User Comments - jjfoerch

jjfoerch

Posted on: Military Training

June 9, 2009 at 2:24 AM

This was an excellent lesson. I had to work a bit to understand the story, but I can feel my brain cells flexing now in triumph. This is exactly the kind of lesson that Chinesepod needs many more of---100% chinese, sink or swim, apply what you have learned in the normal lessons. Thank you 徐洲.

Posted on: The Boy That Cried Wolf

June 6, 2009 at 11:28 PM

This is such a great series, I hope you make more of them. (Writing this note June 6, 2009, and I see there haven't been any new "What's the Story" eps in a while.) It gave me a feeling of accomplishment that I understood the story perfectly the first time through. Great reinforcement. The one new vocab word for me was 放羊.

Posted on: Podcast Language 3

June 6, 2009 at 3:50 PM

In your discussion of 书面词, I think you meant to say "literary", not "literal".

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

June 6, 2009 at 2:43 PM

John,

If I could offer some constructive criticism, one of the points you often teach in intermediate lessons is, I think, unnecessary. The pattern is usually something like this:

In English you would say <foo bar baz>. But in Chinese you say <baz foo bar>. It might seem a little strange, but notice that the Chinese is backwards from the English. If you listen to enough Chinese, you'll just get used to it.

My friendly criticism to you is that this is all very basic stuff, and indeed there are simple grammar rules that can be found in any grammar book about this. The rules can be learned explicitly. It's doesn't have to be a matter of just getting used to it. I think that at the intermediate level, we don't need frequent reminders that Chinese grammar is often "opposite" of English. The great majority of your intermediate students are probably comfortable with this simple stuff already. Perhaps a lesson or two specifically covering the rules would be enough to bring anyone up to speed who isn't.

This was a great lesson for vocab and for ear-training at natural conversation speed. Keep up the stellar job!

Posted on: Broken, Busted, and Smashed

June 4, 2009 at 11:11 PM

changye,

Thanks for the comment about using 弄 with the words in this lesson. Very useful!

Posted on: Excuses for Being Late

May 31, 2009 at 8:33 PM

Is it just my computer or was the audio sped up a bit on this?

The book that helped me master the use of 了 is Schaum's Chinese Grammar. They refer to the two major types of 了 as S-了 (Sentence-final 了) and V-了 (Verbal 了). S-了 corresponds to "change of state" and V-了 corresponds to "completed action". The compact notation was helpful to me. I highly recommend this book to anyone having trouble understanding the different uses of 了.