Since launching a few weeks ago we’ve had loads of feedback from users (thanks to all who have contributed) and are responding to it as fast as we can in the audio content. There have been tons of good suggestions, and we have our own improvements we want to implement too. The thing is, all these changes require experimentation, … and that takes time.
To create time in the team’s schedule, we are going to slow the release of new lessons a little over the next few weeks. We’ll go from 5 a week to 3 a week (but the rest of the site activity will carry on as normal). That extra time will be used to perfect some changes to the materials, and we’ll get back to a full 5 a week schedule in the second week of May. Let me reassure that it will all be worthwhile!
Also, whilst we are talking about the lessons, don’t forget we are always open to requests and suggestions for lesson topics. What do you need? Post your requests here …
中文 Chinese
FuDaWei Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I have no problem scaling back for the moment. I think it is important to put your best face forward and, frankly, you guys have a lot of minor little problems you really need to clean up. This is a great time to do it. You only have 21 lessons so far. Much better to deal with it now that later.
And I want to stress, the problems are minor. You have some vocabulary items spelled wrong (one in the very first Newbie Intro dialogue). You have several rollover “parts-of-speech” mislabeled. You have one or two places where the sentence translations are paired with the wrong sentences. You have several “words-linked-to-audio” that cycle forever without ever loading. In short … you need to go over everything methodically, and I sure that isn’t very easy with the V3 dust still churning on the ChinesePod side.
Good luck and thanks for your efforts. I look forward to the next few months.
Steve Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Hi Fu DaWei,
Thanks for the encouragement. We are making progress, and are all confident that we’ve got something great in the making…
FuDaWei Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I’ve been startled to discover how much I can already decipher when I browse Antonio Vergara’s ChinesePod blog en español. I see that he’s an IT professional (Ingeniero en Informática) working on a doctoral thesis (tesis doctoral) on computer security and data protection (seguridad y protección de datos).
There’s not a lot of traffic there; I hope he knows his efforts are appreciated nontheless.
Steve Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Learning Spanish can be really rewarding, because there are so many cognates and words that share etymology with English vocab. This means that very quickly you can start deducing what new words mean. This is a powerful and efficient learning method (actually the core of our method and philosophy at Praxis), but on top of that, you get a real rush of satisfaction when you start to figure the language out for yourself.
This is all good news, and building vocab with Spanish is much easier than with an Asian language like Chinese, but the real challenge in Spanish isn’t building vocab. It’s building fluency and intuitive usage of correct grammar. Here the parallels with English are fewer, and it can be an effort to get your head around all the tenses and genders.
However,the real problem with gaining competence with Spanish grammar is how it is traditionally taught. It’s often taught explicitly, as a set of rules that need to be internalized in the abstract (repetition of conjugation tables for example). This is ineffective and de-motivating. We are figuring out ways to teach all the structures of Spanish inductively, which will result in learners picking up an intuitive understanding of grammar more quickly (and painlessly!).
Adriana Says:
April 25th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
There is something really called my attention about Steve and FuDaWei’s comments. It refers to what is called ‘word association’, it is a type of learning strategy, a sort of memory tip, one can associate for example faces with names or cognates in the case of Spanish and English. I think this is very good for those learners who are specially visually learning-oriented, I mean those learners who are good at relating pictures to words, situations to words, colors to words and so on.
On the other hand, getting fluency is indeed hard for many -I say this because English is a foreign language for me- I was thinking about a couple of ideas to get a bit of fluency since the newbie level, which is perhaps the level FuDaWei is in and might be funny and worthy, for example teaching another person what one already knows or talking to oneself. You know that might push the mind to think of the words and recall the vocab. I think another core issue in developing fluency is not to worry a lot about making mistakes, at a certain point what matters is to get our messages across, one theory of language says that making mistakes is proof of progress.
Jimmy B Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Two things:
I have a dinner party in a week where I’ll need to speak Spanish all night. Can you guys offer me a quick course in how to be a charming fluent speaker in one week?
Second item: While you folks are on this vision quest, will you consider extending the “Trial Period?” I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to the extra $120 until I know better if the vision of SpanishSense fits into my learning needs…
Adriana Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
I’ll help you with the first request, and I think Steve tells you about the second.
Will you be the host? You may need to be polite and caring with guests so you can pick up some phrases with different collocations:
Buenas noches! Good evening!
¡Qué buena fiesta! What a nice party!
¡Qué buena comida! What a nice food!
REFERING TO ONE PERSON
¿Quieres algo? Do you want something?
¿Quieres comer algo? Do you want to eat something?
¿Quieres tomar algo? Do you want to drink something?
REFERING TO A GROUP
¿Qué tipo música quieren? What kind of music do you want?
¿Qué tipo de comida quieren? What kind of food do you want?
¿Quieren comer algo? Do you want to eat something?
Will you dance in the party? if so you can ask a girl ¿Bailamos? (can we dance?)
¿Bailamos salsa? can we dance salsa?
If you want to pick up some more, you may refer to th ‘what time is the party’ lesson or ‘introducing yourself’ lesson (in case you want to meet new frinds) or the ‘how do you in Spanish’ all are newbie lessons, ¡Buena suerte!
Adriana Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
¿Qué tipo de música quieren? What kind of music do you want? I was missing the preposition ‘de’
Jimmy B Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:52 am
Adriana,
Muchas gracias por ajudarme. Estoy invitado. Pero va a estar solamente cinqo personas a la fiesta, y es porque estoy nervioso. No puedo ocultar, verdad?
I’ve been making lists of smalltalk points and translating them to the best of my ability: I do have around 3 pages of commentary now: I can talk about family, but my career (a project manager in healthcare) isn’t exactly covered by Pimsleur. I’m trying to work it out and not just go to Google.com/translate - sometimes the words don’t line up properly.
I’ve been cramming with all of the SpanishSense courses, as well as NotesInSpanish Intermediate, and my own personal drills. I’m lower intermediate, so I’m hoping I can muddle through!
Solamente quatro dias…
Back on the previous topic: You know, when I started with CPod and Jpod (and a few others), they had existed for over a year and had hundreds of lessons all ready. It’s HARD for me to watch a site grow like this and see 3 new things a week, which I can devour in a single day… Estoy tratando de estar acomodar…. pero es dificil!
Adriana Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
O.K I really hope you have successful communication in your party.
Parece que no puedes ocultarlo!!!, But I think you should relax and forget about being too exact on the spanish, I think you’d better try to focus your attention on the meaning of the words you communicate rather than in the way, as times goes on you’ll be very accurate.
So if you are a guest, then you can have functinal language about food, like to say:
Me gustaria comer (here you mention what you want to eat)
Me gustaria beber (agua, cerveza, jugo, etc)
Project Manager in healthcare, it’s like to say ‘representante de un proyecto para el cuidado de la salud’,
So you say ‘Yo soy representante de un proyecto para el cuidado de la salud.
If a person then asks you: De que es? or De que trata? (What is it about?), you can say
El proyecto trata de… (brief explanation)
El proyecto es acerca de… (which is to say ‘the project is about…) By the way, where are you from?
Hope this can light a candle!
Jimmy B Says:
May 6th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Adriana,
Gracias! The dinner went very well!
Adriana Says:
May 8th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
¡Qué maravilla! Jimmy. Whenever you need help just let us know.