Update on Cpod Full Transcripts blog site

July 5, 2007 on 10:52 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts, Uncategorized | No Comments

I had to do an upgrade to the Wordpress application software. For some reason this seems to have messed up the Chinese in my blog posts. Unfortunately I don’t have time right now to troubleshoot this. Anybody know what needs to be done?

Anyway, for those of you looking for Cpod banter transcripts, they are still there and the Chinese in those files are fine. Cheers. Lantian.

We’re back!

June 1, 2007 on 8:06 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site. No big problems, except all the daily things of life. I hope to have some new items up soon. Thanks to those who have stuck around.

Goals for Fun and Misery

November 29, 2006 on 5:40 am | In Studying | No Comments

GOALS - and taking breaks. About half a year ago I started muttering to myself about an exit strategy, of course I did this here on Cpod somewhere in the blog or comments. Nobody really picked up on it.

These days I’m goal-less, but it’s not what you think. I actually accomplished my earlier goals! I didn’t give up and I’m sure I’ll still keep growing in my Chinese. I’m not a fan of HSK, nor most tests, so that route won’t work for me.

I’m looking for ideas, so here’s the goals I’ve passed, and those I know I haven’t. Any others out here for me to try?

ACCOMPLISHED
-I recognize most of what’s on the menu (of a standard menu, not high-end fancy-smanz restaurants with weird names for everythign)

-I recognize the signs around me, I can say them outloud. You know important signs like the ‘pi e ka da’ Pierre Cardin furniture store. j/k (I’m in China. I was Lost in Translation when I first arrived.)

-When I feel like it, I can go 3-4 rounds in a bargaining session (those sellers that get to round 5+ still out-gun me)

-I can read 90% of Doraemon comics. I’m working on more ‘grown up comics now. You know, those for junior-high kids.

-I will cry watching a good Chinese drama, or Korean/Japanese drama dubbed and with sub-titles (cry only when they kill off the beautiful female lead or make her life miserable).

-I can understand and engage in conversations with Chinese friends (these are friends who can read ‘in-between’ the lines and figure out what I’m saying, not some random stranger). Some converstations I’m glad I can’t understand.

-I can text pretty much most messages in my mobile phone, in Chinese. Enough to meet up with people, etc. I can’t read the spam yet. Blessing?

-I can handwrite in Chinese, it’s not super fluid, but at least it doesn’t look like kid block printing, and I know where to swerve and re-jig the order of the strokes to make it ‘handwriteable.

-When people aren’t paying attention, they take about 4-6 minutes before they start wondering about my ‘weird Chinese. This is versus the first 1-3 seconds when I first started.

CAN’T DO
- I can’t yell loud enough, ‘xia che’, in the bus to get the busdriver to stop. I don’t really enunciate loud enough (yell) in Chinese. People say I speak like a sweet girl…ugg. GRR.

- I can’t confidently YELL fuwuyuan, or maidan, in the restaurant without feeling that my pronunciation goes to shot. When are we having the Learn to Yell in Chinese podcast that we can safely ‘practice’ in the car?

- I can’t read a newspaper (I can read some articles and the paparazzi photo captions)

- I don’t really enjoy trying to phone in a take-out order.

- I can’t really say the abstract or sarcastic things that I want to, in Chinese. Plus/minus?

- When I handwrite characters, yah I resort to pinyin and getting a picklist off of my mobile.

What other ‘markers’ or milestones do others have? I’d really like to hear from some long-time learners. Those that are 3-5 years plus in China.

I really thought what John said was important, motivation is key and that it’s a long-term process. I also want to say that we should distinguish between long-term and “hard”.

I don’t think Chinese is particularly hard to learn, but like any language, there’s just a lot to learn. In a grown-up busy life, this means it competes with lots of other stuff for my attention.

Having fun, attainable, concrete goals invents segments of time that make the years slip away. I’m in year 2 and it just feels like I started!

http://blogs.chinesepod.com/2006/11/28/study-as-a-journey/

It’s the Holidays

November 28, 2006 on 4:21 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

The Full Transcript schedule is a bit topsy-turvey. My transcriptionist had some tests to prep for, etc, etc. We’ll still be getting transcripts out, but this week looks iffy. If there’s a flood of anger, comments, or purchases it could spur my motivation!

Full-Transcript Initiative: Inter 40 Pissed Off!

November 9, 2006 on 3:28 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

Full-Transcript Initiative: Inter 40 Pissed Off!

Click here to go to the Chinesepod lesson

In this Chinesepod podcast Ken and Jenny talk about a couple in a restaurant. They are complaining about a guy next to them who is smoking and talking loudly on his cell phone.

They want him to stop, they want to complain. Can you complain in Chinese?! Learn how!

Click here to purchase this full-transcript. US$3.25 Word .rtf file

  • 也会啊
  • 如果有这个
  • 还可以，因为我很尴尬
  • 我们今天还有一个keyword.

Jenny： 但是他不理我，他不理我。
Ken：他不理我（不理，嗯），He didn’t pay any attention to me, he ignored me.（对）

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Chinesepod transcripts, the full-transcripts of the banter between the hosts is available here at www.aurbo.com/chinese. To really kickstart your Chinese language studies review some real conversation. Learn all the umms, yup, ah-huh, and transitions that make conversation easier and make for more natural sounding Chinese.
ThisisauniqueAurbocodetotrackmyranking8898

The Current Line-up of Full-Transcripts

November 9, 2006 on 3:01 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

About each week we publish a new transcript. Why not add this to your study plans?
http://www.aurbo.com/chinese

Click on the Chinespod Transcripts tab to go to that category. Scroll thru the blog posts for each transcript to see a description and for purchase.

$ 3.25 Chinesepod Full-Transcript Inter Lesson 40 Pissed Off!

$ 2.99 Chinesepod Full-Transcript Inter Lesson 43 How’s Business?
$13.00 That’s Outrageous plus next four Subscription
$ 5.00 That’s Outrageous
$ 3.00 Starter Pac: Three transcripts
$ 2.85 Chinesepod Full-Transcript Upper Inter 6: Getting Tough
$ 3.25 Chinesepod Full-Transcript Inter Lesson 52 : Old Friend
$ 4.25 Chinesepod transcript Inter Lesson 56 A Fated Meeting
$ 1.25 Chinesepod transcript Inter Lesson 28 Negotiating
$ 0.99 Chinesepod transcript for Upper Inter Lesson 9 News

Full-Transcript Inter Lesson 43 How’s Business?

October 29, 2006 on 1:49 pm | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

Chinesepod Full-Transcript Intermediate Lesson 43 How’s Business

US$ 2.99
MS Word doc file
Transcript of entire unscripted dialogue from podcast

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“The Watergate tapes are the most famous and extensive transcripts of real-life speech ever published. When they were released, Americans were shocked, though not all for the same reasons…one thing that surprised everyone was what ordinary conversation looks like when it is written down verbatim.”

The transcript of this lesson is the first with three people in the conversation. Jenny, Ken and Aggie. Our transcriptionist had an extra hard time with catching what was being said. It makes for interesting studying though.

Enjoy the transcript!

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Please take a look at this blog’s Cpod Full-Transcript category for posts and other transcriptions that may fit your needs. There are now a wide variety of price ranges (from 99 cents, to five bucks. ) and a subscription plan. The subscription plan includes That’s Outrageous plus the next four transcripts.

Did That “Click” For You?

October 25, 2006 on 3:01 am | In Misconceptions | 1 Comment

When native speakers of a language speak, hear or read a sentence that is not properly formed they will often say it “just didn’t sound right.” And if the sentence is then properly re-ordered or the proper word inserted, there’s a mental “click” that happens; almost a feeling of relief, “There, that’s right.” Do other’s know what I’m talking about? (that apostrophe in ‘other’ makes you quesy doesn’t it?) You know this feeling right?

In learning a second language (or third, forth..how many was that Ken, John..) there are several approaches to attaining a proficiancy level that allows one to speak or write well, but do those approaches give us “the click”?

Most of us can probably point to examples of long-time learners who still toss out the weird sentence every now and then, and we know of millions of Chinese who could out-grammar most of us native English speakers. Yet they speak and write rather poorly, why is this so? Why does so much effort in the grammar-translation approach lead to such poor speaking and writing results?

In Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” (pp 200-210) he talks about the concept of a mental parser. An ability of humans to utilize this language parser to understand streaming audio (speech). He makes the distinction that “grammar is a code…specifying what kinds of sounds correspond to what kinds of meanings in a particular language”. In other words, ask most Chinese learners of English if a particular word is an adjective, noun, verb and they’re more likely to know before I do.

What does this mean for those of us trying to learn to speak a language, and hoping to attain ‘native-like’ proficiency? Or at least an ability to enjoy leisurely reading and chatting in the target language? This is where I think understanding ‘parsing’ can inform how we learn and teach language.

Parsing by the mind, and especially with Chinese, means going from the start to finish of a sentence and capturing each bit of meaning before moving on. In fact in Chinese it seems quite straighforward, there’s little conjugation to throw into the mix. In other words, we don’t first take in a whole sentence and then interpret what it means. It’s much simpler than that. Let’s say the sentence is,

The dog likes ice cream

The parser goes along and thinks of it like this:

  • The
  • The dog
  • The dog - likes
  • Likes (what?)
  • Likes ice-cream

Notice that I don’t need to explicitly know any grammar here, that functions in the background. What I am doing is reading for bits/chunks of meaning. I believe this is the lexis that Ken and MikeInJimbei talk often about.

I’ve noticed that these days with myself (an intermediate level) I’m able to parse well with known vocabulary. It’s when I hit words that are unfamilar, and the context is complex enough that I cannot guess the general meaning of a chunk, that’s when everything quickly breaks down and I lose the whole sentence. Some call this the ‘intermediate plateau’.
For example,

  • The wiggly likes ice-cream
  • The “something”
  • Likes
  • Likes ice-cream.

I can guess at this sentence. But let’s say we add in more ambiguity.

  • The wiggly likes mub.

And then when the core of the meaning revolves around a key word I don’t know, it all collapses.

  • The wiggley plebada mub.

Even if I then re-build the ‘easier’ sentence

  • The dog plebada ice-cream.

I have come to realize one of the main reasons why I dislike typical classroom language instructions and materials is that there is a huge focus on what words “mean” rather than exposure to what words should come up before or after a word. Think about how we learn words in our native languages, how we gain our intuitive grammar. Our minds are asked “Do you like the wiggley?” “That wiggley is not a cat.” “The dog wants to plebada the mub.” And so forth. It’s natural, it’s easy.

When we are given grammar and translations of words, we lose ‘the lexis’, we lose the exposure to what should come after or before. Words in any language come with a whole lot of expectations about the words that should come before or after it, how they should be used, and the underlying grammar. This is OFTEN different or completely disassociated from the same linkages in the word of the other language. Giving me the meaning of a Chinese word in English completely disassociates me from the lexis and appendages of the other Chinese words that inform that term.


So is a grammar-translation approach to be tossed aside? I doubt it. A ‘natural’ approach only really works for kids who have parents to talk to all day, can play, and have years to experiment. Adult-learners, we do need and like knowing right away what a word means. We have different goals, time and committments.

From what I can see, parsing and building up this skill occupies something like less than 2 percent of current methods. Why not build it up to 30% or so. A curriculum and method that gives us more opportunities to parse and to hear parsing. How would you do this? Build up ‘the click’?

ThisisauniqueAurbocodetotrackmyranking8898

Moving Up in the World

October 24, 2006 on 6:17 am | In Studying | No Comments

HIT ME ONE MORE TIME - I guess it’s some sort of ‘acknowledgement‘ when your blog gets hit with spam. Today, and over the last week a plethora has shown up on this blog. What a time-sink. As such I’ve re-started the registration requirement for comments.

More importantly, with the computers coming back up, good weather, and some time: Here’s what’s coming up soon:

  • The next full-transcript for Chinesepod
  • Talking about ‘the parser‘.
  • Tactics for using text-messages to study

Learning Vocab the Hard-Drive Way

October 16, 2006 on 11:59 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts, Uncategorized | No Comments

VOCAB STRATEGIES - There’s the frequent refrain, how do I learn Chinese vocabulary?! We’ve all heard the various strategies, flashcards, get out and talk, learn one word a day, stickies, you name it.

I have a new strategy, let some little disaster come into your life. You’ll pick up a few new words. Mine is ‘ying pan’. Ying is the word for hard. And pan is the word for box-like. Hence the meaning ‘hard drive’.

Over the course of a week I had one computer harddrive fail. Okay, no problem I started to use the notebook. Virus. Okay, there’s the other notebook, can’t connect to the internet. The internet goes out because I hadn’t paid the landline phone. Who even uses it anymore! My life devolves into a non-tech abyss.

Anyway, this made me desparate enough to ‘keep my chin up’ and call 10000, the Chinese version of the phone company help line. You might be thinking they have an option ‘Press O’ for English. You’d be wrong! Luckily I could ‘hear’ enough to catch “#3 Shangwang fuwu”. Hey, hey, hey, did you get it, that’s Internet service. After asking for an English speaking operator I got, “Well would you like to try in Chinese?” In Chinese! Forget $10 for a Chinese lesson, come to China and mess up your phone and computers, get nice patient Chinese people speaking to you.

I am both flattered and aghast. Anyway, that was then that I learned that I couldn’t connect thru my ADSL because the houseline had gone unpaid for too long. Off to the office, cash in hand I went. “Dian hua fei” that means phone bill.

It was after I had so proudly accomplished all this, that I returned home to find the ADSL reset and me without any slip of paper of the original password. Oh boy. Another call into 1000, and hey - the super patient- operator helped me reset the password. “Mi ma” that’s password. There’s also ‘bo hao’ for something akin to username.

After this, I was really on a role and decided to do a clean re-install of WindowsXP. That’s when I really ‘hosed’ my machine. That’s ’si ji le’ from our recent Cpod lesson. I really wacked it good, my Bios couldn’t read the external CD drive, no way to boot. Yup, yup, yup. That led to my next call, to the computer guy.

I still don’t know how to say ‘operating system’ in Chinese, but luckily Microsoft has taken over the world and my mutterings of ‘….XP’ were enough for us to communicate my plight.

He came over, I had really messed everything up bad, so he took all the drives back to the office to do the installs. That’s where they are now, and why I’m at a ‘Wang ba’, internet bar. Here I also had to catch the words ‘mima yi er san si wu liu’ said in rapid-fire Chinese. That is, the password is 123456.

That all said, the Full-transcripts are slightly delayed this week. Hope you’re reviewing the previous ones!

Full-Transcript Inter That’s Outrageous, Plus More

October 9, 2006 on 8:46 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

Full-Transcript for Intermediate Show 42: That’s Outrageous

This podcast was great! It was John’s first show and it’s almost entirely in Chinese. The pace is quite moderate though and the Chinese banter is easy to follow. There is just so much for the learner in this show. This is all in the banter not the scripted dialogue:

Bargaining
个人说一千五百块，还有一个人说什么三千块

ge4ren2 shuo1 yi1qian1 wu3bai3 kuai4 ， hai2 you3 yi1 ge5 ren2 shuo1 shen2me5 san1qian1 kuai4

One person says 1,500 and the other says what’s this 3,000?

Expressing Emotion

嗯，cat fight.我们都喜欢cat
en2 ， cat fight wo3men5 dou1 xi3huan1 cat

Yah, “cat fight” we like “cat”.

Travel Vocabulary

诶，对，我们的呃飞机上的那些，呃 different kinds of seating，对吧？
ei2 ， dui4 ， wo3men5 de5 e4 fei1ji1 shang4 de5 na4xie1 ， e4 different kinds of seatin， dui4ba5 Yah, right. When we fly there are different kinds of seating, right?

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Bargaining, expressing emotion, travel tips. This lesson’s full transcript appeals to students, the highly emotional and business travelers! It’s a premium lesson, quality content. I’m going to let that be reflected in the price of this full-transcript, five bucks. US$5.00. I’m not going to discount it in the future either, it’s just too good.

We do have something new though for my loyal customers, a new Subscription Option. You can purchase “That’s Outrageous” plus the next four transcripts for US$13.00 with one click and just one Paypal payment. Please click a link below to purchase and get immediate download.

book imageFull-Transcript Intermediate 42 That’s Outrageous! US$ 5.00
book imageSubscription:”That’s Outrageous” plus next 4 Full-Transcriptions US$ 13
book imageStarter Pac 1: Mix of other Three Full Transcripts US$ 3.00

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Lastly, why not post a few comments after your review of this transcript? I’ll be posting some comments in a few days after I spend some time with it. I’d love to see what other’s found interesting. What lexical phrases did you spend more time with? Was there a way Jenny or John said something that’s not like how the textbooks do it? Post and let’s go thru it together. Makes the learning fun and easy.

Website Tweaks

October 8, 2006 on 1:16 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments

My apologies to anyone who was/is surfing this website right now as I’m playing around with the layout of the page. If anyone is familiar with Wordpress and has some hints, please drop a comment.

I noticed that my right-hand navigation pane doesn’t show up properly in Windows running Internet Explorer or Firefox. I don’t know why.

In my CSS stylesheet I have been tweaking, to no avail, the container sizes, etc.

Thanks everyone for your paitence, I’m not doing this with a dev server, just updating the site live and seeing what happens! Life on the edge.

The Full-Transcripts Continue

October 1, 2006 on 11:35 pm | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

Hi Everyone,

It’s Monday, there is a typhoon swirling around southern China, it’s a weeklong holiday — happy 国庆节. We would have liked to put out a new transcript today, it is in the works, but let’s just say it’s been ’scheduled’ for next Monday!

Don’t forget though, there are all the previous transcripts stilll out there for you to get. Click in the navigation panel on the right-hand side, Chinesepod Transcripts. In those old posts are the links to the various transcripts.

Happy reading!  book image

 

Chinesepod Full-Transcript Upper Inter 6: Getting Tough

September 24, 2006 on 7:01 am | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

Chinesepod Full-Transcript Upper Intermediate 6: Getting Tough on Employees

FOR SALE NOW

Full-transcript: Of all Chinese. Enough English for pacing
MSWord .rtf file: It’s possible to cut and paste into Macs or PCs
Five-pages single spaced: Plenty of material to use several times

US$ 2.85 : That’s just 50 cents a page
Click here for instant purchase and delivery

*Our promise: the more people that purchase, the harder we’ll work to bring down the prices. Tell others that the full-transcripts are here. Create links to http://www.aurbo.com/chinese. Blog and comment about it. Thanks!

——————————————————————————

REVIEW

In this lesson Jenny and John go over a scripted dialogue of a manager giving feedback to an employee. It’s excellent material for those of you working or planning to work in a Chinese environment. John and Jenny describe some of the moeedback to an employee.re subtle implications of the tone of the Chinese. Use this full-transcript of the banter to catch the parts that whizzed by too quickly.

Although this is an upper intermediate podcast, the phrases and vocabulary that John and Jenny use are not particularly specialized or advanced. An elementary or intermediate student can gain a lot of value from listening to this. Review this full-transcript and see clearly how John asks for clarification in Chinese, and see the brief colloqial sentences. It’ll make it easier to incorporate into your own Chinese.

John： Yah, so pay attention to the tone…
Jenny：对，这个在中文我们叫做‘语气’。
John： 呃，语气。
Jenny： The tone of your voice…那样的啊。那么嗄——在这个之前，John，你说我们是直接听对话呢，还是先来看看有哪几个词我们的……
John： 我觉得今天的词都不太难，（嗯）我们还是要注意语气吧！

 

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The FTI (Full-Transcript Initiative) is Building a Nice Library of Transcripts:

How to Find Them
To scroll thru this treasure trove, on the right-hand side of this page click on the Categories-Chinesepod Transcripts. Then scroll thru the blog postings announcing each new full-transcript. There are some other projects on the way, an e-book and transcripts of some other media! Let us know if there’s something you’re interested in. Email: clrblu@gmail.com 

 

Is the price of a latte enough?

September 23, 2006 on 3:44 pm | In Chinesepod Transcripts | No Comments

I like to think that I’m providing a worthwhile and pleasant experience with my Full-Transcript Initiative. I enjoy reading thru the transcript because I also enjoy the podcast banter. I’m hoping others are also having a pleasant time.
If one prints out the transcript, takes the mp3 player and sits outside the office at lunchtime, or at the park, it’s probably more relaxing than reading the Times and sitting at Starbucks. A full-transcript is less than a tall mocha — should I be setting the price higher at $3.40? That’s still less than the price of a grande.

Currently, a tall, or 12-ounce, cup of Starbucks coffee costs between $1.40 and $1.65. Twelve-ounce lattes cost between $2.40 and $3.10, depending on the market, and a tall mocha costs between $2.70 and $3.40.

Would anyone pay $10 bucks for a Cpod Full-Transcript? They charge  $3.95 or $12.95 for a month at NPR or $29 for a Good-Morning America transcript . Or 99 cents at iTunes, is that still the hip way to go? Maybe it all yearns to be free, like C-Spans companion BookNotes website?

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