You’re not sure how it happened, but you’re back in school. Instead of the honorary doctorate you vaguely remember being promised, you’re confronted with a 40 page exam on post-modern game theory. Being a ChinesePod subscriber, you’re feeling chuffed about the portion of the exam in Chinese, but even so are having trouble focusing without your clothes.
We’ve yet to blog about it, but it’s true that one of our core principles at Praxis is not inducing nightmares in students. That being said, tests clearly have a role in education: they help measure progress, are useful tools for identifying weak spots, and can also be fun. And so I’m pleased to announce the release of our latest beta-initiative: the ChinesePod test playground. The site is currently quite sparse and utilitarian (and it’s hosted in Asia, so might be a bit slow for surfers in North America or Europe), but this latest labs project will be our holding pen for experimental online tests. We’re calling the first test we have up there the “Cognitest”. It works by asking you to match random Chinese sentences to the ChinesePod lessons in which they appeared. Sound easy? It isn’t. Competitive inter-office grudge matches suggest that if you can routintely score 80-90 percent you’re doing very well.
As with all of our beta materials, the test playground is a work in progress. Old tests may disappear and new tests will appear as we work on them. As materials get polished they will probably migrate and become more deeply integrated with the site and various subscription packages. But they are free for everyone to use and explore as beta projects. So please enjoy. And remember, as long as you aren’t taking these at work, it doesn’t matter if you’re naked…. learning on your terms means learning however’s most comfortable, right?
中文 Chinese
Helen Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
OK. I love doing quizes. But what is the point of these ones? They seem to test how well one remembers each lesson rather than how much one can understand the language.
AuntySue Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
This wasn’t really your point, but can I tell you about the Chinese test nightmare I had only last night?
I was in a huge derelict building, trying to find either a way out, or a toilet, and by this stage both needs were equally urgent. Following the sound of water, I entered an unlit room. It smelled of mould and the water was from a leaking roof.
Suddenly the door slammed shut and two masculine shadows approached, shining a large light into my eyes. I was pushed into a chair and told that because of my outrageous claims I would be tested on my supposed ability to speak Chinese. It was clear that I would not be released unless successful.
I could see the evil smirk on the man’s face when he asked me the question that was designed to justify my life’s unworthiness. He asked: What is the Chinese word for horse? My perfect third tone ma response made them both stagger backwards, defeated, as I calmly stood up and left the room. Then I woke up laughing.
This is the kind of “nightmare” you have when you learn on your own terms. I can handle your tests, bring them on.
Henning Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Is 18/20 in the “Super-Hard Cognitest: Advanced” a reasonable result?
Helen is right, this one only tells me I might have listened to those lessons a little bit too often…
AuntySue Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hey, not fair! I tried the newbie level and I’m sure a lot of those were from elementary and intermediate lessons, ones I’d never heard. But I still got 75%, so there.
Helen, I think the point of it is to do something fun and relaxing, trivial if you like, in a language context. You’re also testing your recognition of phrases presented as either characters or sound, and getting, at worst, some valuable over-practice of what you already know.
The element of chance, or the testing of something unimportant like which podcast, takes some of the pressure off. I didn’t get a perfect score, but hey, that’s not only based on my language skill, there’s game play in there as well. (Of course, had I scored 100%, that would have been due to my superior linguistic superiority and nothing to do with a few lucky random choices, wouldn’t it.)
hape Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I would prefer not to test on the lesson title but on the next sentence/answer of the presented sentence in the lesson.
Henning Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
hape,
哈哈!
That would be the equivalent to the “Nightmare mode” in that old game “Doom”. Only after you memorized all 585 dialogues you pass the test.
hape Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Henning, but it would train your conversation skills…
Jamie Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I got 11/20 on the Newbie, which, considering I am an absolute beginner and only know about 35 characters, I thought was pretty good!
It was fun, except for the ones where I was like, “I only know ‘wa3′, which isn’t much to go on.”
Lantian Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Comfort is important.
kmk Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Lol, it’s easier with the advanced level where you get more information than with the newbie level where it’s sometimes inextricable.
How am I supposed to guess from that ?
你好。
Lost Luggage
Chinese Antiques
Black or Green Tea
Please speak slowly
Lantian Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Newbie Score: 15/20
Elementary Score: 19/20 A most impressive performance
Intermediate Score: 17/20 Above average!
Upper-Intermediate Score: 18/20 Dashan is growing wary at this sort of competition….
Advanced Score: 13/20
Paying attention to the tone of voice can help you peg the situational context
UI: I didn’t know a lot of the hanzi, guessed a lot. Was able to guess with good certainty though.
Adv: I was wildly guessing.
Bazza 白锐 Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 6:17 am
16/20 on newbie.
Lantian Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 9:47 am
The Super-Hard Cognitest
Newbie Score: 10/20 Pretty good if you’re a Newbie
Elementary Score: 18/20 Dashan is growing wary at this sort of competition….
Intermediate Score: 18/20 Dashan is growing wary at this sort of competition….
Upper Inter Score: 19/20 A most impressive performance]
Advanced Score: 12/20 A pass… barely. Listen to some of the podcasts that you missed and try again!
Newbie: I actually found it rather difficult. There was little context to help me place the words, it wasn’t that I didn’t know what they were saying.
UI: I found the upper inter listening much easier than the reading from the previous format.
Adv: I think the titles are more abstract, and harder to place. Just listening I was still basically just guessing, although a few I did know, which I missed from just the reading-test version.
HARDNESS - I don’t know why you call it the “Super-Hard”, Cpod focuses much more on aural and spoken skills, I actually found the listening only easier.
I think both tests placed me well, the results match my own self-assessment of where I’m at in terms of Cpod materials/levels.
I don’t have any ideas, but unfortunately the tests don’t yet test my spoken output.
Both times, tests were taken in comfortable attire. ;p
Lantian Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Bazza, what do you get if you take the Elementary test? I think it’s actually easier than the Newbie…
trevelyan Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
lol @ kmk’s test. The questions are randomly generated in real-time, so the Newbie test can be tougher than the elementary/intermediate for more advanced students.
Someone should try to pry out of John what his score was the first time he took the test….
kmk Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Yesterday
Newbie Score: 14/20
Jamie Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Just took the Super-Hard Cognitest (Newbie) and got 11/20 on it, too. I guess I am at an 11/20 kind of level right now.
I did get a couple of “ni3 hao3s” like kmk’s, though! I might have done better with something topical. Or not.
Mike B Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
That classroom looks familiar. Is it MC, 4′th floor, Waterloo? Wow, that takes me back a long time.
The test does make me think you guys at Chinesepod are getting a bit narcissistic. I mean, you’re lessons are great, but I don’t memorize the lines and remember the titles like some kind of cult movie fan.
AuntySue Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 3:59 am
Feedback on how it works.
I tried the upper intermediate and sat on “2/20″ for ages, wondering when I’d get to the end. Could those numbers say things like 2/13 instead so you know where you’re up to? BTW, after working through what seemed like a hundred questions, I ended up getting 9/20 there based on recognising the glue words and the words spoken from the titles e.g. Shaolin. It was still good listening practice.
Also, for one question the options two and three were identical (Transportation).
Any chance of making it work with traditional characters too?
Lantian Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Hey John,
What did you score on the Cpod Cognito tests, and on SAT verbals? ;p
BTW, why are you plunging in the Active User Algorithm? Is the score bounded by some period of time?
Where does PK come from anyway? I figure it’s a word from video games, but what’s the P and the K stand for?? People have asked me and I’m like….uuuuhh, it’s English?
kmk Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
PK :
Player Killer，起源于MUD遊戏，指游戏中专门杀害其他玩家，而不是与其他玩家合作应付遊戏内的难题及NPC的人，亦称PKer。
Player Killing，原指PKer杀害掠夺其他玩家的这种行为。现时这个词语随着《超级女声》，已经在中国内地风行，并演变成PK赛这个名词来指残酷的比赛。因《超级女声》中，PK为两选手淘汰其一，现日常使用中PK通常表示两人（或两物）“单挑”、“决斗”、“作比较，分出高下”。在使用中通常为动词，例“姚明PK奥尼尔（Shaquille O’Neal）”。
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/PK
kmk Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Player killing
Player killing, or PKing, is non-consensual PvP resulting in a character’s death. Some games offer “open PvP” (also sometimes called “world PvP”), where one player can attack another without warning anywhere in the game world. An aggressor attacks an opponent without agreement to any set of rules of engagement or combat.
PvP can also create additional facets in the community. In Ultima Online, a rift formed between those who enjoyed PKing, those who enjoyed hunting the PKs and those who simply did not want to fight at all. The Renaissance expansion later added a Trammel facet where PvP was not allowed, giving some out to the UO crowd that did not wish to engage in PvP at all.
Some players find PK deaths to be unfair, since the most effective tactics require surprise or attacking an opponent in a weakened state and sometimes, the abuse of bugs and/or hacks. In PvE, the goal is to learn the pattern of the monsters and often to exploit those patterns for fastest gains. Fighting challenging monsters in online games usually requires a period of recuperation before fighting another monster, and this downtime is the perfect chance for a PKer to strike. PvP, and more specifically PKing, goes against the predictability of the game. While some people enjoy this aspect of gameplay, others do not and criticize such gameplay design. PKs who consistently harass players by “corpse camping”, “ressurection killing”, and other involvement which the PK has nothing material to gain by it, these PKs are considered Griefers
Character death in an online game usually comes with a penalty (though some games remove it from PvP combat), so habitual PKers can find themselves ostracized by the local community. In some games a character will die many times and the player must often sacrifice some experience points (XP) or gold to restore that character to life. Permanent death (such that the player must create a new character) is relatively uncommon in online games in general, and more specifically when PK is involved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....er_killing
Frank Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Newbie 16/20
Elementary 15/20
I started to do the Intermediate one as well, but I haven’t listened to any of the lessons, so even when I did understand what they were saying, I had no clue as to the answer.
I had fun doing this. I just wish there had been a “return and try again” button once you got your result.
Richard Sharpe Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Something to relieve all the exam tensions people might be facing.
Today I happened to listen to Elementary Directions with a Map, 1. For reasons that I do not understand, it was sped up when it was played.
I had a full chipmunks effect! There was Ken sounding so funny, and Jenny, who was trying to sound so serious when she said “yes” ended up sounding, ummm, so unfunny.
I will have to see if I can put the mp3 into Audacity to get the same effect as I heard. I played it directly off of the web site in Firefox.
Richard Sharpe Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Actually, I am enjoying the new ChipmunkPod!
Richard Sharpe Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 2:01 am
To get the effect, I had to select Full rather than DIRL (or whatever it is) on the Flash Player. I have Windows XP and Firefox 2.x. It only seems to be that mp3 that gives me the Chipmunk effect.
Jingawee Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 6:38 am
At first I agreed with Helen. Later i found out the test has good things: 1.that i got inspired to listen good. But indeed, the score doesn’t per se say about ur language skill.
To test my language skill (both reading and listening), i do with the Expansion section of the lessons.
2. now i know of the existence of PvP, pk, pVe etc.
Eileen Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Hi Richard,
The chipmunks are actually more of a streaming rather than a downloading problem. If you download the full mp3, it is not chipminked at all. We are not sure the cause of this streaming malfunction so we will have to regenerate the file again and re-upload it later once the mp3s are tagged properly.
Lantian Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 10:46 am
PK’d - Thanks KMK!
silentlyrules Says:
July 26th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
18/20 Novice. “好吧” is not exactly giving me much to go on.
20/20 Elementary. I am a rock star.
Quick suggestion - maybe it would be good to get a list of the questions, and what you got wrong (and, if the web guys are feeling extra generous, an ability to bookmark the lessons that are the right answers?)
Also, keeping track of the back button might make it harder to cheat (Nerd hat on - some kind of session state?)