Term of Bart

Wellll, I decided to follow up on Chinesepod and see what other people were saying about it. A google search led me to a fiesty discussion on Sinosplice.com, a blog by a budding China hand called John, a fellow UF grad and Florida native (What's in the water?). He turns out to be involved in Chinesepod now and we had the following exchange (in which he replies to my post on Chinesepod below with the following and then I reply below that):

Bart,

I think you have a valid point, but there are some key points you forget:

ChinesePod has foreigners in the podcasts, but the model for pronunciation is always a native speaker. The foreigner is there as a guide, not as a model speaker. Most people like this format. Obviously you don’t, but ChinesePod can’t please everyone.

The higher the level, the more you will hear from the native speakers in Chinese, until at the advanced level there are no foreigners and (usually) no English at all.

I also find it amusing that you hold up Dashan’s “Learning Chinese” series as an example to learn from, because it’s pretty universally regarded by teachers and students alike as not very good. It’s also not free.


John,

First off, thanks for responding and for acknowledging that what I wrote has some merit. I have not used the Da Shan videos very much, hence the guesstimate about the # of hours, which may be way off. I'm referring to the "Communicate in Chinese" series, by the way. I got onto Da Shan as a tangent about why it's a bad idea to learn from foreigners. And I stand by that. I taught in Taiwan and my co-teachers were great speakers of English by and large, but they all had flaws in their pronunciation, inflections, and grammar. And we're the same way in Chinese. It's like Rumsfeld said, there's known unknowns and then there's unknown unknowns. (I'm the opposite of a fan of that lunatic, but it works.) Well, the problem with learning/speaking a foreign language is that there are the screwups and lacunas that you know you make/have and then there are the screwups and lacunas that you don't know you make/have. That problem is pretty insurmountable.

What you say about the show may be accurate, that the foreigny influence is being phased out. But I downloaded about 20-25 shows, and with the exception of one show that was on the 8 schools of cuisine in China, they all had the foreigners. P.S. I loved Jenny in that show, she cracked me up, but that show was a monologue, not a dialogue. She needs to give her partner some room to chatsky.

I see where you guys are coming from, I think the concept is basically a good one, but part of hitting the big time is dealing with criticisms like this. And if you really want to be the go to source for Chinese vocal skills, well, to be frank, you have to step up your game a little. You're doing great stuff for a small house and we all know how crappy most of the Chinese language materials (and schools) out there are. But first do no harm.

My suggestion is that you split off the foreigners into seperate chats about grammar and personal anecdotes about learning Chinese and mishaps therein. The idea that students need someone to identify is part of my problem with having foreigners in the dialogues. When I was a teacher, I would be frustrated with the pronunciation errors in my kids' speech. One day, I had an epiphany when I watched a well intentioned parent try and do some practice with their kid. Sure enough, they were mangling almost every word. And then the kid thinks, this is the way that Chinese people speak English. And preferentially mimics their parent. Or their Chinese teacher. Or their friend. That's the way I see it and why I'm so adamant.

I'd also be interested in seeing some support for the assertion that teachers and students universally think that "Communicate in Chinese" is not very good. Like I said, I haven't used it much and it's not my baby or anything but from what I remember it seemed pretty decent.

I'm glad I ran across your blog, you seem like a thoughtful guy, and I really, really want to like Chinesepod, I assure you. I hope you take my comments under advisement. Also, I noticed that on Chinesepod a couple days ago, there's a diss of DaShan's new program. Maybe's its unfair, but it seems kind of like you guys are doing the classic foreigner in China thing "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" (Highlander, what?) or maybe the Head Negro In Charge (yes, I read James Baldwin). Might want to focus on your own product and making it the best that you can.

I'm going to cross post this to my blog. Let's stay in touch. I hope I can revise my opinion of Chinesepod in the future.


An interesting discussion and one that I hope will have a positive impact on Chinesepod's offerings in the future--I'll say this, they will be players one way or another, so I hope it's in a good way.