ChinesePod Works

xiaophil - touché!!

About the name - waiguoren - I've actually had it since late 2006 or early 2007 back in the days when free MP lessons were the norm. I'll forever remember the day when I headed down to internet bar to get my fix of ChinesePod only to be told, that this material was 'for paying subscribers only'  - I was up to 'The War Zone' (Elementary) lesson at the time and felt absolutely gutted. Then I had about two years of 'one-week free trials' using bogus emails...Not really (only joking), but it definitely but my 'studies' on the backburner.

Well done on 'sneaking' into a few Chinese classes by the way, sounds like something I'd do!

hkboy,

Good question. I give a very wide definition of the term 'study' ranging from just listening to the lesson, to listening to it and rewriting it in Chinese, Pinyin and English. I have never done the extra material. What's more is that my learning needs have changed over time. When I was a newbie, I was just concerned with speaking, used to listen to the dialogue and 'practice' (i.e. repeat it) to whoever was willing to listen. When I was an Ellie, I used to listen to the dialogue and rewrite it in Pinyin and English. Now I consider myself an Intermediate learner, and have developed more of an interest in the characters (something I previously felt was unnecessary) so now I rewrite the dialogue in Chinese/Pinyin and English (if needed). Naturally, there's a bit of overlap there - I didn't study 150 newbie lessons and move straight on to elementary...but thats the beauty of ChinesePod, if you stay in the one level for long enough, there is enough repetition of the same words, but used in different contexts so you become familiar with them. It's really good revision. Right now, I feel very comfortable with the Intermediate lessons, but find Upper-intermediate a bit (lot) too challenging at this stage. (As a side-note,  don't know if anyone's had a similar experience, but I find 'breaking through' the levels difficult - it seemed to take me forever to go from an 'elementary' to 'intermediate' and am finding that now when I try and listen to upper-intermediate).

pretzellogic,

Yes, I'm one of those who has a teaching gig in China which only occupies 15 hours of the week, so I have a bit of time to devote to my 'studies', but I wouldn't describe my progress as 'fantastic'. I am seldom understood when I speak and this can be incredibly frustrating, but the fact is that my listening at least (and to a lesser extent reading/writing), has improved leaps and bounds.

I'm interested in how you feel you have "studied" a lesson.  waiguoren has done 150 lessons before moving on.  Have you just listened to the lesson or have you done all of the extra material provided?

Xiaophil, I suppose part of the reason for my desire for metrics is that i'm struggling with setting "realistic" goals about my chinese progress, given work/family responsibilities.  I'm at times admired  other poddie's fantastic progress with Chinese, then find out that they've had Chinese before, and now they're unemployed, and have plenty of time to dedicate to Chinese studies. If I had that kind of time, i could make that kind of progress. I think all of us could.  But asking you guys to quantify what progress you make has in the end helped me set a realistic goal.  That's been good, and I guess, for me only.

Simonpettersson, good on you.  Sounds like you have the tools at your disposal to help you measure your progress.  If I could make a request, you might also attempt somehow to estimate your time spent on this as well as the word count. 

On quantifying: The method I'm using has the effect that pretty much every word I know is in my Vocab list. This means it can serve as a base for quantifying progress. Unfortunately, I was not using this method until I was at Intermediate, but I can tell you that going from Intermediate to Upper felt right at around 1,200 words. At the moment, I'm at about 1,750 words. Will try to remember to check the number of words when I transition to Advanced.

Hey waiguoren, congrats!  Keep it coming.  By the way, I bet that conveniece store worker is still talking about the time a foreinger came in and bought condoms and said it in a perfect Mandarin accent ;)

Your friend's metaphor about the ocean is great.  I think I'll translate that into Chinese.

PS: I'm surprised I didn't see someone with the name waiguoren earlier.  It's such an obvious choice.

pretzellogic

You can't resist a discussion on quantifying results!  Haha.  Seriously though, you probably have the right idea.  If not the students, educators (and I'm not pointing at CPod specifically) should be looking for a way to tell their students how much progress we should have after how much input.

pretzellogic, it's a little hard to say, as I first began learning Chinese without ryhme nor reason, but your estimate of 1.5 years sounds about right.

I try not to think about the time factor too much - learning Chinese takes an epic effort, but with ChinesePod it becomes all the more enjoyable. I am also reminded of an email I received from my colleague, when I was lamenting my lack of 'progress'. He said:

Just remember that learning any language is a bit like trying to row across an ocean. You just plough on day after day without any sign that anything's changed or that you've made any progress - but that doesn't mean that you haven't made any progress! 

So, you just have to keep on, keeping on. If you want to fast-track your progress, I suggest you enlist the services of a tutor and find some Chinese friends that are willing to converse with you in Chinese.

waiguoren, thanks for that input. Just curious as to how long you think it took you to listen to the 150 intermediate lessons? I'm sure that it wasn't a 7 days/week, every day type progress. 

I'm thinking that at the rate i'm going, it's going to be about 1.5 years before I go through 150 intermediates.  Is that how long it took you? or was it faster?

What an interesting post!

I think ChinesePod has improved the quality of my life by about 86% (at least) since I came to China. Before I came, I couldn't speak a word, now I can order food at a restaurant, or over the phone, ask for less 辣椒, tell the waiter to 'hurry up' in true Chinese fashion, ask for cold beer, get water delivered to my apartment, take a taxi, book train tickets, understand airport announcements, buy a SIM card, add credit to my cell phone, get a massage, buy condoms, consult my drug dealer, and then ask for a refund! (开玩笑).

I too, like Xiaophil, may have used an alias or two during my learning journey, rely primarily on CPod for learning Chinese and have moved through the levels in a most ad-hoc way. I think it keeps things interesting.

There's been a bit of talk in the discussion about 'quantifying' things. Now, that I'm an officially paid-up poddie, I am plugging the numbers into 'my archive' and found that 150 seems to be a magic number for me; 150 newbies/150 elementary/150 intermediate, before I feel I have truly 'mastered' each level. 

In sum, I agree. ChinesePod definitely works.

谢谢 CPod.

Thanks xiaophil.  I skipped around myself from level to level, but found upper intermediate was giving me challenging sentence structures, and now i'm heading back down to intermediate and elementary.  probably at 30 intermediates will I feel i've accomplished something.

Well guys, the problem is I really have no idea how many lessons I took before I jumped to the next level (and besides, I skip randomly around from level to level), and I wasn't solely using ChinesePod as my method for studying.  I can only give my assurance that ChinesePod's impact was quite significant.  A feeling, yes, but a feeling I'm confident is right.  Wish I could answer better.

That would be my estimate of the number of lessons required to start understanding intermediate lessons based on my experience.

For all, cpod has also been a tremendous help for me.  Those 1000+ lessons on numerous topics have been a godsend.  I know I would struggle with even more language instances here in Beijing were it not for cpod having the "taxi taking you the long way" or "at the bike shop" lessons.  Personally, I think the greater variety of topics, the more cpod makes itself valuable to customers (hint: CPOD has enough food lessons, and now maybe time for a few more star trek, or more arcane lessons to broaden vocabulary and situations that subscribers can call on).

But my focus on metrics is because i'm realizing that it would have been helpful to focus my Chinese studies around quantifiable ways to measure progress.  More important would have been to suggest that for those of us that are using cpod as a university class substitute, there is a minimum amount of time that you want to spend studying mandarin, else the benefits won't stay with you. 

Personal metrics to force my progress that i'm now starting to use include:

1) 10 hours/week.

2) 40 new sentence words/week

3) 10 characters/day.

The idea is to have around 4000 words in my vocabulary within a year.  Not that 4000 words makes you "fluent", but with 4000 words, you've got decent command of everyday situations, and when you encounter new words or situations, if someone simplifies the explanation around the new situation or word(s), you'll understand the explanation. 

This need for measurable, quantifiable progress has become really apparent to me since i've moved to Beijing. I've talked to a few other expats here who I later found out were cpod subscribers.  Our situations are similar; moving here for 2-4 years, and now must pick up mandarin without the benefit of a university class, and lack the time to take a university class, since we're now working adults with school-age children.

I really don't want to be in China for 3 years, and then say that I don't really know mandarin. Without these metrics, I haven't been forcing myself to spend the MINIMUM time necessary to learn mandarin. 

Hi Sebire, It looks like some of the text in your explanation is missing.  I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say.

I reckon... a month's worth of Newbie lessons, so that would be about 12-15, if you did three or four a week, and then overlapping Ellie and Newbies for around 2 months, so that would be around Ellies a week, so 15 lessons, and around 8-10 Newbies, then I dropped Newbies and continued with Ellies probably for another couple of months before starting to overlap with Intermediates. So I reckon 30 Newbie and 30-40 Ellies with weekly Qing Wens can get you in a position where you can begin to understand Intermediate (though not much). Howzat?

Another metric: Count the number of unknown words in a Chinese lesson at a given level. Or - if that gets boring - do it with a Chinese news article.

xiaophil,

Here's somethng you might be able to quantify:

How many Newbie lessons do you think it took you to start on Elementary, and how many Elementary lessons do you think it took you to start on Intermediate?

Hi pretzellogic

To be honest, I have no idea.  I listened to a lot of lessons while on the subway, running or in transit in general.  My theory has been if my hands can't do anything else at the moment, listen to a CPod lesson.  Some people work out a neat studying plan for learning Chinese, which I think is a good idea for many.  Myself, I just study Chinese any chance I get and by any method that appeals to me (ChinesePod being the prefered one in recent months).  So, the degree of help recieved from the podcasts cannot be known in any scientific way. Alas, a disappointing answer, I guess.

To everybody else

Thanks for the nice words.  I have to admit my Chinese is far from being where I want it (and is possibly worse than what this post impies).  I still say 再说一遍 far too often, but it is a good feeling knowing I am getting somewhere.

xiaophil, just curious about any quantifiable metrics you might have about either the number of lessons you listened to, or the amount of time that you actually spent listening to cpod lessons.  You've implied you've been listening (on and off I suppose) for 4 years. 

The metrics help get around the usual discussion about "everyone is different, has different learning styles, abilities, etc..." or is able to allocate different amounts of time to chinese studies and other disclaimers. 

xiaophil,

Ha ha, thanks for the kind words.  And for indulging my curiosity. :)

你好，你的中文水平很好哦:)

我们是上海示范大学公共关系学的学生，我们希望可以和外国朋友一起学习语言（外国朋友学习中文，而我们也可以从他那学习英文）

不知道你有没有兴趣同我们一起学习:)

我们的联系方式是241927801@qq.com

我们在这里等待着你的回信:)

Xiaophil yeah thanks for sharing, and congratulations. I don't know yet how that kind of advancement feels in Chinese studies (sigh), but hope to put in the work and have my moment sometime not too far in the future. Am inspired now!

xiaophil

congratulationg to you !!!

i hope talk with you in Chinese !

i am also a newbie in learning English.

 thank you for you sharing.

orangina

Yeah, it is a great feeling.  Although I guarantee there is much for me to be learned, it is comforting knowing that my position is good relative to others. 

john

I actually forgot my past names except for 'craniumsoftener'.  Craniumsoftener has a benign meaning (it's a personal thing), but I knew that it sounded quite violent, so I didn't carry on with it.  The other one or two names I forgot because I didn't keep them long.  I didn't participate much back then.  Anyway, I think I remember listening to your first podcast.  (Don't worry.  I was impressed.)

Wow, what an awesome testament!  Thanks, xiaophil!

(Now you've got me wondering who else you've been in the past...)

yay xiaophil! What a great feeling... I haven't been around as long so of course have not progressed that much, but I often am asked by my friends "Did you learn that on Chinesepod?" when I say something new. Thanks for sharing your encouraging story!

hkboy

I have wandered in and out of ChinesePod under two or three different aliases since her inception.  And yes, I guess I definitely was a newbie back then when I first discovered her.  That was four years ago. 

connie

谢谢你的祝贺，而且谢谢你的以前的帮助！

xiaophil, 为你取得的进步感到高兴，祝贺你！

I always enjoy hearing people's study history.  Thanks for sharing.  Did you start with Chinesepod as a Newbie?

Thank you, ChinesePod!