Chinese Pod members can't read Chinese, zhen ke lian!

I am currently learning conversational Chinese, from CPod and other avenues. I don't plan on diving into characters for a year or so. So, I don't use CPod to learn characters (at least not yet).

Bazza, I can recognize / understand a lot more than I can produce, and I'm sure the same is true of most people. That goes for written as well as spoken material. There's a lot more knowledge that's not been fully digested and can't yet be called upon but is useful given the right context. Incidentally, that's why I much prefer material from / discussions with native or near native speakers.

Personally, I was never a big fan of story chains.

xiao hu, 好久不見. 你的氧氣吧(oxygen bar?)開得怎麼樣?

Chittywangwang: 你说，“可能” 我的故事不好了， 可见你在暗指自己没有读过我的故事，所以我给你一个任务好吗？ 当你看完我的故事以后你再来用中文给我们你的看法， 可以接受吗？

Man2toe: 我的氧吧公司已经开好了可是从目前为止一个客户都没来租啦！ 不过， 今天一个客户来电话了说三十一号的晚上大概要租！ 一个晚上在活动租氧吧，一千块钱！很赚利润的，你觉得呢？

Even though chain stories sometimes don't end up to be that interesting (since most people aren't very good writers), nevertheless it's still a great way for users to really exercise their Chinese reading, composition and grammer skills, as well as being alot of fun!

the link doesnt work

这是上网、播客的生活，无论是英文、法文或者中文，有时候，有题目大家都发现比较无聊，麻烦回答。除了叙述故事以外，你还可以用中文答应别人的留言，我渐渐怎么做。但你要知道，大多数人这里不会读汉字、不少会读汉字不会写汉字。那无所谓，我鼓励你继续… 哦对，那个链接不灵了!

这样吧。。 快把你写的故事post在这里。我就给你写

I can read Chinese And im sure many others can too... maybe your story just sucked

got it ill read and add later today

好的。

When I started I had a strong passion for learning to read and write, even more than learning to speak, but that was beaten out of my by peer opinion that one shouldn't learn the characters until later on, opinion delivered from multiple sources with almost no counter-argument. It's a lot harder to pick it up now, because the right time for me has passed. When reading here and on the forum, I frankly ignore anything that's written in Chinese, even if I might be able to understand a bit of it, because I don't want to put in that effort with dictionaries and traditional character conversions (during non-lesson time) and then still feel small for not being able to join in properly. So it's easier all round to just ignore it and not let it worry me.

我曾经写过一个故事， 叫"魔术服务器管理"。 好像很无聊。 除了Bob以外没人意识到了，没人看到了， 所以从来没写过故事也那么继续。 http://forum.chinesepod.com/viewtopic.php?t=1349

不管是英文或者中文的，我基本上不读二三段的评论。 No matter whether in Chinese or English; I generally don't read comments longer than 2-3 paragraphs AuntySue; not sure who your advising peer where/are but I think you're missing out on a huge chunk, you've basically decided to be illiterate in Chinese. That's a feeling I certainly couldn't accept, regardless of the challenge with characters (let alone the cultural, purely esthetic and cognitive dimensions)

it is an effort to learn characters, luckily I started learning fromt he beggining of my studies, just because thats what my teacher made us do and i knew no different. But i advice anyone to learn characters since once you get to a certain level you need to be observing those things around you (if you live in china at least) and reading in Chinese to improve since not much is written in Pinyin above basic chinese text books. Also if like me you need to functional in CHinsese, in China, then you need to be able to read and write to do your job and generally be useful. speaking and listening is not enough. I cannot write many chinese words, but i can read them. Perhaps you could focus on at least recognising them and usind the computer to type them.

I strongly agree with both of you, learning Chinese characters is essential. I'm learning them now and would advise anyone who has even the slightest interest to start learning them from the outset. But I'm still not going to feel comfortable using them during leisure time with people who are so far ahead of me, both in literacy and also in general language ability, and on top of that using simplified characters which I don't want to learn yet. Maybe there are other students who are not totally illiterate but for whatever reason have not acquired sufficient skill to feel confident joining in. Typing the right character is a lot harder than reading.

I think typing and reading are probably equally difficult. If you can read a character chances are you'll know the pronunciation so you should be able to type it and you don't even need to remember the tone to type it.

I wonder why after copying and pasting it, it doesn't work? Try it now. http://chinesepod.com/connections/viewpost/xiaohu/connect/The+Drug+Dealer%3A+Part+2+-+Redemption