An XBox for the Kids

Elementary: An XBox for the Kids

Doctor Smith says young children need intellectual stimulation, and what better way to stimulate Billy's imagination that bonding with his father over a deathmatch or two. Now don't look at me that way honey. You want to surround the boy with nothing but books, denying him the trigger-finger reflexes and hand-eye coordination necessary for a good job in the twenty-first century?

Thinking of becoming a parent or already have a brood under your wing? Join us for an Elementary Chinese lesson that overcomes traditional myths about parenting with very practical suggestion on how to rear your children. In addition to advice that will let you sleep in for a change, this lesson introduces a key measure word for talking about household electronics. Use it whenever you hear the word XBox.

Andrews_seat

said on

May 15, 2010

Where are the PDF and Text File for this lesson?

Elementary

said on

May 15, 2010

@bob_trenwith,

Thanks for the comments. To avoid cluttering our discussion space, I've noted the lessons you've reported issues with and have deleted your various comments save this one. Where problems were immediately fixable (pdf on this lesson) I've also just regenerated and reuploaded.

To give a general answer to your questions, all lessons should have transcripts. The dialogue-only recordings, character-writing sheets and the audio fix are staples which come with most lessons, but aren't guaranteed to come with every single one. Some lessons also have attached tests (mostly HSK materials), and speaking practice and writing pad access too. Listening tests (which show up at the more advanced levels) don't generally have character writing sheets and dialogue-only recordings since the main podcast is pretty much just the dialogue and there may not be an explicit focus on teaching new vocabulary.

Another reason for the occasional inconsistency is that we've added some features as we've grown, and need to actively backport them to older lessons for various downloads to show up. This is why our Absolute Beginner and Elementary lessons pretty much all have dialogue recordings by now, but older Intemediate and Advanced ones do not. We need to be more aggressive about backporting content here, but there are always a lot of other things that seem to hit our priority list and the focus is always on releasing and recording new content.

Anyway -- thanks for helping us out with this content check and pushing us to get some of these solved. As mentioned above, I've made note of the lessons you've pointed out in a list here. The most visible problem I can see is missing audio review for some lessons - which we can take care of early next week. So thanks for the comments, and if you run into any other problems, please let us know.

Best,

--david

jyh

said on

November 14, 2010

I really enjoyed this podcast. At first blush it's completely straightforward with just a couple of new words, but even then the general story was pretty easy to guess (even if I had no idea what 遊戲機 meant, it was obviously some kind of gadget). And then when Echo and David went digging into the use of 給 in the dialog, the podcast took a completely different turn.

I am not 100% sure: what Echo says around 6:02, is it

他给我打电话，说今天腕点儿回家 ?

barrister

said on

November 14, 2010

@jyh,

Typo there. 腕 (bowl) should probably be 晚 (late), but otherwise that's what it sounds like to me too.

jyh

said on

November 15, 2010

oops, thanks for the correction. I wish I could blame that on a traditional vs. simplified character mistake, but here no such luck. :-)

dainichi

said on

February 15, 2013

Echo says 你就是买给自己的, but in the dialogue itself, no matter how many times I listen, I cannot hear the 是. Is it optional, or is it just pronounced in a way so my ear doesn't pick it up?

Echo

said on

February 18, 2013

@dainichi,

The girl said 是 very quickly in the dialogue. You'll hear this very often in the north of China. Sometimes it sounds like the 是 is omitted when people speak really quickly. Grammatically you would like to keep it though.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

gmsalpha

said on

January 6, 2015

In the very last line 你就是买给自己的, is this the 是+的 structure for past tense who/where/when type things?

I assume that's why it's not 买了 for "bought".

Also, there is this sentence: 这个可以学嘛.

Can you say 这个他可以学用嘛？ Would that be wrong? Or is it just more words than is needed?

Finally, 这个可以学嘛. Well, this can learn.

Why not "Well, he can learn"?

trevelyan

said on

January 8, 2015

@gmsalpha,

I'm not sure if this is going to be helpful (sometimes the best advice is just "do it like this until you get the feel of it"), but the 的 in that sentence is a nominalizing particle. In this case it turns the verb phrase 买给自己 ("to buy for oneself") into the noun phrase 买给自己的 ("a person who buys for him or herself"). The sentence is then grammatically straightforward:

(subject) + 是 + (what the subject is)

Conceptually, nominalization involves a kind of categorical subordination (the invocation of an abstract category into which something is placed). If you squint hard enough, you can see the same principle working in the "possessive" compounds like 我的 ("that which is of me"), 他的 ("that which is of him") etc. And sentences like 这是你的 and 我说的没错, etc.

On the second front, Gail suggests 这个他可以学着用嘛。We should do a lesson about this. But probably at the Intermediate level.

Best,

--david

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