Want to be interviewed for a ChinesePod Success Stories interview series?
johnb
March 22, 2011, 03:27 AM posted in General DiscussionWe want to hear from you! If you'd like to be interviewed on Skype for a short series of "ChinesePod Success Stories," please contact me (John) at john.biesnecker@chinesepod.com. We'd love to include as many of you as we can.
When you contact me, please include your ChinesePod username so I can look up your user record.
Thanks in advance, and I look forward to hearing from you all.
johnb
Good stories, I think, hits the nail on the head. I think it is also instructive both to other ChinesePod users and to ChinesePod itself to hear how people use ChinesePod.
As for objective definitions... well, those are hard. A newbie that has moved to elementary and is happy with their progress is a success story, in my book. Success is a nebulous thing, and we're interested in exploring various aspects of it with these interviews.
bodawei
March 22, 2011, 08:02 AMThis might be a hard (or even unecessary) question but how do you define 'success stories' - any criteria? (I take it you are looking at successful students and not aspects of ChinesePod that are successful - although the more I think about it the title is ambiguous.) I'll go with my first thought: are you interested in 'fast learners', people who have been customers for a long time (that's a commercial success), people who derive a high level of satisfaction from using ChinesePod services, ex-students who have achieved success in the Chinese-speaking world for any reason? People on the site who are famous or successful for any reason at all? All of the above?
You know (this has been debated a lot in K-12 education circles) the true measure of success may relate to the ability of ChinesePod itself as an organisation to move people along in their language learning to higher levels of ability. It can be a mistake to look at just the students themselves rather than the institution, unless you are willing to account for a whole host of individual differences. In other words a brilliant Chinese student may be brilliant for any number of reasons other than that they pay a ChinesePod subscription. The question is not: are you a brilliant successful accomplished student; rather the question is: did you learn anything at ChinesePod?
Then, you might be just after some good stories and the best of luck to you. I think that hearing peoples' stories can be inspiring in language learning.