User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: 减肥药

Hey Jenny, listening to advanced lessons is why i'm bullish on cpod.  other language programs are great for when you first start out, but after a few months, you realize the speakers sound too perfect.  Then you go to China, and people don't sound anything like what you heard on the tapes/CDs/DVDs, and you're starting from scratch.Hearing the sounds, the rhythms, the patterns of mandarin spoken is outstanding. The only thing that would make cpod better is to have more "man in the street" type dialogues.  That way, we could hear what native speakers speaking "real" mandarin, really fast.  To this day, I can't figure out what that taxi driver was screaming at me about before I even opened the door to the cab....

Posted on: 减肥药

I brought in the big gun (my fluent mandarin - speaking wife) to figure out the lesson.  Maybe in a couple of years i'll understand this. Cool to listen to this though.

Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market

vikram,

garlic is da4suan4.  there was a helpful lesson about this in another chinese seasonings about a year ago.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/chinese-seasonings/discussion

Posted on: The Expat Show and a Jingle Contest

Even though i'm only going to understand about 5% or less of the Formula 1 lesson, i'm really looking forward to hearing it. i'm not sure where the Formula 1 lesson is in the development process (all done and  just need the pdfs to be created, or just writing the script), but I am curious to know the thought process at cpod about sports focused lessons.  From American Football, World Cup Soccer, and other sports that Chinese may not be familiar with, cpod doesn't give much detail about specifics of the games that a person familiar with the game might want.  For example, the Super Bowl lesson was just very top level vocabulary, and wasn't helpful if you want to explain some deeper strategies and tactics of the game (like a "play-action pass is not a good play from your end-zone").  Granted, the Super Bowl lesson was a elementary lesson, but even the World Cup Football lesson, which was an upper intermediate lesson, didn't have specifics about player positions, or a favorite player on a team, or descriptions of regional styles of play.

It would be nice for the Formula 1 lesson to have a few terms that talked to strategy and tactics. Maybe talking about specific drivers like Lewis Hamilton, and whether he can continue to put himself in position to win the driving championship this year would be helpful. Also discussions about road courses, and the difference between tracks might be helpful, like the differences between the track for the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai ("very fast, 16 turns and corners"), and the track at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix ("lot more chicanes, 12 turns and corners"). 

Actually, for all the sports themed lessons, it would be nice to have those types of descriptions.  Just a thought.

Posted on: Considering a Credit Card

Jenny,

Interesting your use of credit.  I know it's going to foster a discussion of appropriate credit card use, but in the US, FICO scores are heavily dependent on how well you use your credit cards. FICO scores determine, among other things, whether you get a 30 year mortgage at 5% or 10%, or whether you get a mortgage at all.  I've found that charging no more than 30% of your available limit is a good rule of thumb. Even better is paying off the balance on the card in full every month. The exact alchemy that goes into credit score calculation is not as transparent as it could be, but it turns out that spending maybe 1% of your credit limit, and then paying off that balance is a possible way to get a score in the 800 range (depends on who's doing the scoring). But that's just one of many rules of thumb here in the US. I'm sure others will post other rules of thumb.  I didn't sense a lot of education from Chinese banks or anyone for that matter, on effective credit card use, but there are plenty of people here in the US who are learning the hard way about the impacts of bad credit card habits.  

And yeah, fansteelydan was interesting for the moment, but is not long for this world either.

Posted on: Using Verbs 不出来 , 得出来

I was afraid of that.  I know the comment was made to have pdfs for QW, and I thought that comment led to the creation of pdfs. Too bad it didn't.

Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market

xiaohu,

I was concerned about the guerilla style of shooting also.  The videos are cool, but moving forward, with more difficult concepts, it's not clear how the nouns, and especially verbs will come through.

On the other hand, It would be cool (or maybe even funny) if cpod manages to do some guerilla shooting, and then incorporate the irate shopkeeper/hairstylist/perfume saleswoman/bookeeper into the video.  we'll see....

Posted on: Considering a Credit Card

I listened to this lesson by first downloading the dialogue and looking at the title.  It convinced me I still have a long way to go in understanding mandarin.  I was on the ragged edge of understanding the dialogue, until i read the introduction, and realized I missed the point.  Much like my time in China.

I think cpod has struck the right balances in all the lesson levels.  The upper intermediate level is pretty fast, and i'm still not quite there.  But it sounds like all those TV shows in Lanzhou I used to watch.

Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market

With Jenny pointing, or better yet, holding a specific vegetable, it was easier to know what was being named in mandarin within the video.  This was definitely helpful. Not sure how cpod is planning on moving forward in other videos on that point.

Posted on: Keys, Wallet, Phone

I think that the speakers spoke with a slightly slower pace in this lesson, and that was helpful. I guess that's what plenty of feedback over the past three years gives cpod.

Glad to see cpod hasn't been sucked into a quantum black hole now that the Large Hadron Collider has been turned on.