We're making Mondays our official Speaking Practice days. Which doesn't mean we won't have other lessons to start off the week - there's a fiendishly difficult Absolute Beginner podcast lined up for tonight - just that we'll be scheduling our lessons providing speaking feedback for the beginning of the week. This gives us a few days to process all your recordings.Now on to the difficult part. If you click through to our text section you'll see eight seemingly-simple sentences. Think you can master them? Good. Then pick up the phone, call us, and read them to us. Once you've made your recording we'll add it to our review queue and contact you to let you know how you did. Our toll-free number is listed on our text page, so dial it, enter your lesson-specific PIN number and start talking. This is the next best thing to having a one-on-one session with a regular teacher, and it's a part of our regular subscription.
mat
said on August 2, 2009
Okay, got myself all brave enough to give this a go, had a few practice goes and then reached for my Skype but... there's no number or the pin on the text page. Boo!
Also, despite subscribing to speaking practice in account settings, speaking practice doesn't show up. I have to go to lessons and click on the speaking practice link (assuming one shows up on that page) to see all lessons.
Speaking practice should probably be a link on the permanent top right links on the lessons page too right?
mat
said on August 2, 2009
Well anyway, (one) aspect of pronunciation I have a little difficulty with is trying not to sound robotic particularly when asking questions.
This text is great with the playback queues. 你有水吗 is probably the easiest bit here. I originally thought Chinese doesn't add heavy inflection for forming questions but that's wrong. The pronunciation of 有 is very interesting, it doesn't sound (to me) like the third tone.
After having a go at this like maybe 50 times, I think I can pin the difficulty on giving 渴 this particular inflection. What we have are two third two words but with entirely different inflection. The first is a raised inflection, very familiar to English, the second is sort of accented down glide which just doesn't exist in English.
So anyway, I enjoy this on Sunday morning - thank you. :)
Speaking Practice
said on August 2, 2009
hey mat - not sure what happened there, but the problem should be fixed now. this is a new feature, so there's likely a bug somewhere we have to iron out and stake through the heart. I'll dig through the backend and see what I can find. thanks for reporting the problem.We should have another one of these out tomorrow. tone sandhi is tricky, and it's one of those areas where teachers usually fall out of the habit of correcting students. Usually the best clue you have you've got something wrong is when people simply don't understand.And not to let the cat out of the bagm but this is one of the things we're listening for with these sentences. Pronunciation, contextual tone changes. A few people are thwarting us by really practicing using our recordings before calling us and end up really nailing it. Which is actually great for internalizing the way mandarin is spoken. On the other hand, we're hoping this will be a useful tool for people who can only find 5-15 minutes in their day and still want some targeted feedback.--dave
barrister
said on August 4, 2009
I just got your mp3 by email Echo, thanks a lot. Pretty cool feature too. And yes, my tones *are* that good in the real world too.... ;)
trevelyan
said on August 4, 2009
Glad to hear it. Good to hear your voice too, eh?
barrister
said on August 5, 2009
it's a sweet little service. would have been really useful for me when i was starting out. also a smart move handling tones in combinations as with the newest lesson.
i think one of the hardest things about being an adult learner is putting in the time to develop physical memory. it is easy to just tell yourself that you know and understand something and move on before you can physically do it. so i'd imagine a lot of the benefit here is in actually forcing people to practice, it's a good motivating tool.
also a smart move from a business perspective. there are an increasing number of podcasts out there. must make it harder to compete.
mat
said on August 5, 2009
100% agree with you on the physical memory thing.
I was very surprised to learn that most of the customers are from China. I sort of find that a little depressing really. Like the only possible to reason to learn Chinese is if you happen to find yourself working there.
Seems kind of ironic to me, what I wouldn't give to be surrounded by Chinese being spoken all day... yet folks who do then sign up to a podcast? 真怪...
orbital
said on August 5, 2009
I live in Shenzhen and aren't that surprised. I like this place for getting me out of the box of vocabulary I use every day. Listen mostly to the more advanced podcasts and take some of the tests. Ten to fifteen minutes a few times a week keeps me from rusting. It's supplementary.
Back when I was Stateside my Chinese learning strategy amounted more or less to just going to class and listening to what my teachers told me. It was an awful approach, but as a total beginner I didn't know better.
Echo
said on August 5, 2009
@mat,What surprises me the most is a lot of students who are in the foreign countries (barely have the chances to talk to any Chinese people) can actually speak VERY good Chinese. Such as one of my students of the Popup conversation lesson, Michael, he lives in the New Jersey, and has only come to China once or twice for travelling. His fluent Chinese really surprised me in our first lesson. I couldn't stop myself from commenting "oh, your Chinese is so good!" through the entire lesson.--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
mat
said on August 5, 2009
I think you're experiencing "selection bias" there though Echo. Eg you're more likely to come across the most motivated of students.
I, on the other hand, only have experience of students locally that ... well. Let's just say they're a year into study and still can't pronounce pinyin...
Actually, I've just had a discussion with a Chinese friend about a good word for what I'm doing right now, in Australia we'd call it "whinging". We struggled to find a Chinese word for it.A 贬词 variant of "complain", she says it'd be most likely a phase with something like 吗事 in it. :)
Anyway, you guys are a breath of fresh air. I'm actually getting freaked out that I'm increasingly being able to understand Chinese I overhear on the streets of Melbourne. So much so I find myself stalking groups of Chinese tourists and trying to walk a discrete distance behind just to get my fix!
BTW does anyone else know the popup chinese music note for note yet? When I get around to the speaking practice I should sign off with me having a go at it on guitar :-)
beijingboy
said on August 7, 2009
I phoned last Sunday, but didn't get a result til now.
trevelyan
said on August 7, 2009
@beijingboy - I don't think we've received a recording from you, so this may be a tech issue. I'll look into our logs and see if I can track this down.
Has anyone else had problems or not received a response yet? I think we've taken care of everyone who called before today, so if you haven't heard back please let us know.
