter or dialogue. Selection of podcasts for these supplementals would be based on original comment thread questions and feedback, and/or perceived difficulty/easiness within the level. In this way, students happy within a level are happy, and students bridging would get some additional help. I really don't see any negatives to this, including it's impact on resources. Anyone out there see negatives? Does it cause more confusion? Not really effective or helpful? 你不说，他们不做。 If you don't speak up, they won't do it!

I think Lower Intermediate level would certainly keep my wanton terror in check when I think about dipping my toes into the level above me, but I wonder about the logistics of it. They're already producing podcasts seven days a week, plus The Fix, plus ongoing changes to the Grammar Guide, plus Qing Wen, plus Movie Madness, plus Dave's Luv, plus the mobile site, plus Zod knows what other features we haven't seen yet. They have finite resources to produce these things and we as an audience have a finite time to consume them. Perhaps the better answer is to take down Intermediate a notch so that it's somewhere in the middle? (That's hard for me to judge where it is now, as they're both way beyond me.) In any case, the short answer is, "Yes, if there's enough interest, the company should seriously consider it," but at what cost? Which of the daily lessons would be forced off the radar? Just thinking out loud here.

Granted, I'm not a good judge of these things (I bridged this gap about two years ago), but I just listened to "It's Over (Again)," and found that though Jenny spoke Chinese more than in the Elementary, John explained almost everything in English as well. Plus (and I say this as a learner, not a ChinesePod employee), it's supposed to be hard. Making the jump between any level, or learning Chinese in general, is hard. At some point, whether it's at the Elementary - Intermediate gap or the Intermediate - Advanced gap or the first time you try to understand two old women arguing over the price of cabbage, it's not going to be fun -- it's going to be a lot of hard, unavoidable work. But if you push through it, you do get out the other side and look backwards and see how easy what you once thought was so hard really is.

LIKE A DIAMOND - I keep hearing about this 'hardness'. Granted for a time I floundered at an 'intermediate plateau', I don't think there is a inherent 'hardness' to these transitions. Soft serve ice cream all the way! Do kids go thru 'hardness'? They get moody and have fits, but...hey that's life. Old school methods made transitions hard so that old professors could keep their jobs. Toss that thinking out with the old ceasar salad! My transitions have been relatively 'soft' and let us not forget that Cpod is now available!! And the internet!! I recommend variety when one seems to be in these 'transition' stages. Engage in the language in a new, different way, this helps give the old stuff time to digest. Then bingo, old stuff is digested and new food awaits. For marchey, I'd like to note that personally I 'awoke' to the intermediate banter after a period of a couple months watching a few Chinese soap operas on t.v. They seemed to have given me enough of the colloquial high-frequency phrases to catch the intermediate dialogues and chatting. Can anyone tell I'm hungry?

Pleeeeeaaaaase add a lower intermediate. Just as much Chinese, but more English. I'm going to listen to "It's Over (Again)" like John suggested, to see if that's different from the others I've tried. I always feel like too much goes by without translation. Chinesepod is the only exposure I get to Mandarin, so absorbing it any other way is dificult. Thanks for bringing this idea up again. TaiPan

I also listen to a few intermediate lessons (in addition to elementary), and I've found that I really can't get past the quick explanations in Chinese. BUT- I listen to each one at least 10 different times (20 would probably be better), and I've found that many times I understand even just a few phrases that I didn't before. But still - it would be extremely helpful to add in that in-between level so the transition is a little smoother. I'm tired of thinking, "HUH?" every few seconds in those intermediate lessons.

I'd fully support the introduction of a lower intermediate level.

John, Ok, good to hear. I will be patient.

When I first started the intermediate lessons, I did have loads of new vocabulary and sentence structures. I still do and I review them all the time. I don't think one can really "own" a vocabulary word or expression until you can use it several times and hear it in several different contexts. This takes time. Don't be so hard on yourself. Relax. Listen to the podcasts and you will be able to pick up more and more. I never understand everything. I try to get the "gist" of what is being said. When I go to China I don't know exactly what is being said to me. But I try to pick out the context. Most of the details escape me, but I feel like I am making some progress because at least I know what they are talking about. Remember when you couldn't even discern one word? You are making progress. Be kind to yourself. Suddenly understanding 20% of an intermediate podcast becomes 30% and so on. But there are no transcripts in real life and podcasts are are lot more clearly spoken. My advice is not to try to understand every word when you first move to intermediate level. I still go back and forth between elementary and intermediate and even newbie because there is always new vocabulary. It lets me know how far I've come.

Hey, I understand that there has to be some effort from my part. My only critisism is about the difference in difficulty between elementary and intermediate. After all these months it still feels like hitting a wall and I have already studied a lot of intermediate lessons. Until recently I thought it was my fault, because I wanted to jump too far too soon. But now I know that I am really through with the elementary level. Ok, by listening to the lesson and working through the expansion sentences I can still learn a lot about the culture, etc and there is the occasional new word, but the challenge is gone. Just as an example. I have just finished the 'Why? Why? Why?' lesson and there were no new words for me and no new characters. I use the expansion sentences as a way to check my listening and writing skills and I was able to understand every sentence straight away and write it down too (just a few little mistakes). By contrast I had a look at the 'Snack' lesson at intermediate lesson. There were about 25 new characters and more than 30 new words or expressions. That is just simply too much of a difference. But from John's reply I know that CP is aware of this, and I am looking forward to lessons that can help make the transition smoother, that will keep the interest going and the motivation strong. Marc in Belgium

I have noticed that C-Pod has been making an effort on the gap problem. I'm just curious though--why are you guys so opposed to the idea of adding a lower intermediate level?

Dave, The number of levels is, to some degree, arbitrary. We could make it 20 levels if we wanted to. But there are three key factors pushing us to find the perfect balance: 1) Classification. If you had 20 levels, it would be pretty difficult to design a lesson for one exact level, or to decide exactly which level a lesson belongs in. In order to be consistent in our designations, we would have to develop a set of lesson standards for 20 levels that we could then apply to every lesson. This would be extremely difficult. Obviously, having only 1 level makes classification easiest. Two would be pretty darn easy too. The fewer the levels, the easier it is to classify a lesson or to design a lesson for a difficulty level. 2) Targeting. We want a difficulty level to match a student's needs. We don't want an advanced student to have to listen to boring, easy material, or a beginner to have to struggle too much. In theory, it seems like adding more levels solves this problem (and it does, to some degree). One thing we have learned, though, is that students don't like being pegged to a certain level. Nearly everyone listens to two levels or more, possibly partly for entertainment value, but in many cases it's to work on different skills at different levels. You might say, "people would stick to one level if there were a level that really suited them," but the truth is that when you're learning a language, you're always progressing. Your level is never fully encapsulated by one level for more than a short period of time. 3) Scheduling. This is where practicality sets in. We currently only have the resources to do one lesson podcast a day (plus the occasional "Extra"). Keeping in mind that we have to cater heavily to Newbies, suppose there were only two levels. It might look like this: Newbie: 4 lessons per week Elementary: 3 lessons per week That's a lot of lessons! In fact, it might even be too many for many Newbie or Elementary learners to keep up with. I think you can see where I'm going with this. If you add too many levels, and you have to distribute them throughout a publishing schedule with a finite number of publishing slots, then everyone gets fewer of the lessons, per week, targeted at their level(s). So if you get more Lower Intermediate, then everyone above or below that level gets slighted some lessons at their level. This explanation doesn't take into account everything, but I think it's a good start. I designed the difficulty levels, I schedule the lessons, and I am responsible for the ongoing difficulty and quality of the lessons. I am very much involved, aware of the issues, and paying attention. I hope this makes it all clearer.

Marc, We've been working on this issue for months, and it is getting better. Please hang in there. We will not be adding a "Lower Intermediate," but we will be making sure to balance the harder intermediate lessons with easier ones. The next two Intermediate lessons in the lineup are of this easier variety.