Hello,
My name is Patrick and I discovered your podcast on the Yahoo site. It’s absolutely amazing. My friend and
I are learning Chinese from your lessons. I hope your company does really well; as soon as I get a bit
better with listening to all that ‘input’, I’ll probably subscribe to your service.I have a suggestion for you. My friend and I are using the very basic words from lessons 1-4 while we’re
working out at the gym. Obviously the lessons contain a small vocabulary and so our conversations are quite
limited. We found that if we had just a few examples of common expressions we use, we could build our skill
up dramatically.My suggestion is that you allow users to submit a sentence for Jenny to record in Chinese. The page could have a list of requested sentences, their Chinese characters, and a link to the one spoken line. For example, I’d like to know how to say:
- Let’s go.
- Do you want _____?
- Be careful.
- Let’s exercise.Thanks again for the show; I really enjoy it.
Patrick
San Diego, CA
USA
We can certainly do this.
Ken Carroll
凯恩
你 好 Jenny and Ken
Chinese Pod is progressing beautifully. Congratulations!
It is good to know what you both look like.
I have a couple of suggestions for the vocabulary that appears under each day’s dialogue transcript on the website.
1. You often give us in the podcast really useful details to help remember words - for example in today’s lesson you explain that the two characters for “journalist”, 记 者, mean “memory” and “professional”. Would it be possible to add to the vocabulary a Notes column where such gems can be put and which could be transferred into one’s word bank?
2. Also I notice that you do not always include in the vocabulary the useful words you discuss in the lesson (but which were not actually part of the dialogue). For example today we had “shīfu”, “chǔshī” and, I think, one or two others. It would be helpful if you could always put such additional words into the vocabulary so that they can find their way into the word bank.
请 继 续 你 们 的 很 好 工 作 (No doubt that is appalling Chinese: but you may be able to guess what I am trying to say!)
再见
William
William,
Excellent suggestions and a valiant piece of Mandarin writing.
The learning center is a work in progress - we will continue to add to it, and try to improve it. These suggestions are good. Let me see what the tech guys say.
Patrick.
Thanks so much for the suggestions, it’s a great idea for a few reasons:
1. Less prep for us, the production team to do
and
2. Helping you out with this means I don’t feel so bad when I visit SoCal and need a place to stay.
…do you have skype? If so, this might be even easier, but if not, I’ll send this on to tech to find the easiest way.
Thanks for the comments. You stay classy, San Diego.
Aric
Producer
William,
No need to apologize, you should see some of the scribble Ken leaves on my desk…speaking of my desk, those suggestions made it here and I agree with both points. As Ken mentioned, that first issue will be a tech one and has been sent to their office. The second can easily be done and from now on, we’ll pay more attention to adding additional words.
Thanks again for the great suggestions, I might pass them off as my own the next board meeting.
Aric
Producer
Hello, I have just started listening to Chinesepod and I am also slowly working through a teachyourself Chinese book& audio set to compliment. The thing I love about the book and audio that isn’t covered on Chinesepod is the stroke order of the characters. Using the stroke order while practicing made it very easy to remember the characters I have already learnt - 中国 中文 你好 What makes this particularily great for me is that I now see these as actual words and not as ‘pictures’ representing words. I was looking at a Chinese website the otherday and the characters I only just learnt jumped out at me and I instantly recognised them! This has urged me to continue as for me personally, this is the most fun part of learning Chinese - reading and writing. I can’t wait to learn more.
Here are some more suggestions for product enhancement:
1. Video Podcasts - I would love to see video podcasts included - maybe not for every lesson, but say 1 per week. This would also be a good method of enhancing stroke order.
2. Text & Workbooks - Are there any recommendable books & workbooks that we could buy to enhance our self study?
3.Pricing - perhaps it coule be possible to have an optional paid subscription through iTunes? You pay a weekly/monthly fee through iTunes and you get all the materials included in the cast - audio, pdf & supplementals. I have seen a French podcast that includes pdf along with the audio.
4. Stroke Order instructions along with a blank pdf grid for practising.
5. ‘Cultural Notes’ & Recommended Reading - A weekly podcast that focuses on cultural aspects of life in China. Real life conversations with Chinese people could also be included. A recommended booklist/website list could also be included.
Keep up the good work.
Mame du Bois