Needs more sentence practice.
Since you only learn the meaning of a word or character in the sentence portion, it doesn't make sense to have them at the very end and only quiz them once.
I just finished a lesson that literally only had one sentence with all of the new characters included in it. This isn't enough repetition for me to really learn the meaning of the new words. The rest of it was just matching the characters and pinyin and matching the characters and sound; while these are important, without the meaning behind the characters, they don't matter.
Thank you for all the work you've put into the course!
12 Comments
I wholeheartedly agree, and I hope some of the people in charge of designing these courses takes your recommendations to heart.
I've been using the "test out" button and replaying the lesson as many times as it takes to pass. I only see sentences that way. Of course, I'm not a beginner in Chinese. So far, it's been mostly review for me, so this might not be the best way for a beginner to go through the tree.
I've been doing that as well! I complete the lessons of a skill up to the last skill, and then just as I'm about to complete the final skill I quit and test out. Helps a lot as it gives a lot more sentence practise!
I agree. They give words without the meaning which is useless and the long sentences are difficult when you haven't learned what the words mean. I have taken to writing them down to try and figure it out.
If you're writing the characters down and are not aware of this: it's important to note that "stroke order" (the proper sequence and direction of strokes in a character) is important for correct handwriting in Chinese. 口, for example, is three strokes: the left side going down, the top and right in one across-down stroke, and the bottom across. This isn't just a 'good form' thing either, as dictionaries and handwriting apps will often organize and identify characters by stroke number / order.
I'd recommend keeping mdbg.net open (an online Chinese dictionary) and looking up characters before writing them down in your notebook, as that site will let you see an animation of how a character is meant to be written.
1396
You will get more sentences per skill further in the course. Meanwhile, you can always repeat the skill, even when golden... And if really bored, you can always do speed tests... One thing that I have not done with the asian languages is practice writing the answers.
It still seems very sparse to me and I'm well into the course; I just finished the "Payment" and "Entertain" sections.
I also have the additional complaint that in spite of there being not enough sentences, there are too many very long, complex sentences, which makes practice very frustrating.
i think the same. che chines class is impossible to understand completely. :(( ad it is a shame. if is was complete like the En class it would be perfect.
Yes I agree, a good option would be to write down the characters and it's meaning in front. For example 你 = ni = you. And so on with all the characters. This course isn't still enough and one will have to research on the internet. ANYWAY it's free and i appreciate very much the community's effort.
Having a dictionary ready with the notebook is a great idea.
Yes, but if they haven't given you the meaning of the word you can't do that. You can't get the meaning of a word til they get to the sentence part so I end up floating over the Chinese symbol so I can see the English word and then writing it down. it makes the sentence part a waste until you know what the word means.
I agree though, I am glad the app is available and I think they are doing quite well. Just needs some tweaks. Like a voice option. You can't speak Chinese just by reading it. You have to practice it. My boss is Chinese and he is helping me with the nuances of pronunciation sometimes but I need to be able to practice without involving my boss lol
Yeah, it's very difficult to memorize decontextualized characters presented only via pronunciation; until they're given meaning, it's not much different from just matching random sounds to random symbols.
This gets especially obvious when you get to lessons that teach proper names: I just did the "Locations 1" lesson, and was shown a series of undefined individual characters—纽, 香, 约, 港: all of which were pronounceable but meaningless to me until the very end of the lesson, when it was revealed they were used in 纽约 (New York) and 香港 (Hong Kong). This feels like a super weird way of teaching vocabulary—like giving out flashcards for "cup", "air", "board", and "port" while teaching a lesson about "cupboard" and "airport".
If nothing else, it would be nice if (in the short term) a wordlist with definitions were included in the lesson notes. In a perfect world I'd prefer to be learning 香港 and 纽约 as full words paired with meanings, rather than individual characters paired with pinyin, but I realize that's a way bigger dev workload than just adding a table in the notes on each lesson.
I'm still super happy this course is out at last and am excited to see how it develops through the beta phase!
