Two things to tell you about, and both concern additional audio features that we’re introducing.
First, we have the ChinesePod News and Features show. This show will bring you updates and information to help you keep up with any developments on ChinesePod, get more from it, and make your study as effective as possible. I’m particularly proud of the loud (garish even?) yellow banner and and the masterful jingle that opens it. (You must listen.)
News and Features will be a regular offering. In our first show I talk with John Pasden and Dave Lancashire about some exciting news. One item dominates today, and that takes me to my second announcement: the release of the new audio feature called the ChinesePod Fix. (We include a sample of the new feature.)
The Fix is an new, premium audio feature that will accompany each lesson, starting from today. We created The Fix as a response to several months of user feedback. The Fix does a number of things, and amongst them are (briefly):
- Review. You get to review the key vocab for each lesson - including the expansion sentences. There are lots of memory and recall strategies built in.
- Speaking. The format is also ‘generative’, meaning you’re actively challenged to produce words, sentences, etc.
- Pronunciation. Your focus, during the gaps in the audio, can be on recall, or on pronunciation.
Actually, there are other things you can do with The Fix, but we can talk about them later. The Fix will be a permanent feature for all future lessons. For now, you can find it on the lesson page, on the left-hand side, below the media player. (You’ll see the NEW! icon in yellow, beside it.) You can also subscribe to it in your feed.
I see The Fix as a major step forward. I hope it provides more options from which to choose and bring variety in your study on your terms. It also builds upon the idea of integration: learning is a multi-dimensional process and so building in more and more dimensions we hope to make the lesson ever more effective.
We’re very keen to have your feedback on both the News and Features as well, of course as on The Fix. Don’t hold back, now.
Ken Carroll
Hey guys,
This is really huge news. I’m quite excited by this one. This will be a really useful and excellent way to consolidate a lesson. I’m a fan of Pimsleur (for getting an initial hang of a language) precisely because of its prompts to the lazy learner to make you drag the word out of your memory.
This will fill a gap in my use of Chinesepod. I usually listen to the lesson, then study the transcript (noting the vocab) then listen a few more times, and I enter the words into my vocab list for review. However, I often tire of the lesson (or rather, wish to move on to something new and exciting) before I’ve really taken the vocab to heart. This means the word can take time to stick just from seeing it in the vocab trainer. Once familiar with a lesson, I’d rather just review the vocab, and this is much better than studying a list. This strikes me a great routine: Listen to the lesson, study the transcript, listen to the lesson a few more times, then schedule the “fix” for review the next day/next session before listening to a new lesson, and keep it in the rotation until I can do it free from mistakes. Because of the length, doing 2 or 3 fixes in a day doesn’t seem at all onerous and leaves time for new material.
I’ll let you know how I get on with this feature. One suggestion I could anticipate is removing the initial slow review and getting straight into the faster prompting. I’ll be curious to see what other learners make of it.
You guys are obviously putting a lot of effort into R&D. I’m glad to be a subscriber to Chinesepod.
I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the idea. And then I listened to the podcast. And especially when I hit the section where the listener is given a Chinese word, and an English sentence and told to come up with the Chinese equivalent. Then I felt a new part of my brain getting some exercise. Honestly, I could sit and listen to exercises like that for hours. Great great practice.
At first I thought that the level of difficulty of the vocab was a little too low, especially compared to the level of difficulty of the subsequent sentences. But I guess the emphasis of that section is on pronunciation rather than actually acquiring new vocabulary?
Great innovation. Keep it coming!
Two topics that deserve two posts:
First of all the Exercises.
Excellent. I love them, because just like the podcasts they can be used in otherwise unused time slices. My desk study time is almost completely filled with Dialogue, Expansion, and Exercises.
I am really curious how this will translate to the Advanced level. I can imagine Media also: more geared towards listening practice for radio news kind of content.
One question: The example was for yesterday’s lesson. Do you plan to provide “Fixes” for “back issues” (old podcasts) as well?
Second the News.
I think this is interesting, because kind of content used to be part of The Saturday Show (TSS).
Does this mean you *decompose* T(G)SS(ITW) and provide the chunks independently on the “Extra” tab?
With sections for:
CPod News (already there)
Chinese Culture
In the News in China
Word on The Street
CPod presents (musicians, self-promotors,…)
CPod Personals (including certain Alumni…)
Bad word / good word
Community Digest
?
Ken,
Good, yes. Great, maybe. Revolutionary, No!
Michael,
Allow for a degree of hyperbole! In fact, however, it’s probably best to have David inform us in more detail about this. Maybe we should reserve our judgment till then…
Ken Carroll
That’s great to hear about the add-on’s. Can’t wait to try them in the Elementary and Intermediate lessons.
I don’t see it. I have a Mac G5, using Safari.
AZERDocMom,
Go to doday’s Newbie lesson - Sweet Watermelon. Scroll down the page a bit. On the left side, below the media player you’ll see a new link - ‘The Fix MP3 Download’. (It’s a premium feature.)
Ken
Ken, thanks. I realized that just now after reading more carefully your blog post. Mental fatigue after working all night…zzzzzzzzzzz…nighty night!
Ken,
I don’t always jump on the bandwagon as quickly as I might and I am (overly?) sensitive to hyperbole. But seeing as you put it that way….and seeing as you do have a great reason to be proud of these people….go for it. Seriously, congratulations on another useful tool.
Love to hear more from Dave on the three-step process. BTW I’d reconsider the name. Was something previously broken or is this wording a throwback to the 30s (”the fix is on boss”)?
CPod Team
I apologize for not appearing to be so active as before. All I hope will be clear shortly. In the meantime I do want to say The Fix along with Qing Wen is a great addition.
Like or unlike Coljac I am not sure when I will listen to The Fix. In some cases I may wish to do so before the lesson perhaps for Intermediate lessons to help burn in the words a bit more first. Only time will tell what is the best way.
I do agree with Coljac that for sure it is a great review tool once the onces The Fixes build up to select one and review how well the words and use of words is stored in my feeble memory bank.
As to Qing Wen this is just great. I would love to see more and more of these Grammar Is Fun Audio tools.
Mike in Jubei (well not really any more somewhere in BetaPhase Location)
This is a great addition to the package, especially because I need more practice while on the move, and frankly, after listening to a full podcast for 3 to 5 times I am done with it. However, for most lessons on elementary level and higher that is not enough. Lately I feel I have to spend too much time behind the computer using the online features, this could balance it out. Please try to backport this feature to a least some of the lessons (you could use ranking or popularity as an indicator).
Marc in Belgium
This is fabulous. THANK YOU!!!
You guys are on a total roll now - Qing Wen, now this… I hope it all goes over to Spanishsense too!
This could be the biggest development yet! Can’t wait to hear/use it on the next levels. Thanks Chinesepod and especially the tech guys for putting this together. AND my fellow Cpod users who nudged them down this road (you know who you are!)
‘The Fix’ is EXACTLY what I need to make this all stick. I am really looking forward to using it and seeing it evolve. There are so many places this concept can go.
I can’t wait to try it.
GREAT WORK CPOD!!!
PS - I LOVE the News and Features jingle. It is brilliant.
Thanks for listening to those of us who wouldn’t shut up about implementing a feature like this. Now if there were only some way of implementing this “generative” idea into the lesson exercises…
In the past I’ve had trouble internalizing some of the lessons so I think this is a great addition to Chinesepod and it might just make me a premier subscriber.
Ken (and the CPOD Team)
THANKS!!!
I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of 3 examples of this feature at different and I think it’s going to a great addition.
I’m not sure if it’s adding to my feed though, when I tick and click save and refreshes the pages and unticks it again.
I’m guessing if we add them to our feed now we won’t get them until the next one?
Bazza,
The Tick box works now.
The really unexpected thing (for me) was how adding the sentences at the end of the recording really ramped up the difficulty.
There have been a lot of discussions on strategies for pushing past plateaus and crossing level gaps and once we started playing around with this, we saw it as a way to try and help there. After all, anyone who can translate sentences at any particularly level without much difficulty is probably going to feel comfortable listening to the next. The challenge is providing a good tool people can use without terrifying or intimidating people. Hopefully newbies won’t panic at being thrown into the deep-end with full-sentence translation after they’ve just mastered “Hello”.
Anyway, I think we’ll be looking at tweaking the format going forward on a level-by-level basis. Generally, I think what we have works pretty well up to the Upper-Intermediate/Advanced lessons. At that point the utility (for me) switches from the sentences section to the actual vocab review, possibly because the sentences become so long The Fix becomes a bit of an exercise in simultaneous interpretation. We’re looking forward to hearing suggestions from people on how we can improve things at their preferred level.
What does CPOD think about releasing a demo of “The Fix” for all levels? I doubt that it would make upgrading to a premium subscription worth it, but maybe a demo would change that?
Thanks Eileen, you’re right it does.
Sounds awesome and can’t wait till the weekend when Ill have some free time to listen and try it out!
Great idea! I’ve actually been doing this for a while, using Cool Edit Pro to cut out what I want from a lesson. I do it for all language podcasts I listen to. At a basic level sometimes you just need to memorize something and this makes it a lot easier. Long English passages in podcasts get a bit boring… I find myself able to recite large chunks of English passages because I’ve had to sit through them for long periods.
For this reason, I wouldn’t use this at all at Chinesepod. I’m a bit more advanced. If you were to take this over to Spanishsense, I might maybe possibly consider signing up.
Sounds good! I’ve been doing this for all my language podcasts; you’ve saved me 5 minutes picking away at a wav file in Cool Edit Pro!
For language learners where their level is quite low, I can see how this would be useful, but for higher users, I don’t think it would be so useful.
Also, unlike a lot of other users, I can’t get enough of hyperbole: I feel that this is almost life changing in its ramifications.
CHUNKS - When will the hanzi, pinyin, and English be added to the mp3? And when will the expansions sentences get their own RSS feed? Just figured I’d give it a shot asking, mom said never hurts to ask.
Never hurts to ask Lantian, although “I don’t know” is the best answer I can give right now.
Jeff had an interesting suggestion on one of the lesson threads: adding a second repetition of the Chinese sentence in the use-in-context section. I could see that being useful, but the trade-off would be slowing things down. What do you guys think?
I did make a short post in one of the lessons but I’ll go into more detail here. The purpose of The Fix (it seems) is to elicit a generative, hopefully vocal response from the user. In a short period of time, the user has to process what was said in English, construct the Chinese equivalent, and then say the Chinese equivalent. (This might not apply for fluent speakers but for learners I think you could argue this is the case.) So I think a requirement of the fix should be that there is enough time after both the English and Chinese sentences to say the entire sentence yourself. The vocabulary section is fine, because each word can be said quickly, but during the sentence formation you aren’t given enough time for a generative answer.
The current situation is this:
“Let’s try using these words in context”
Vocab Word 1
Ample pause to repeat the word
Sentence 1 using Word 1 in English
Ample pause to form and speak the sentence (though I think more time would be useful, especially the first time around)
Sentence 1 using Word 1 in Chinese
No time to repeat the sentence
This is where I see the problem. I naturally try and repeat the sentence after it is said but I’m immediately interrupted by the next sentence. I would even go as far as saying that the first time around the sentence could be repeated twice in Chinese, each time with ample time post-sentence to repeat.
Anyone else feel the same way, or am I being too picky?
Jeff,
I completely agree with you and no, this isn’t being picky. The length of time someone is given to respond in IS extremely important.
If, in the guise of a student, I know my window of opportunity to translate a sentence is quite small then the speed at which I try to “translate” will obviously be effected. I would imagine that the quality of the translation is effected by the time one is given to make the translation.
For those that would argue that the faster the better because real communication proceeds at a rapid space I would like to remind you that in actual communication there is little place for translation.
Translation is NOT a very good strategy when it comes to communication. The goal of communication is actually to avoid translation if at all possible (in most situations).
On the other hand, I would argue that translation is helpful in promoting accuracy but that this too should be understood with a number of cavets.
The biggest of which is that just as there are many ways to skin a cat there are many ways to translate a sentence and in many cases a complete and full translation of a sentence from one language to another is unnecessary (unless you work at the U.N.).
In much, much earlier posts Ken talked about the pitfalls of Gramar/Translation and decried its use in Chinese language classrooms. It would be wise to be aware of some of these pitfalls if you choose to use translation in your daily studies poddies!
My feeling is translate single words- Excellent! Translate complete phrases- Wonderful. Translate full sentences- step gently and be aware that translation is a transitional step not a final goal.
Ok Jeff, I’ll lengthen the pause after the Chinese sentence in phase three, and shorten the gap between the Chinese word and the english sentence in the same section.
If we get more requests for repeating the Chinese recording we’ll consider making the change. I’m reflexively wary of slowing things down that much out of a feeling it would make the recordings less useful to people at other levels.
Yeah I think repeating the Chinese would be better, English once, then Chinese twice.
Yes, please repeat the Chinese, it’ll double that sentence’s effectiveness.
Please don’t change this because of one person’s comfort level. There should be some sort of measure beyond that of responding to a single person’s needs. I suggest some independent yardstick.
Perhaps you should base it on the number of words in the sentence. The pause at the end could be based the number of words per sentence times some fixed amount of time per individual word (or some other criteria). Thus a sentence containing 11 words would have a longer pause than a sentence containing 7 words.
If you were able you could ask individuals to indicate a preference and then dynamically introduce that amount of time into the pauses between sentences. This would require that you could dynamically be able to generate these silent intervals but I bet Hank could figure out a way to do it.
ANOTHER VARIATION - I challenge Cpod to record 2 or 3 versions of the below and put it out there as a comparison. Then let the poddies vote.
wen ti
a problem
请问
你
有问题吗
wenti
请问你有问题吗
你有问题吗
有
I have a problem
我
有问题
This car has a problem.
这辆车有问题。
Your head has problem!
你的脑子有问题啊！
dong
to understand
你
懂吗
你懂吗
dong
I understand
我
懂
我懂了
I don’t understand
不
我
我不懂
I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
对不起，我不懂。
Whether you understand or not, it doesn’t matter.
你懂还是不懂，没关系。
I like The Fix, but I also think it is just ‘a sweet nectar’ for memory and will doom many to a fruitless path of language acquisition wandering.
The first review of vocab words is simply a short-term memory routine. Some will be able to gain more from it than others.
But I think especially at the very beginning it is most helpful to language acquisition to burn in the fundamental patterns (grammar) of the target language.
I would suggest the above routines instead. It starts with the sound in Chinese, why start from English?, then gives the meaning, then introduces the way the word fits into simple patterns.
I think that in many cases the particular word will fall away from short term memory, but the patterns will begin to etch into the interlanguage/long term memory/ and intuition.
In other words, the use of new words is mostly a guise to build the language patterns.
I also think this makes it easier to remember.
My point is, The Fix is like studying vocab for the SATs, but really what I want to study is language….and language is how words relate to other words to create meaning.
I want “Build It.”
The News and Fix are great features; however I have tons of problems working with Vocab. Often, I even have to shut down then re-engage. That’s inexcusable. Way more important to me than new features right now.
In principle I agree with Ron. I would e.g. have preferred to see the Glossary back, before that Netvibes thing went life. There is also another major functional block I am desperatly waiting for, but I promised not to whine for a while
With the Fix it is different though. For me that feature has proven to be a lot more useful than any tweaking of the current Vocab functions. I actually found peace with the vocab part of CPod - especially since I learned how to successfully export my list.
Dear Ken, are you maybe the nephew of Lewis Carroll?
I said that just because all your work is wondering!
Thanks a lot, your italian fan in China, Luca Cerilli
(I don’t know if this is asked already) Is this retroactive to old lessons?
Is there any pdf for “the fix”? 开玩笑！
There aren’t any set plans to go back and generate the fix for older lessons, but we’ll probably do it as we go back and change older content. We’re still experimenting with the format, but can probably add the lyrics to the ID3 space in the mp3 file.
BROKE - Okay, I’m a little lost right now, how do I add The Fix to my iTunes?
Was this mentioned somewhere?