Your CPod daily routine

mark

March 24, 2009, 06:42 AM

I have more like a weekly routine that I use to process all the lessons for a week.  The processing is somewhat dependent on the lesson level.  I've also been catching up on the old advanced lessons.

newbie, elementary - check for any new vocabulary or cultural insight

intermediate, upper intermediate - learn by sound mostly, copy the hanzi for the intermediate by hand, edit the dialogs for a repeat-after-each phrase kind of study while I commute.

Advanced - study the transcript until I can follow word by word

Media, qingwen, poems with Pete - listen to it to see if I can get something out of it.

The excercises and expansion sentences arre really cool, when I have some "extra" time.

 

Yes, it very much brings the learning to me.  I have a schedule that wouldn't allow for any kind of traditional class.

miantiao

March 25, 2009, 05:02 AM

jckeith

with regard to learning language, or more accurately language aquisition, it's a lifelong process, and a process that has no endpoint.

i'm a native english speaker, but i don't profess to know all that there is to learn about the english language, far from it in fact.

 

 

henning

March 24, 2009, 08:32 AM

I got a draft for the perfect schedule right by my side in the drawer. I will start learning according to it...soon. ;)

Meanwhile I follow my old course. This involves (levels Ele-Advanced):

• Listening to the podcast (usally on the way to work)
• Ele. + Interm. + UI: Relisten and copying relevant Language Points (which later appear in the "Grammar Points" thread)
• Going through the dialogue line by line (at lower levels: Including some sketchy writing)
  
• Listening through the dialogue again
  
• Going through the expansion (a lot more learning impact since the day we could switch the English on and off)
• Exercises (when not in the train)
  
• Advanced and some UI: Listening to the podcast again
• Going to another place for a short dose of more intense Grammar practice
• When there is time left: Go to Skritter for a while (this usually happens at the weekends)
  

I also try to catch up with Goulnik's news, but more irregularly. Recently, there have been several days each week without any Chinese due to work pressures. This condenses the schedule a bit.

I also feel that my motivation is degrading slowly, so I definately need to go to China again (July-August).

miantiao

March 24, 2009, 08:49 AM

hi ken

i'm a scatterbrain so i don't follow any particular routine.  the abundance of lessons (at all levels) provides me a reference source for specific topics which i find useful.  I listen to most new lessons from UI above and scroll 请问, and of course i read pete's poems. i find the community section very helpful at times. i mostly access the site in my spare time at work.

i'm a tech quamby so I don't understand anything about platforms streams and plecos, its all battlestar gallactica to me.

i guess if i were not living in china i would use the site more studiously, and perhaps would buy an ipod and learn how to use it.

cheers for your interest ken.

btw, i took a look at epod and have begun recommending it to my students. the ele level at epod is about the equivalent of my advanced students here who are fed the line 四十五天突破英语听说！it's a cutthroat business.

 

 

goulnik

March 24, 2009, 11:57 AM

These days, my CPod time is almost entirely taken up by lesson preparation - I'm coming up to the end of a 1-year practice stint, which has been good fun and tremendously helpful (thanks Vera), but extremely demanding.

I still publish in the News group but only occasionaly, sometimes Character Points, and rarely Cancer Stories as I guess is now obvious.

When this comes to an end, I'll probably go on to a new routine, but for now, with 2 advanced lessons a week in 4 conversation sessions -one is a review-, it's mostly vocabulary preparation. The session is in the morning my time, I do prepare ahead of time, but do get up early for the bulk of the work.

Concretly, we did Emotional Intelligence this morning (EQ, lesson 1008). What I do is collect all content (dialogue, vocab, expansion, comments, my own take on related / relevant terms or anything I may think of as discussion material).

I put them into boxes, lookup the definitions (in Chinese, recursively adding the vocab from those definitions) and get my script to nicely render so I can better learn. As an example, I uploaded the resulting EQ categories (you'll notice a few wrongly placed, and key vocab in bold) and EQ definitions... quite a bit of work, twice a week. That's ok, you can call me crazy!

And in the car back from work, I listen to podcasts from another source, all in Chinese, with no reading preparation, just for oral understanding (or not).

helenhelen

March 24, 2009, 12:53 PM

I've become less concientious with c.pod. I used to use all the features, and I'm glad, because it did a lot to support my literacy. But now I've found some book-based reading and writing stuff which works for me. Also, my tingli has improved since I've been here, so I get more out of the podcasts themselves. So nowadays I just listen, on car journeys etc.

I also listen to all channels bar Newbie. I reckon your ability to pick out words that you do know is independent of the size of your vocabulary, so I listen to Advanced and Media lessons for the Jabberwocky effect. And with elementarylessons the 'weight' of so much familiar context means the new stuff sticks really well.

runmaggiecooper

March 24, 2009, 01:22 PM

First I'd like to say that Chinesepod is great. Learning Chinese for me is not something that I naturally enjoy, I'm a scientist not a linguist but you guys make it bearable and sometimes the lessons are laugh out loud funny.

I get my lessons from Vera (guided programme elementary/intermediate level) and I try to do at least an hour 4 days a week. I sit down and listen to the lesson (I try to do it without the transcript first) then I'll look at the transcript so that I can follow the lesson better. So once I've listened to the whole lesson (maybe rewinding a few times) I'll write out all the vocab in an exercise book and then go through all the expansions and write out the ones that come up on the audio review. Then I'll do the exercises. I'll also select the vocab so that I can use the flashcards later. In total that will generally take the best part of an hour.

I download all the audio reviews from the set of lessons Vera gives me onto my iPod and when I'm walking around e.g. to the shops or something then I'll listen to the audio reviews from a playlist. If it is a lesson I've covered then I'll try to say the vocab or sentences using the vocab but if it is a lesson that I haven't yet covered I'll generally just listen or guess the vocab. Because the audio reviews are quite short I can get through about 8 on a trip to the shops and back so I end up listening to them 5-10 times over the course of a month. I sometimes listen to them in order and sometimes shuffle them. I'd say that the audio reviews are one of the most important things for helping me because I feel that learning the vocab and using the words in context is crucial.

If, and it's a big if, I have any extra time then I'll do flashcards with the new vocab especially using the Hanzi and audio flashcards from Chinese to English because my reading and listening skills are bad.

In addition, I get 2 x 1 hour lessons a week using a normal textbook but it is quite informal. Also, I live in China so I get practice with routine things like shopping and speaking to our ayi.

Thank you Cpod for all your hard work.

billglover

March 24, 2009, 01:40 PM

Ken,

I decided to turn my response into a blog post. I've included a summary below but you can find my full response over on my blog.

• First thing in the morning I listen to a ChinesePod (Elementary) lesson whilst eating breakfast. If there is time I will try and run through the dialogue (without English) on the site.
• When I arrive at work, I save all the lesson vocabulary to my ChinesePod vocab manager, a step in my routine that has stuck for no particular reason other than that I have always done this. I don’t use ChinesePod for vocab management.
• I then run through the expansion sentences and exercises. I try and work out the expansion sentences from Hanzi alone. If I get stuck I listen to the audio, and if I still can’t understand, I mouse over the individual characters.
• Once I have completed the exercises I mark the lesson as studied and get on with clearing out my inbox.

henning

March 24, 2009, 02:05 PM

Isn't it interesting how (despite all slight differences) most of us are basically following the structure that comes with lesson publication schedule and the lesson page layout: 1. listening to the newest Podcast, 2. going through the tabs, 3. repeating with the AudioReview. There are so many possibilities on the sidelines (cf. goulnik's approach), additional tools, we got considerable degrees of freedom. But yet we have this invisible but strong force field dragging us into those same old tracks. They feel like the daily duty, a homework, an obligation. 

And isn't that a powerful lever for fleshing out the learning? Add exercises and tabs onto the lesson page for grammar and writing so we feel that nagging conscience to cover those parts of the language also!

jes13

March 24, 2009, 03:14 PM

I'm on the basic and a newby, but my study structure is not so different too. I use the 'dialogue only' as a revew - can I understand it? If not back to the podcast and printed sheet. I need to both see and hear to start with or I can't make a lesson 'stick'. I also pull new characters out from my Tuttle flash cards - used when I have spare moments in an enviroment where electronic gear needs limiting - so good old cardbord! Good for the train too. I'm slow but advancing.

antony73

March 24, 2009, 07:39 AM

Hi Ken

My recent schedule for learning 5 lesons per week:

I begin a lesson at the night time. Having pre-printed the PDFs from all lessons given by my tutor Vera (Guided Plan), I copy and write out on paper the dialogue in pinyin.

First thing the next day with my coffee I go through all the five elements of the day's lesson, fix, exercises etc on my laptop. I download all the audio into my mp3 player, and put all new words (Hanzi) into the FullRecall flash card feature on my mobile, all for occasional review during the day.

Before I move on to the next day's lesson, I'll write out the lesson several times on paper, this time with Hanzi.

A most enjoyable part is my final review on Thursday. This is my weekly ritual of reviewing the week's lessons at the local Starbucks. I take along my note pad and pen, Windows mobile with 3G mobile internet, and use whatever tools necessary to complete the weeks lessons to satisfaction. Friday morning 7am (GMT) I enjoy my weekly review via Skype with Vera, altohugh I have a new tutor as of this week.

I store all Dialogues and Fixes of lessons I've completed on my Mobile (Samsung's Omnia i900) to review at random, usually during shopping, paying bills etc.

Hope this helps - thanks Ken

 

 

xiaoandongni

March 24, 2009, 04:32 PM

I don't have a mobile internet device, but I dowload the audio and video to my MP3 player so I can learn on the go.

By the way, Ken: I would really like to see much more learning using songs/music.

Video showing mouth movements would be good for pronunciation. (For example, just watch a chinese person's mouth shape when they say 'hungry' - 'e'(4th tone). How un-English is that mouth shape? And also 'fish;' 'yu' (2nd tone), talk about pucker up!

Have you thought about karaoke lyrics, (pinyin or chars) on top of music videos? I have a DVD track of a cheesy Taiwan-Pop track, but I learned loads of vocab from it.

Great work though. Cpod rocks.

urbandweller

March 24, 2009, 07:23 PM

您好Ken老师,

This is an interesting question...we all have our own methods that evolve with within the constraints of our lives...

Learning chinese for me has become a part of my daily lifestyle...Similar to practicing my faith and excercising. It makes me feel good mentally which in turn makes me feel good physically. But let me get back to the question at hand..

I try and spend about an hour a day "learning" chinese. I spend that hour reviewing my current cpod lesson, reading and speaking. A big part of this revolves around Cpod. I consider cpod the "sun" or "hub" of my learning. I would have have to say that i am organized about it. This way i can track my progress and see how far I've come. It starts with finding a particular lesson of interest. I print it out and make flash cards. I study it and ask questions about it on the boards. I carrry it around with me and practice it when i get a chance. In addition to that, the audio file gets downloaded to my IPOD. A newbie lesson might only take a few days to a week. An intermediate takes me a couple weeks. When i feel that i have learned it sufficiently, it gets numbered, hole punched and filed into my master hardcopy notebook. Also, I type it onto a master electronic word doc on my desktop. I will then review this stuff from time to time to make sure i dont forget it! I am currently on lesson #26.

Again, Cpod is my "Hub". It is the organized part of my learning. Now, from my hub there are unorganized spontaneous spokes that branch out. This is the supplemental stuff that i do to help mix up my learning such as listening to chinese music, listening to other cpod stuff like poems with pete while cleaning or working, keeping a chinese journal (when i learn new things, I quickly jot them down), spending time in my local chinese bookstore, chatting with chinese friends on skype, and practicing character writing.

Not sure if that all makes sense but i figured i would give my two cents.

cheers man

-Adam

helenhelen

March 24, 2009, 10:30 PM

I think I'm similar; I need a quantifiable thing I have the discipline to do every day, and things I can do when I feel like it.

But cpod is the latter for me. There's a matchless range of incredibly well-presented material on here, and I find the podcasts fun and interesting. But it demands little in terms of the range of activity, compared with working through a book. The exercises are very uniform, and so bluff-able once you get used to them. It's almost too convenient..

user1283

March 25, 2009, 12:30 AM

Ken

I am a early subscriber. I down load the lessons after supper (EDT,USA) and study them. I understand Newie to Upper Intermediate, QW and Poem with Pete.

On the weekly basis, I use these lessons for a two hour one to one sesson with a college mandarin teacher who corrects my pronouciation and help me to converse.

Your lessons are excellent and covered many areas that other web sites do not--This is your competitive strength.

Jenny zhu is also an asset to you as well

 

jamestheron

March 25, 2009, 02:10 AM

My CPod habits are to listen to the podcasts as they come out.  I listen to them while commuting.  Once going to work and once again on my way home.  I'll also go over the transcripts at some point during the day.

My other Chinese lessons are textbook based.  Often vocab with a CPod lesson and my textbook overlap, so it's all good listening practice.

Except for my commute, where I am alone, trying to listen to the podcasts while doing something else isn't too useful.  I need dedicated study time in order to concentrate on the lessons.  This applies equally to CPod as it does other types of lessons.

John

March 25, 2009, 03:32 AM

I'm not good about doing most things on a daily routine, but I try to use Anki every day to review new vocabulary.

...and of course I talk to my wife in Chinese every day. :)

jckeith

March 25, 2009, 04:21 AM

Wow, even John still studies Chinese. That's encouraging (or is it discouraging?)! Here's my routine:

• I pick out 2 elementary, 2 intermediate, and 2 qing wen per week to study.
• I listen to each one, along with its respective audio review, every day at work, and look over the pdf dialogue every once in a while.
• Once I feel comfortable with a lesson, I add it's vocab and a few related sentences into Anki.
• Then I look at the lesson's expansion page and read each sentence (first I read the English and try to guess how it's composed in Chinese; then I check the Chinese).
• I also try to fire up an upper intermediate lesson every once in a while, and listen to it once without the pdf and then once with it just to provide listening practice and make myself feel like a complete newbie :)
• I use Anki every day to study vocab and get some speaking practice.
• Try to speak with the wife as much as possible, but my Chinese is very sad, and her English is perfect...
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm using a book (Remembering the Hanzi) to learn Hanzi. I also try to listen to one unit of the Pimsleur Learning Mandarin series of audiobooks every night.

jamestheron

March 25, 2009, 04:56 AM

没想到跟我太太聊天！;)

peachluv

March 24, 2009, 03:43 PM

I stick to the newbie lessons and plan to move up to the elementary level when I can comfortably absorb newbie lessons quickly.

I listen to the podcast online and do the dialog and vocab that goes with it. I used to try and do the exercises, but the Chinese characters are too small for me to always make out clearly and it was hampering my ability to really absorb the meaning, so instead, I found a book called The First 100 Chinese Characters and I'm working thru that book. The characters are large enough for me to take in the detail and have the added advantage of explaining how to write each of the characters and also gives examples of how those characters are used and combined with other characters for new meanings.

Another thing I do, is listen to audio CDs in my car. They are put out by someone else who speaks mandarin with a slightly different accent. I think this is very useful in understanding.

Here and there, I also try to view some youtube videos by just everyday people doing their everyday things and seeing how much mandrin I can pick up. Again, it's hearing words spoken slightly differently and still being able to recognize and understand them.