Popup Chinese

Advanced: Pet Ownership in China

Echo was pretty sure she was a dog person, and still insists she's going to raise a Golden Lab someday ("and the larger the better"). But her animosity to cats crumbled when Squeak showed up, and wormed his way into her affections with a prolonged licking session. Gail - on the other hand - has always been something of a cat person. So it isn't a surprise she's raising one either. Or that they settled on this topic for today's podcast.

If you're capable of listening to Chinese at native speed and have a thing for cats too, join us in this Chinese podcast for advanced listeners. In it, Echo and Gail talk about their experiences as cat owners in Beijing. And on a side topic, this editor will admit to being impressed that cats in Beijing know how to play fetch and seem to enjoy it immensely. We're not sure if this is a sign of end times, but consider yourself warned.

nurflight9

said on

November 14, 2010

Hi! This topic is dear to my heart... I just got a new kitty myself: http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/big.asp?photoID=11015758&catID=&style=&rowNumber=20&memberID=130891

(And welcome to my photo gallery!)

And enjoyed hearing Echo and Gail chat about their kitties, even though I fully understood only snatches. But there's a problem for me with this kind of lesson. The way I got from Beginner to Intermediate is because the intermediate lessons offer me dialogues that I can study, pinyin versions of the dialogue and translations--all enabling me to learn what at first I don't catch just by listening. They also offer me discussions on grammar points. I can go back to them again and again, refresh my memory of the vocab and gradually it sinks in the most enjoyable learning method I've found. But though I really enjoyed hearing Echo and Gail talk, what is offered here really isn't anything more than what I can get by turning on my TV, minus the visual cues. I couldn't learn anything new from it. This worries me because I am not studying written Chinese and other than my daily interactions in life, Popup Chinese is my only (and wonderful) learning tool. If there were advanced lessons that followed the structure of the other levels, I could then have the tools to gradually pull myself up by your bootstraps to advanced level when the time came. Actually, you do have two or three advanced level lessons that follow that pattern and they were great. More of them please!

trevelyan

said on

November 15, 2010

Susan,

Some of those nature photographs are stunning! I especially liked some of the bird photos. And on a random note, if your cat is from China you should see if he plays fetch. My cats back home never did it, but Squeak and Qixi are just wild about chasing paper balls. Perhaps there is something about China....

And thanks for the feedback as always. We're aiming to produce more advanced materials (and most need to be Chinese-language only at the advanced level) and will try to have variety here. That said, we are trying to produce more Chinese-only audio fairly regularly, as we've had multiple requests for more materials at this level.

We're going to keep experimenting, and when we have good dialogues that fit at the advanced level we will definitely be producing dialogue-centered lessons.

Best,

--david

trevelyan

said on

November 15, 2010

p.s. you should point people to this gallery page -- its much more impressive than scrolling through them one by one. To my eyes, those nature photos are amazing!

nurflight9

said on

November 15, 2010

Thanks for the kind comments on the pics, David! Saved long and hard for a good camera and first class lens, and must admit that helps ";^)... Gotta confess that I'm just trying to finagle more for my money... Your dialogue format lessons make any level accessible to anyone (if you've got at least a basic subscription and can access the translation and pinyin transcript). I sit here ready to gobble up anything that comes out, no matter what level it is (that's right, rang4 ren2 shang4yın3, shang4 du2pin3 yi1yang4!), and what you're hearing above is a temper tantrum because I can't reach the bar in a level that's admittedly too high for me! (zai4 fang4 yi1ge!)

My Chinese kitty loves chasing paper balls, but she's never actually picked one up and brought it back to me to play fetch... Do yours really do that??? Maybe it's something about Beijing kitties--maybe they are more evolved...

Xiao Hu

said on

November 16, 2010

@Susanjallen,

Trevelyan was absolutely spot on, the nature pics are incredible!

Just a note about the format of the Advanced lessons. As someone who is both a student and a teacher, I really like the format of the Popup Chinese Advanced lessons. They work hard to vary it, give some set dialogues with notes, some free talk with new vocab, some traditional teaching podcasts with a dialogue and explanations all contained within a single podcast, like the lower levels.

The thing is, once you reach the Advanced level and your able to understand most of what's said, then dialogue, context and a short word list can become your teacher. At the advanced level, students don't need as much spoon feeding as in lower levels.

The dialogue centers around one topic, the language they use is clear and concise and all related to the topic of raising kittens, so with the word list in hand, it's a great teaching tool. It's also quite a bit different than watching a movie to learn Chinese, in movies the language the topics wildly vascilate around, making it not a focused learning tool.

Besides, with watching movies, you're not guaranteed to get useful, high frequency, modern language like on Popupchinese. Many programs use archaic, out of date language. You just never know what you're going to get, yet with Popup Chinese the whole dialogue has been structured to be a learning tool.

Be patient and be dilligent. As the Chinese say, 心急吃不了热豆腐。一口吃不了个大胖子。(you can look up the translation on www.nciku.com or www.mdbg.net)

nurflight9

said on

November 16, 2010

Arggg... Actually, it's only just now that I realized that there IS a vocab list! When I didn't see anything below the general introduction and as there wasn't a dialogue, I didn't think to scroll down. You're right, actually, the Echo and Gail's dialogue was very clear and as it was centered around one subject, maybe I'll get something out of it if I study the vocab list first. Thanks!