Comments on: Chinese Pod Revisited

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:11:27 +0000

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying about the Rs. Is this a complaint about her Shanghai accent?

Setting that comment to one side for the moment, I like some parts of Michael Thomas’s method, especially the strong focus on comprehension at the beginning. But, isn’t his program pretty heavily dependent upon using shared roots between languages for teaching vocabulary? I’ve seen a lot of rave reviews from people who have used it to get started on Romance languages, but how does it work with Chinese?

By: andrew lee

andrew lee — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:37:31 +0000

You guys have to be kidding. I’m Chinese and Jenny is a quack. They expect people to learn from her? I purposely dumb down my Chinese when teaching to Americans and dumb down my English when teaching to Chinese. CPOD doesnt do squat. Durh, we already know Jenny is a native speaker. It’s like Spanish speakers teaching Spanish in school, talking in their native tongue rolling their Rs as much as possible. It proves nothing more than what a lousy teacher they are and that they need to teach it while being familiar with the audience and their beginning abilities. There are plenty of time to roll the Rs and pronounce like a native speaker AFTER learning the basics.

If you want to learn, get Michel Thomas. If you want to watch a clown show, there are plenty of Chinese tv that does that without pretending to teach you Chinese.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:55:20 +0000

Prince Roy, At ChinesePod we are trying to cater to all types of learners, so we have, as you mentioned, individual student discounts at 20% in addition to 40% discounts for groups of students over 10 people. We hope this will be of benefit to those studying Mandarin on tighter budgets!

By: Prince Roy

Prince Roy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:15:26 +0000

ChinesePod has gotten far more student-friendly now. They offer student discounts of 20%, which should put the premium subscription in the range of USD$20 per month.

By: Prince Roy’s Realm » Blog Archive » Catching Up With John Pasden and ChinesePod

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:17:56 +0000

[...] ChinesePod–in any event someone much braver than me, Mark Wilbur, has already posted a great review–and remember, he wrote that 1.5 years ago. ChinesePod continues to improve, and it’s an [...]

By: Learning with Chinese Blast | Doubting to shuō: Chinese, Investing, EFL and Being a Geek in Taiwan

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 00:00:32 +0000

[...] Related Post:Chinese Pod Revisited Related Post:Is the (YouTube) Gravy Train Over? Tags: chinese web 2.0, Language Learning, reviews [...]

By: nate

nate — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:50:33 +0000

“About your questions.
1) Do you think learning names matters when learning a language?
I think it’s important for me to call someone by the name they introduce themselves to me as.”

Hmm… I think somebody had a bit too much to drink before posting.

By: schtickyrice

schtickyrice — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:29:20 +0000

Ta nainai de! Speak for yourself! It may not be an asset in Shanghai, but being able to speak manly mandarin definately helps when out drinking with the gemen’r in the north.

By: Bart

Bart — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 03:27:46 +0000

I think the issue of male speakers is some what overstated. Certainly, if male learners are saying “ai-yo” and “waimien ri si” and such girly things, there is a problem. But I don’t think that people have to be ultra-macho in Chinese fashion to be good male speakers of Chinese.

By: Lantian

Lantian — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:36:54 +0000

On Cpod Advanced there is now a lesson specific to names, take a listen.
http://zh.chinesepod.com/podcast/2006/07/26/%e9%ab%98%e7%ba%a75-%e5%a7%93%e5%90%8d%e7%9a%84%e8%b5%b7%e6%ba%90/

About your questions.
1) Do you think learning names matters when learning a language?
I think it’s important for me to call someone by the name they introduce themselves to me as.

2) Do you think there’s any sort of advantage to using English names inside a Chinese lesson?
No not really, not in the sense of creating some sort of ‘total’ Chinese immersion input, but in a lesson of conservatively SWAG counting, a name consisting of 1-4 characters and total 50-150-300 characters which appear in the chatting and lesson and a language lexicon of say 2000-5000 characters I say ‘no biggie.’ If they made up new names for themselves every 5 lessons till they had gone thru the top 50 Chinese names, well maybe that would be an advantage.

Hi Prince Roy,
I really don’t get what the deal is with you guys and names. About your ‘reversing’ of the situation and calling yourself by an made up Chinese name. Umm…have you heard of DaShan? About English classes, in Japan, that’s usually the exact scenario, English teachers get this weird ‘katakana’ized English name, and all the students keep their Japanese names, even in class. There’s no SilverMoon John Takayama san there.

And I don’t get why you don’t use a Chinese name, it’s easier for people to remember. After a while if the person gets to know you, and they speak English, they’ll probably call you by the name you’re most comfortable in, which seems to be English.