Sean couldn't mask his dismay at the literal exactitude with which his Chinese lecturer approached her teaching duties. Even after months of parroting back her sentences like a trained parrot, he still struggled with spontaneous communication. It struck him as absurd that anyone expect a student to reach fluency this way, but that was why he'd finally taken the plunge and hired a local tutor. Even if his new teacher wasn't professionally trained, at least his time with her would afford the chance for some genuine conversation.

On the off-chance that this is your first lesson, don't be scared: while this is the longest dialogue we've ever produced at the Elementary level, the vocabulary is not terribly complex and we think you can handle it. And if you have any questions or comments? Feel free to write us anytime at service@popupchinese.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
murrayjames
 said on
April 30, 2013
God this so awkward to listen to. I encourage all foreigners living in China to make friends with real Chinese people. Why learn from a robot who will leave you with stilted Mandarin and no appreciation for China. Make friends with real people—you'll fall in love with the culture, food and language despite yourself.

Incidentally, David and Echo, the Elementary dialogues have come a long way since“咪咪…过来…过不过来？”Lessons like this newest one--and the strangely touching beginner dialogue from last week (我爱你……我说我爱你[...]我也是)--keep me listening to the podcasts at all levels. It's hard not to appreciate the emotional vulnerability of your voice actors, or Brendan's stiff delivery of "I love you... Right back at you." :-D Great work, all around.
leuken46
 said on
April 30, 2013
I enjoy your lessons. Please continue the great work. This is an essential tool for my learning. Thank you all.

Luke
尼古拉斯桑
 said on
April 30, 2013
@murrayjames

Not to be pedantic or anything, but Chinese come out of their education speaking pretty damn good English, at least compared to the American foreign language programs which is nearly nonexistent. The repetitive drilling seems to be effective although admittedly tedious. You also have to give credit to the teacher that's willing to do that for an hour at a time. I listen to the advanced podcasts multiple times to the point where I can recite the dialog. It's painful but it seems necessary.

-Nickolas
murrayjames
 said on
April 30, 2013
@尼古拉斯桑

I'm not convinced learning this way is necessary. Why repeat a single dialogue over and over when an ocean of Chinese-language media is available? Why pay a robotic tutor to read sentences at you for an hour, when you can have friendship with a real person, and enjoy emotionally connected, extemporaneous, native level Chinese conversation for free?

Most educated Chinese do not speak great English. Keep in mind that virtually all Chinese adults studied English at one time or another, most of them for years. Do most Chinese adults speak good English? In Chengdu it's especially bad, and this even includes those who major in English in university(!) and the English teachers themselves. Young people in Shanghai speak better English, but there are also more foreigners there. Some Chinese people, like Echo, speak fantastic English. Do you think she credits her English to the education system, or to hard work, frequent interaction with foreigners, and watching English language TV and movies?
Echo
 said on
April 30, 2013
@murrayjames,

我不敢说... 哈哈哈哈哈 :D

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
尼古拉斯桑
 said on
May 1, 2013
@murrayjames

I agree with you for the most part. Forging real relationships in Chinese has no substitute in one's learning of Chinese. Still, sometimes the language learning process is painful and you have to eat your vegetables so to speak.

I'm gonna be moving to China within the next 6 months and I expect the first year will be highly uncomfortable and will involve me smiling and nodding when I don't understand, which will be 50% of the time, at least. Therefore, running language drills do have their advantage when you are assimilating phrases and structures into your memory.

-Nickolas
pefferie
 said on
May 1, 2013
I just like the way she talks, those tones are so crisp! She's a robot? Fine, nobody's perfect...
maminglei
 said on
May 2, 2013
Nice one, great work from voice actors. Luckily I was listening to this alone, because after first four sentences of the dialogue I was annoyed to the point I wanted to kill people.

Can't believe I've come this far without learning 适应 before...
minghan
 said on
May 3, 2013
lmfaooooo this dialogue is making me laugh SO hard! This is EXACTLY what my 口语 teacher does to us! She'll ask someone a question and when the student pauses, she'll FINISH the sentence, just assuming that's what the person wanted to say. And a lot of times she's just wrong and my poor classmates can't do anything but sit there helplessly.

It's seriously like Chinese Madlibs. And it doesn't help anyone's spoken Chinese at all. Also, this class is ”高级汉语"...
na.1788
 said on
May 3, 2013
I second minghan!!!! Me, too! I couldn't stop laughing! And it's really painful, too.

This is exactly what my Chinese professor did to the class back in college. She was a nice, old, grandmotherly lady from mainland China, but I dropped out of the class half way because I couldn't stand it.

Thank God I've come along way with Pop Up Chinese since then.
yeroc99
 said on
May 3, 2013
I agree with pefferie. I wanted to strangle her for teaching that way, but she does have a nice voice :-)
ew
 said on
May 9, 2013
Oh the tutors I went through...
尼古拉斯桑
 said on
May 9, 2013
My tutor is the polar opposite of this. If she's not interested in the subject then it it's a fool's errand to get her to talk.
matt_f
 said on
May 26, 2013
@尼古拉斯桑 (and all):

I agree with some of you that the perfect robot tones were actually lovely to listen to. The robotic speech wasn't the real problem. For those of us laowai whose ears are not accustomed to hearing the tones, I think that half of the teaching would be very effective.

I suspect, however, that the subconscious revulsion reaction that everyone seems to have listening this fictional-but-probably-real teacher's method is about the content, not the form:

"Do you like China? Tell me, I like it."

"I like it."

"China's climate is very wet. Do you like China's climate?"

"I don't li..."

"DON'T like it? Tell me, I like it."

... "I ... like it."

This is why my (Chinese) middle-school-aged English students can't give an answer when I ask them what is their opinion about something.

- Matt

Echo
 said on
May 27, 2013
@fields.emmett,

I can't agree more on your last sentence. 中国洗脑教育。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
舒雅
 said on
September 10, 2013
Wow!这么教学生啊！我以前上大学的时候也雇佣了一位中文辅导老师；她年纪大奔来生在南京，在哈尔滨上学然后再北京的环保部门工作了几年。我们上课一般有一半学生词、课文然后一半聊聊天。我们两个人太喜欢聊天还有有事可以聊。以后好多人说我口语真不错而想我初中或者高中开始学中文，不想到我在大学才开始学中文。这位辅导老师也很有意思，文革时她也上学了然后政府派她去农村当农民，她几年在黑龙江做农民。对这件事她只想说这代的人“知道苦是什么”我问了她好多问题不过她不太想说也不想说文革领导或者指令了他们的事。我对这件事太好奇，不过我想尊重她而不再问让她不舒服的事。

啊啊，我还是想知道。。。。
MAC.JAMIE
 said on
October 6, 2013
This is a good teacher. Learning Chinese has a lot to do wiyh repetition, given that it is a tonal language. Get the tone wrong and youre inadvertently expressing another words meaning because tone affects meaning.

Murray, Chinese is not English; it cannot be learnt solely via communicative approach student-centered techniques we now use to teach English.

English is a stress language. At the early stages, it needs a lot of repetition to form good tone habits.

Why do Chinese chant English in the classroom? Probably because there are 60 students to teach one sentence to.

This is not brain-washing but in fact, necessary.

There is method in her madness.

murrayjames
 said on
October 6, 2013
@MAC.JAMIE,

The woman depicted in this podcast is a bad teacher. Not because she uses repetition--she's bad because she uses a robotic approach to learning that bores and infantilizes students.

And yeah, it is brainwashing. Chinese people complain about their education system all the time, as Echo did above ("中国洗脑教育"). Common complaints are an overemphasis on busy work, and a philosophy of feeding students the answers instead of letting them think for themselves. Both of these are at play in the lesson dialogue.

Finally, who says a communication-based approach doesn't work for Chinese? That's more or less how I learned: by making friends and getting tons of natural input in the language. I'm not against traditional methods like textbooks or classroom study, but they're hardly necessary. I got all the repetition I needed by moving to China, talking to people, reading stuff, and Popup Chinese :-D
MAC.JAMIE
 said on
October 7, 2013
Im not sure how serious Echo was about that brain-washing comment, maybe it was just a wry remark.

Nevertheless, I agree with about the brain-washing in terms of supplying the answer and inhibiting the students own intellectual enquiry, as this is just true; a Chinese chemistry student went to study a Masters in Australia and was shocked at how they didnt premodel the answer for her.

And you mention the force-fed duck education system, as they call it.

For my part, I would mention 'guoxue jiaoyu', and Marxism classes in the Capitalist economy. Of course,100,000 people protested against it in Hong Kong, as it was threatening to spill over into their syste, in the sweltering July heat.

Nevertheless, I would still mantain that repeating a tone based language is the best way to build in correct tones. And at the early stages, zhege shi bixu de.

Though the teacher is a parody, Im still believe repetition in tonal languages is essential and Communicative Approach is something you should do in bars. I jest, but still..
MAC.JAMIE
 said on
October 7, 2013
Forgive my errors, its the Samsung phone.
Tomek
 said on
May 30, 2016
Great podcast, thanks!