User Comments - menglelan

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menglelan

Posted on: Lesson Page Upgrade, Video Lessons and a New Office!
March 11, 2012 at 6:16 PM

Good, finally, videos with open Chinese captions and live speakers who I can speechread. You guys need more than one camera to film their faces. John move your face away from that microphone!

Posted on: Playing Mahjong
March 11, 2012 at 3:30 PM

Finally, video lessons I can speechread. Is this the first one???

Posted on: Lesson Page Upgrade, Video Lessons and a New Office!
March 11, 2012 at 1:39 PM

Finally video lessons that I can speechread. Is this the first video lesson ever?

Posted on: The Spring Festival Gala
January 22, 2012 at 3:56 AM

The CCTV gala is such an unpleasant show.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization
December 28, 2011 at 4:53 PM

A topic I would love to have in more Advanced or Media lessons is education: formal Chinese discussing school administration, teaching, and linguistic terminology. Something about how Chinese teachers of Chinese to non-native speakers would discuss their profession.

That is an excellent idea and I would like to see this too.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization
December 28, 2011 at 2:12 PM

John, if you're learning Chinese to use it, you have to start with the basics and build up on that on a systematic matter so that in the real world you can use it for a variety of different situations. As for recurring patterns, I think that is the biggest problem with Chinese Pod. I would use it to supplement lessons but never as a curriculum itself and certainly not by itself.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization
December 28, 2011 at 2:05 PM

Not all textbooks are dry and boring. As for self motivation that's something everyone needs to learn a new language anyway.

Posted on: Focus and Specialization
December 28, 2011 at 4:59 AM

The problem is really the way the entire Chinese Pod program is organized from Newbie all the way up to the highest levels, is that it's what I call a scattered approach. Mainly put together a bunch of vocabulary words, then throw them into a big dialogue. It is not an organized, systemic, criterion and standard based curriculum where grammar, vocabulary, syntax, etc are built upon, one chapter at a time.

Posted on: Dental Floss
December 11, 2011 at 4:05 AM

bababardwan, that dialogue you came up with was thousand times better than anything the ChinesePod staff could come up with. John! Hire this man.

Posted on: Retired Life
June 30, 2011 at 1:42 PM

To the over 60 years YOUNG crowd, we Sinophiles respect you!