Request for English word translations in the dialog rollovers for advanced lessons

I'd like to see Chinese definitions for the advanced material, actually. I support no English as a good-natured kick on that crutch, but a Chinese definition would be cool.

I think that's a really good idea, johnb. Once you get around to the Upper-Intermediate / Advanced levels, most things should be able to be defined in a Chinese-only environment and still make perfect sense. But, don't Jenny and co. do that already? Also, I agree with Mark that reading paragraphs of pinyin does me no good. However, I'm pretty sure the pinyin is there so you can look up specific characters you don't know more easily.

One of the downsides of the practice plan is I only occasionaly work on the advanced lessons now, but I certainly agree with mark that pinyin is of limited use here, and certainly way too prominent. I could also leave with Chinese definitions, makes a lot of sense at that level, and actually works pretty well even on less advanced levels if wording is carefully choosen.

I'd definitely do more with the Advanced lessons if there were more English. HOWEVER, when I read the transcript I so obviously need the English that... maybe I shouldn't be working at this level yet. I often listen to the banter and feel I've totally got a grip on the topic, then the actually conversation starts and... ouch. For me the pinyin in the transcript is essential, because that's what I use to look up the words. I'm also very tonally challenged, and that makes the pinyin good for me. (A possible alternative: as well as the vocabulary section, have a longer section of just the characters and the pinyin. Footnotes would help, although I imagine that'd be an encoding nightmare.) I think it'd be nice to add English in the roll-over, because the roll-over has always been my last resort, after the dictionary definition leaves me clueless or when I haven't realized it's a long expression/ idiom. I don't want English in the PDF, beyond the vocab that's already there. That'd be too much of a crutch. As johnb says above, kicking away the crutch is a good idea, but I wish Advanced made it easier to pick that crutch up once in a while. At least make sure whatever's in the Advanced lesson is also in the ChinesePod dictionary.

The advanced lessons may be beyond my actual ability, but I try to study them anyways. Thers is already pinyin in the roll-overs, if you want to use that to look up words. I don't think that should go away, but finding the pinyin that corresponds to a specific character within a paragraph is not easy. So, the paragraph sized blocks don't make much sense in the pdf transcript for lookup purposes, either. Also, even when I look something up, I often don't find multiple character words and can't guess from the meanings of the individual characters. My second choice would be definitions in Chinese. On the subject of crutches, the roll-overs are also nice that way, because if you don't need them, you don't have to use them. As to the banter containing the definitions. My impression is that the banter mostly covers what's in the new vocabulary section of the pdf transcript. That's usually not the whole of the words I don't recognize. Besides, I am able to understand more advanced material by reading than by listening.

The ideal Advanced dialogue & expansion would have 4 checkboxes: 1. show/hide Pinyin 2. show /hide Definition 3. show/hide English and most important: 4. enable/disable Vocab transfer I just hate it when I try to copy/paste vocab to a dictionary and instead a window opens, gleefully announcing that your Vocab base is enriched with yet another translation-deprived piece of junk vocab.

The new vocabulary, for me, in this week's U and UI lessons consists of 玩脑筋急转弯. There is still some value to these lessons for usage, listening practice, etc. However, I still think adding English word translations to the rollovers on advanced dialogs would make my study of these lessons much more efficient. There is a goldmine of new vocabulary and usage there, but it is a time consuming struggle to get to it. (There are still some words in the lesson on 澳门赌博 that I can't find in the dictionary. ) Guessing is good, but convenient is good too.

Chinesepod, thank you, so much, for adding translations to the rollovers for advanced lessons. I just noticed that was one of the new features. My day is made.