User Comments - lamps5jam3
lamps5jam3
Posted on: Endless Summer
August 10, 2010, 02:31 AMHow to learn/memorize vocabulary! It's hard to commit vocabulary to long-term memory, especially when you're not immersed in the language.
Posted on: Asking for a Raise
May 25, 2010, 02:40 PMOur first year in China my kids learned a speech about themselves--name, age, teacher's name, name of school, etc. One day on the bus a Chinese woman and my son had an entire conversation on the bus because the questions she asked were exactly the one's answered in the little speech. So simple, and yet I was so impressed!
Posted on: Haggling Like a Local
April 23, 2010, 02:33 AMAwesome idea! I'll be in Shanghai in a few weeks. Maybe I'll knock the socks off some local. Maybe I'll be too shy and just use Mandarin... But at least some of the sounds won't be quite so foreign!
Posted on: Kinds of Nuts
April 16, 2010, 01:41 PMI'm surprised there hasn't been a discussion here about bian4 vs. bian4cheng2. It seems to me that bian4cheng2 is when something changes into something concrete (a noun), but I'm not sure that's the end of the story.
Posted on: Computer Problems and Tech Support
April 09, 2010, 01:03 AMI'm a little concerned that this dialogue came from real-life happenings in the Chinese-Pod office!
Posted on: Special Green Hat
March 17, 2010, 07:10 PMI've never known a Chinese person to open a gift when given it. Usually they wait until later. Perhaps the gifts here are not wrapped?
Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year
March 11, 2010, 12:55 AMAfter studying the expansion sentences, I'm wondering if whoever wrote the sentences recently went through a bad break-up!
Posted on: Can't Get to Sleep
January 21, 2010, 09:01 PMI can't believe this wasn't covered in the lesson! I learned shui4jiao4 for "to sleep," and to have shui4zhao2 thrown in without any comment is extremely confusing. The different sound might be obvious to a native Chinese speaker, but it's not to a student.
Posted on: What have you done in 2009?
December 29, 2009, 05:05 PMVery cute lesson, and excellent explanations of the use of "le." Really complete grammar explanations are hard to find for Chinese, which is why I find the Elementary level lessons very useful, even to an intermediate learner.
Posted on: International vs. Local Schools
January 21, 2011, 08:40 PMI had a good mix of worlds. When we arrived in China two of my kids were preschool age and I sent them to a Chinese preschool. They (and I) learned so much culture, not too mention fluent Chinese. I didn't think Chinese schools would meet their needs long term as western kids, so then they moved on to the international school where they continued their Chinese study along with a more conventional western curriculum. At some point they will have to decide to take their language ability seriously and learn adult language and full reading and writing. But I was able to start them with a very good foundation.