User Comments - Jerry@ChinesePod
Jerry@ChinesePod
Posted on: 66 Enjoyable Characters with Joy #6
April 11, 2019, 02:16 AMI would suggest getting a resource that teaches you about how characters are built. A few popular ones are Tuttle's "Reading and Writing Chinese Characters" or, if you want something digital, the Outlier Dictionary. If you get a printed book, be sure that you get the right one for what you're learning: Traditional or Simplified.
Posted on: Can you help me find...?
April 11, 2019, 02:11 AMYes, it's common for "Newbies" to start getting boring at the 50 mark. That lesson I linked to above ("Learning about Levels") talks about splitting time between two levels - when ChinesePod had a "Guided" plan and students had an actual ChinesePod teacher, this is often how it was done.
The harder level (in this case, Elementary), really pushes you on Elementary days, then on Newbie days you get to relax a bit. Also, when you're doing Newbies, you can skip the "Full Lesson" and go straight to the Dialogue, Expansion and Exercises. You can actually study lots of Newbie lessons very quickly that way, without having to hear a lot of teaching (in English) on stuff you already know.
Posted on: Elevator Emergency
April 11, 2019, 01:25 AMThis is a lesson from 2006, so it may have had more to do with limited access to photos than anything else!
Posted on: Family Members
April 05, 2019, 01:03 PMThat's true. I taught for a while at an all-girls school, and my students were constantly telling me stories about stuff they did with their 姐姐's and their 妹妹's. I was confused and had to continually ask, "I thought in China you could only have one kid?" They would laugh and say, "No, not my REAL sister! (Giggle giggle.)"
Posted on: Popular Brand Names
April 03, 2019, 08:16 AMOh no! 
Posted on: 夸夸群; 制售假冒星巴克; 日本奥运会
April 03, 2019, 08:15 AMHi 502994367,
Glad you liked the content! This is a Media lesson, which means we do our best to have absolutely no English at all in the lesson. This is also true for the next lower level, Advanced. For English translation, I'd suggest doing lessons from Newbie through Intermediate. You can read about the different levels here.
All of the lessons do have English translation on the website under the "Dialogue" and "Vocabulary" tabs, as well as in the "Vocabulary Review" mp3 audio. This makes English accessible to users, but keeps it out of the lesson itself.
Posted on: Chinese Drinking Culture
April 03, 2019, 07:27 AMRichard108,
ChinesePod's policy for Intermediate is to have a 50/50 mix of English and Chinese. You can read about it at the top of the page here. But whether or not we always achieve that goal is another matter!
Posted on: How Cold Is It in Winter?
April 02, 2019, 09:04 PM"Tǐng lěng de" is similar to saying, "very cold," whereas "lěng jí le" is like saying, "cold in the extreme."
Neither "lěng tǐng le" nor "jí lěng" can work. The pattern is always either "tǐng [adjective] de" or "[adjective] jí le."
Posted on: 66 Enjoyable Characters with Joy #1
April 02, 2019, 08:23 PMNo need to apologize! We have been discussing this issue at the office lately - the majority of our users are studying Simplified.
Posted on: The Tones of Ma
April 13, 2019, 03:13 AM吗 is always neutral in tone, and it is quite common as the ending of a question sentence. Not all yes/no question sentences end with 吗, but most do.