CLO_043:Teaching Phrases Review
Listen to this lesson, to learn what the following means:
Teaching Phrases Review: Numbers
Rang4 wo3men lai2 xue2xi2 di4si4shi2er4 ke4.
Huan1ying2 lai2dao4 di4si4shi2san1 ke4.
Jin1tian1de ti2mu4 shi4 shen2me?
Rang4 wo3men xian1 ting1 yi2ci4 jin1tian1de dui4hua4.
Rang4 wo3men zai4 ting1 yi2ci4 jin1tian1de dui4hua4.
Bing4 gen1 Kirin shuo1.
Xian4zai4 wo3men kai1shi3 fan1yi4 jin1tian1de dui4hua4.
Na4 shi4 shen2me yi4si?
Zhong1wen2 zen3me shuo1?
Teaching Phrases Review: Tones
Ràng wǒmen lái xuéxí dìsìshíèr kè.
Huānyíng láidào dìsìshísān kè.
Jīntiānde tímù shì shénme?
Ràng wǒmen xiān tīng yícì jīntiānde duìhuà.
Ràng wǒmen zài tīng yícì jīntiānde duìhuà.
Bìng gēn Kirin shuō.
Xiànzài wǒmen kāishǐ fānyì jīntiānde duìhuà.
Nà shì shénme yìsi?
Zhōngwén zěnme shuō?
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I like how you introduced these instructions. A quicker paced lesson would be nice to hear, especially for a review. Also on a technical note, can you reduce the difference in volume between Adam and Kirin’s voices? Adam, you’re a fair amount quieter.
Thanks for the feedback James. There’s a delicate balance that I’m trying to achieve here by satisfying those who want a quicker pace versus those who find themselves falling behind. Hopefully the tools being added to the Premium side will help.
I experimented with a new microphone setup for this past lesson. I’ll pay closer attention to the volume difference - thanks!
Adam, Actually, in this lesson, the volume is pretty constant. I was refering more to previous recordings.
I look forward to when you reach more intermediate level lessons. The pace of introducing new material in the lessons seems to be about right. It’s only the slower speech and explainations that are hard on my ears.
Hi James. Ok, in the new lessons (starting with 43), I’m using a new microphone so hopefully that will fix the problem.
I had the same feedback from someone else that the lessons were too slow during review, so I’ve placed remixed summary audio files in the Premium section that just have the dialogue without the explanations. This should hopefully quicken the review process.
As far as intermediate goes, the pace should change from Lesson 61 on (start of our Level 2). I’m hoping for more interaction between myself and the Chinese speakers, so let’s see how that works!
Keep the comments coming - it really helps me fine tune the system.
-Adam
You know, this lesson was a strange mixture for me. During the single word explanations I was yawning and looking around the room with an “oh yeah who wouldn’t know that” expression. Way too easy. Then when they were put into a sentence I was completely lost. Somehow I “couldn’t hear” what was being said. The same as what happened in lesson 30. Now I think I know why.
My brain will hold about three chunks of Mandarin. When the next chunk comes in, the first chunk falls out. A chunk can be a word or a phrase or a syllable, it depends. Now when I hear Heidi say “Rang women … dui hua” that’s all I hear, that’s all I’ve ever heard. I know each word very well, but I’m still busy perceiving the first words by the time she’s finished. Other sentences whiz by me, word by word, like I’m viewing through a tiny one character wide peephole as it moves across. My brain takes in (consciously hears) each word, but each word pushes out whatever was in the brain before, and all recollection of hearing it. Yet, some other sentences are the same length and speed but I hear (perceive) them easily.
I may be wrong, but I think the reason lies in these chunks. One-word chunks won’t see you through a whole sentence unless it’s spoken at a snail’s pace and you have a good short term memory that will last to the end. When the words become more familiar they get chunked together, so then there might be four or five syllables in a single chunk! Put three of those together and you have a substantial sentence, still only requiring three chunks to be processed. It would be no harder than taking in a three syllable phrase when each syllable was an isolated chunk.
Then the solution is to make the brain chunk some of these words together as a unit, so there is less work to do. Here laziness can be a virtue. Then the smaller groups, once established as familiar, can be chunked together into longer phrases or typical phrase patterns. After that point you can throw a lot of them into a big sentence and speak it quickly and my brain will stay with it all the way through. Imagine this: it’s easy to juggle two matchboxes, but impossible to juggle 100 individual matches. The words need bundling up before it will get easy to manipulate them, and maybe that’s what all those textbook exercises are designed to do. Right now I’ve only got tiny little chunks of Mandarin to juggle, too many of them, so I need to go away and practise manipulating them as little chunks, like I should have done back at Lesson 30, and then bigger and bigger chunks of chunks. After all, a huge familiar chunk with one changed word in the middle, is only two pieces of information to take in, isn’t it!
Hi Parrot,
Here’s what I’ve learned from this last exercise. Please add anything you feel I may have missed:
1. If I make changes, make them all in one lesson so that people only have one place to refer to for review (I did this in Lesson 30 but then started adding more new words and phrases in later lessons).
2. Rather than translating an entire sentence, start with manageable chunks and then work my way up to an entire sentence.
This is great feedback and will really improve this course going forward. The whole inspiration behind the switch was that I found myself saying a lot of the same things over and over in English and thought that if people were going to hear the same thing again and again why not do so in Chinese so that they are learning outside the learning (so to speak). Obviously more thought needs to go into that process but I’m proud to say that with your all help I’m getting better at it!
-Adam
Wow, nearly 6 years since this course was set up.
I wonder if you know that the pdfs are not downloading for the characters of this lesson.
Thanks for pointing that out. We have deleted the links that don’t have content assigned to them.