Marking as "studied"

xiao_liang
May 21, 2010, 11:52 AM posted in General Discussion

I'm curious how others treat the lesson tools here in terms of marking lessons as studied? In my case, I'm having a bit of trouble, because I'm just starting to listen to intermediate lessons. 

Previously, with newbie and elementary lessons, it was easy. I'd listen, maybe a couple of times if needed, go through the additional tabs, read the expansion, then do the exercises. If I felt I'd got a good grasp of the grammar and vocab, I'd mark it as studied, problem solved, lesson off the list and I can move on.

With Intermediate, there's so much more grammar and vocab to learn that I would find it very hard to get to this level of "studied" on any level, so although I'm studying them, I'm not yet marking any of them as studied. For example, I was looking at the "a fated meeting" lesson, and on the vocab page I count 17 words that I've not seen before. Along with the extended dialogue, and longer exercise, I've no chance of getting a good score, and it will take me several nights of study to get even half of this into my head.

What it means is that my lessons feed is filling up with Intermediate lessons. I'm not sure how I will progress into intermediate if I can't move on from any of the lessons! 

How do other people handling it? Chinesepod, I know it's "learning on your terms", but do you have a suggested method?

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tvan
May 21, 2010, 12:22 PM

@xiao_liang, I used to go through lessons fairly quickly; sort of a "throw mud at a wall and see what sticks" methodology.  However, as I've moved into more difficult lessons, I now only mark a lesson as studied if I can get at least 90% on the test and can write the characters (using the flashcard tool) for all the terms in the lesson, using the English definition, as a prompt with at least 90% accuracy.  

I also feed some of the new characters into a third-party flashcard tool, but that's outside of CPod.

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xiao_liang

Yea, that's kind of what I'm doing, but it just means I never progress through any intermediate lessons, and they're clogging up my lessons feed in droves. Studying the same lesson again and again and again gets pretty tired pretty quick...

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luoqing313

take it easy ,mu buddy!if you know more about chinese charater history!maybe you will easy to remenber it! I am collgege student in china! I wish some friend can help me in oral english! othough. maybe i can use my chinese mouth to help u in china,when u buy something in china , I can reduce the price for u !

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thanks a lot

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trevorb
May 21, 2010, 12:37 PM

I'm on guided so my teacher gives me about three a week to study but my pastern of study fitted in around daily life would never let me follow tvan's  approach. Instead I try to retain as much as I can from repeated listening in the week  and mark the lesson as studied when I begin the next one.

Much of the vocab repeats in different ways over time  and often  if you hear an old lesson it all comes back.   that said I really wish I could dedicate more time to study and follow tvans  route, I keep making plans but alas other things intrude and I have no other chinese influence in my life.

That said in French class at school the lessons changed every time and the teacher did not keep you in the class until you had every aspect of the lesson in your head (Not that we'd have minded that much, she was from France and we were young!)

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xiao_liang

Hmn. That might be an idea I guess. There's such a lot of vocab, that I'm really lost. I might try that method, thanks.

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trevorb

I know what you mean, I'd been concentrating on doing the elementary lessons until I understood them and would think I'll move to intermediate when I get new lessons I just understand the whole of. They never came there were always words I did not know so I did not feel ready to move on.

When I first started with guided my teacher gave me elementary lessons to work on but quickly began to introduce intermediates and now that's all she gives me. I feel at times swamped and at the begging I would listen to the lesson all week and not fully get it.....but now its getting easier and I realise I'd stopped making progress because I was not challenging myself.

It still takes me a few listens before I get much of it, because its so fast but it is coming........

This is the beauty of chinesepod you can pick and choose your own way and speed of learning :-) You have a younger brain on your side than mine so will be on the advanced lessons before I truly understand the intermediate ones I suspect ;-)

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zhenlijiang
May 21, 2010, 04:35 PM

XiaoLiang are you trying to study the Intermediate lessons in order, or are you sort of picking ones that look interesting to you? Intermediate is such a "wide band" (learners levels range from Upper Ele-ish to pretty proficient and so does lesson difficulty). CPod have obviously adjusted difficulty several times over these five years. Recent ones are again easy, particularly this one: http://chinesepod.com/lessons/a-tour-of-the-office/#comments

There are also some really old school ones that are easy (dialogue is spoken slowly.). I did all those first. In fact that's what I still do, pick out the easiest ones and do those first plus ones that appeal to me for any reason. And I pick out easy ones by listening to the dialogue once. There actually isn't any need to do all the lessons in the level before graduating so I guess I'm being a bit funny about that. Trying to pick up the pace now because I really need to get ready to move into Upper Inter, but I still have nearly twice as many Active lessons as Studied. I'm on the Lao Wang series now and finding those lessons on the easy side, as well as useful, a lot of fun and engaging.

I mark as Studied when I'm able to understand all of what's being said in the Dialogue and Expansion and able to shadow it pretty much verbatim which is the hardest part for me. Reading and understanding is one thing, hearing and then actually being able to mouth the words yourself in a natural flow is another world altogether. I do do the Exercises but scoring high isn't a concern for me (that is, I expect to score 100% every time because I have an advantage with reading hanzi. My weakness is in listening comprehension and speaking).

The Love Story series is relatively advanced I think!

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xiao_liang

Yea, I've been following recent ones, and they're easier to follow than some of the older ones, I still get lost pretty easy. I might give up on Love Story and have a bash at Lao Wang then. Thanks for the advice!

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mark
May 21, 2010, 05:43 PM

Well, for the past few weeks I haven't been able to mark any lessons as studied.  I suspect a bug in the new dashboard software.

Aside from that, my standard is that I have performed my routine on the lesson: week1 - listen to the podcast until I can get the jist of it, copy the transcript and extract what is for me the new vocabulary.  week2 - verify that I can shaddow the dialog and can read the transcript without looking up characters.  For advanced lessons I listen to the expension sentences and take the test

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xiao_liang

On the marking studied thing, have you tried clicking the icon to the left of the lesson name on the dashboard? Otherwise from the "manage lessons" screen?

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svik
May 21, 2010, 08:34 PM

As for "mark as studied", I don't know if this is the way it is expected to work, but I do this:  Under manage lessons, I click the icon to the left of the lesson name, so that it becomes a blue star (bookmarking).  Then I check the box at the left.  And finally, under the menu: more actions, I go to Mark as studied.

It seems more complicated than before, especially for an old dog.

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mark

That worked, and I can now officially study lessons again. However, as someone once commented when I made something over-complicated, that is not just Baroque, it is downright Rococo.

对了, Baroque 有一个俚语的意思和“画蛇添足“有点像。

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svik

I only know a few, but that's one of my favorites: 画蛇添足

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bababardwan

thanks for 画蛇添足..that's a bewdy

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xiao_liang

Did you know you can also mark them as studied from the dashboard, by clicking the little icon to the left of the lesson name?

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svik

Aha, that is much simpler!