VideoHotpot - VI – The Tone Police
In our most dramatic VideoHotPot, ever, we show you what happens when you get your tones wrong.
The Tone Cop is the very same maniac that has stalked Ken since he first made his tones public last September. It ain’t pretty, but then, nor are poor tones.
For newbies/absolute beginners: There […]
Archive for April, 2006
Some more ideas on speaking practice:
When should I start with speaking practice?
Many teachers believe there should be a ‘silent period’ where beginners concentrate on input without trying to actually speak. We recommend that ChinesePod Elementary level learners begin to seek out opportunities to start speaking. Start off with 2 hours per week and build […]
小混混（xiao3hun4hun4）
dawdling punk
This Chinese term is derogative. It refers to teenagers or young people who do nothing but hang around.
白骨精（bai2gu3jing1）
office elite
This is the name of a siren in the famous Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” But, today it is also used as a new title for white-collar office workers who excel in their career. Instead […]
I know how much you guys love ChinesePod’s Video Hotpot series, so I thought I’d offer a little more listening practice in video format. Both feature female native speakers.
The first is a pop star by the name of 张含韵 (Zhāng Hányùn) / Mabel Zhang. She doesn’t say anything very complicated, but she talks at a […]
Let’s push on with our discussion on the role of speaking practice:
Communicative output
The key to effective fluency practice lies in using as much communicative output as possible.
Let’s look at some of the characteristics of communicative output:
It’s natural
Speaking practice should approximate real conversation. Our brains are hard-wired to communicate and engage in conversation. Rehearsed conversations, or […]
Here is the second (short) installment of the speaking practice guidelines - a definition of what we’re talking about.
What is speaking practice?
For present purposes, the term ‘speaking practice’ refers to organized practice sessions, rather than real world practice. (We can look at practice in the ‘real world’ later.)
There are 2 kinds of classroom practice. […]
I recently did an interview wi the Guardian. They will most likely run a story on Thursday. You” find it iin the tech section: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/
Update: It seems the publication of the article has been delayed for a week.
Ken Carroll
Folks, we’re going to update our server tomorow to deal with the the growing traffic (120,000 unique visits per month). Service will be intermittent between 9AM and 5PM (Shanghai time) tomorrow.
Sorry about any inconvenience, but it has to be done.
Update: The upgrade has been delayed for a week or so.
Ken […]
I want to catch up on some comments about the difficulties that newbies may find here on CPod. It seems that for absolute beginners, the recent newbie lessons have been a bit difficult. Sorted! Next week we’ll have some lessons for people who may be hearing Chinese for the first time - […]
I’ve given some thought to the issue of speaking practice over the last couple of weeks and written up some guidelines. I’ll post them in installments.
Here’s the first one:
Speaking Practice
Guidelines for Mandarin learners
Defining your objectives
Most people approach the study Mandarin in one of two ways:
1. As an object of study and […]
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