The post Learn Mandarin Now Podcast Review appeared first on Sensible Chinese.
]]>The Basics
- Learn Mandarin Now is a free learning Chinese podcast available on this website and also via iTunes.
- At the time of writing there are 120+ episodes available on the website. Each episode is ~8-10 minutes.
- All podcast episodes are downloadable and come with Chinese/English transcripts and vocab lists.
- Each podcast follows a similar format: vocabulary introduction, dialogue and then step-by-step explanation of the language used in the dialogue.
Free Podcast
Probably the most important thing to mention upfront is that Learn Mandarin Now is totally free. A lot of other podcast shows have free tasters and then paid extended lessons or payment for other learning resources like the PDF scripts.
Learn Mandarin Now however is all free – the audio, text transcripts and download files are all available without cost and even without registering. Pretty cool, especially considering the quality of the material.
Structure of the Learn Mandarin Podcast
The basic structure of each 8-10 minute episode is: vocabulary introduction, dialogue and then a step-by-step explanation of the language used in the dialogue. This is fairly standard and you’ll hear this format in most foreign language podcasts.
The obvious comparison in Mandarin Chinese learning needs to be with Chinese Pod, one of the largest and most popular providers of Chinese audio podcasts at the moment. Chinese Pod follows a similar format (vocab, dialogue, explanation) and has a much larger library than Learn Mandarin Now but of course it isn’t free. Chinese Pod’s basic package starts at $14/month which isn’t cheap.
Learn Mandarin Now‘s podcast series (currently ~120+ and growing every week) is also more tuned towards beginners than Chinese Pod. This also makes sense as the vast majority of Chinese learners are in the early stages of study and as such there’s a lot more demand for beginners to low-intermediate material.
The best recommendation I can make if you are at an early level in learning Chinese is to use a free resource like Learn Mandarin Now to get started with (and, with 110+ episodes, a good distance into) Chinese listening comprehension. It’s a quality, free resource that is perfect for beginners to cut their teeth on.
After exhausting that content (perhaps after a year of study, depending on how fast you progress) then you should start looking at Chinesepod’s intermediate series and above to continue your study.
Style and presentation of the Learn Mandarin Now podcast
The presentation format of the Learn Mandarin Now podcast is very much educational: “here’s the information, here’s how to use the information”. Over each episode this strict adherence to education first, entertainment second remains in place.
Whether this is a good or bad thing totally depends on your learning style.
Again, let’s come back to the Chinese Pod comparison. Chinese Pod podcasts (especially the early beginner lessons) tend to have a lot more “banter”. There are normally two or more presenters in a Chinese Pod podcast, compared to the single presenter you’ll hear in Learn Mandarin Now.
Using multiple presenters means that you’ll often hear discussions and general chat on Chinese Pod podcasts. This can be entertaining, often educational, but at times the presenters get off topic and there’s very little language learning value to the digressions. This is especially the case in the beginner’s podcasts as the presenters speak in English! This means that for each 10 minutes of listening you may only be hearing a minute or two of Chinese. Considering the purpose of listening to Chinese podcasts is to expose yourself to more Chinese this is not ideal!
Learn Mandarin Now has one presenter (Song), who is a Chinese native speaker (from Beijing). Stripped of another host Song sticks to the script, focusing on the educational core of the podcast.
Again, whether you find the Chinesepod “banter” approach or the Learn Mandarin Now’s “school-room” approach is totally dependent on your personal preferences and learning styles.
There’s a similar contrast in the two main audio learning programmes out there: Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. Pimsleur’s programmes focus entirely on the foreign language, using as little English as possible. They are quite dry but their teaching potential is great. Michel Thomas’ audio programmes on the other hand are like a virtual classroom where there are a number of “students” on the audio recording learning alongside you. There’s a lot more digression, mis-stepping and off-topic conversation, mainly in English.
Again, both methods work if you stick to them. The main thing is consistency. The absolute merits of the educational vs. entertaining approaches doesn’t matter if you don’t stick to a consistent habit of using the material. Therefore the best approach is to download and listen to a bunch of Learn Mandarin Now podcasts and a bunch of free Chinese Pod lessons and see which you prefer.
How best to use audio podcasts
Audio podcasts are a vital resource for getting used to the sound of Chinese and tuning your ear. Beyond this early level you can use extensive listening through podcasts to increase your listening comprehension, making you much more capable of carrying out conversations.
Initially (beginner level) listening is all about tuning your ear. At this stage I’d recommend listening and focusing on replicating the sounds, not worrying overly much about the complete meaning of sentences. The Learn Mandarin Now podcasts start right at the beginning with 你好 and the basics. First listen and focus on the sounds and repeating back what you hear. Then use the scripts on the website to read along as you listen. This will help you to couple together the sounds of Chinese and the letters than represent the sounds in the pinyin romanization system .
You can find out a lot more about using listening to get started in Chinese in my First Week in Chinese course (which is available as a free bonus with my Chinese Character Course).
Beyond the early beginner level audio podcasts are best for building your listening comprehension. At this point it’s about listening to a lot of Chinese at levels slightly above your current comfort level. By always focusing on material that is slightly above your current level you’ll always be learning but, importantly, not frustrated by difficulty.
Learn Mandarin Now is good in this respect because i) most of the episodes remain in Chinese rather than conversations in English and ii) the existing episodes are structured more like a traditional course, moving from one topic to another and steadily building in difficulty.
Action Plan for Listening Practice
- Early beginners: Check out the full podcast archive at Learn Mandarin Now and use the early lessons to begin “tuning your ear” and building a basic base in Chinese. Supplement this with the free lessons at Chinesepod if you like the style.
- Moving forward: Push through the complete 110+ lessons at Learn Mandarin Now and/or supplement with Chinese Pod’s basic (paid) lessons.
- Intermediate:This is where Chinese Pod’s content starts to shine because the podcasts become 100% Chinese. This is the ideal entry point for the content because it maximizes the amount of Chinese you hear in each listening session.
- Beyond: Native language material from Youku / Youtube. Also check out 懒人听书 (Lazy Person’s Audio Books) for free Chinese audio books and radio shows. Start with kids shows if required and go from there depending on your interests.
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]]>The post Learning Chinese Tones with WaiChinese | A Review by @Eurolinguiste Shannon Kennedy appeared first on Sensible Chinese.
]]>In my opinion, tones are one of the (if not the) most difficult aspect of learning Mandarin Chinese. Even after close to a year of study, they are still something that I struggle with as a language learner.
Without a private teacher or language exchange partners (who sometimes let your pronunciation slide), there’s really no good way of knowing whether or not you’re correctly pronouncing the tones.
For all you know, you could be telling someone that you want your kids to brush a Chinese guy, rather than telling them that you want them to speak Chinese (Yes, I admit it, that was me. I was horrified.).
It was frustrating, having to speak at a pace so slow that I’d forget what I wanted to say before arriving at the end of a sentence. It was embarrassing.
Working on tones through slow and deliberate reading, or combing through tone-pair charts was both boring and demotivating. Focusing on my tones easily became the most dreaded part of my Chinese study.
That is, of course, until I stumbled across WaiChinese.
WAICHINESE
I started using WaiChinese because I have a habit of at least trying out almost every new language learning method or application I stumble across. Most don’t stick because they don’t work for me personally, but WaiChinese did.
When I first signed up with WaiChinese, I didn’t quite realize just what I was getting into. For me, it was simple, I saw that it was a way to improve my tones (something I really needed to do) and thought it would be worth experimenting with.
I would soon find out that it was so much more.
After visiting the WaiChinese website, I created my account, took a quick look at the dashboard on my desktop and decided to try out once I was able to download the mobile app when I got home later that day.
But then I received an email from my “coach.”
I was a bit confused at first – was this an automated message? I supposed it was something like most membership based language learning tools send new users. Just another welcome message. As I read through it, however, I realized that my coach was, in fact, a real person who had taken the time to look me up and made a point to mention our shared interests.
What?!
It seemed too good to be true. A real-life coach assigned to help me improve my pronunciation of tones?
I was immediately intrigued and decided to download the app right away rather than wait until a later point.
Upon exploring, I discovered more about what the app had to offer and I was more than pleasantly surprised.
Here’s what you get with your WaiChinese account:
- Voice recognition technology that allows you to see a visual graph of your pronunciation
- Evaluations from real-life teachers
- Speech evaluation reports
- Tons of vocabulary and sentences to practice with
- Example recordings of each word or phrase from native speakers
- Grades within 24 hours
- Premium accounts get custom lessons
HOW WAICHINESE WORKS
Once you open up a lesson, you have the opportunity to listen to the words or phrases spoken by a native speaker before trying it out on your own. If you mess up, you can record again before submitting the lesson to your teacher.
After submitting your recordings, you only have to wait 24-48 hours to get feedback from your teacher! I receive both an email from my teacher with personalized and specific advice for improving my pronunciation, and as you can see below, scores (on a scale of 1-5) within the app.
My two favorite features are definitely 1) the graph and 2) the emails from my teacher. I find that being able visualize my pronunciation with the graph feature has helped me improve as much as the corrections from my teacher have.
I can actually see where I’m making mistakes, rather than try to listen for them. This feature is extremely beneficial when your ear isn’t quite trained enough to pick out the sometimes subtle difference between incorrect and correct pronunciations. (Subtle to a listener new to the language. To someone who has studied Mandarin for some time or is fluent in the language, the difference isn’t as difficult to pick out.)
WAYS I THINK THE APP COULD IMPROVE
Although I found the app extremely helpful, there are a couple things I think that they could do to improve its usability and boost its chances of becoming a “must-have” for any and every Mandarin language learner.
The first would be the a feature that allows the student to download a PDF copy (or excel sheet) of the vocabulary they’re working on for future reference. I would love to have access to the written, pinyin and English translations of the expressions I’ve been learning to continue to study beyond pronunciation and outside of WaiChinese.
Or, upon clicking the “translate” button, the option of adding it to a flashcard deck (either within or outside of the WaiChinese app) for further study would be incredible. If the words in your flashcard deck could be exported for printing or saving outside of WaiChinese, that would be even better!
*Update: I spoke with Kyle over at WaiChinese and they said a flashcards feature is definitely on their list of things to add to the app.
The second would be a way for users to see what lessons they’ve already recorded. This feature is available once the teacher has graded the lessons, but until then, there is no way for the student to see what they’ve already submitted. For someone who might open the app up a few times a day to work on pronunciation (like me!) rather than in one sitting, this would be a great feature. Especially for the lessons that have some twenty-odd words or phrases.
GREAT COMMUNICATION
I was incredibly surprised by the dedication and the response from those behind the scenes at WaiChinese. Syd, the founder, replied to the emails that sent to him and the teachers always get back to you with any questions you have – like adding new lessons – rather quickly.
I was really impressed by their desire to interact with customers to continue to improve and develop WaiChinese. It’s really great having a company that takes your feedback into consideration, looking to ensure that their product is something that truly fulfills the needs of those using it.
Full article text at Eurolinguiste : WaiChinese a Review.
The post Learning Chinese Tones with WaiChinese | A Review by @Eurolinguiste Shannon Kennedy appeared first on Sensible Chinese.
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