CCTV gone mad?

[roddy]

I just had CCTV on, and accidentally watched one of their learning Chinese programs - not the Dashan one, it had the Daniu guy.

Anyway, when they had the sentences up to repeat, they had it in pinyin, characters and English - but instead of reading it out in Chinese, they read it out in English, slowly, then quickly, like you were meant to be learning English, not Chinese.

Then at the end they had a really simple question you could answer by text message, but they read out the instructions really quickly in Chinese only.

Do you reckon they've given up on teaching Chinese and are trying to attract English learners?

Roddy

[confucius]

I think there has always been at least one or two programs designed to interest English learners in China. I remember one featuring local Beijing laowais in silly sketches involving miscommunication with Chinese people.

One of the Chinese was called Mr. Muscle and the cast of laowais remained the same for about 2 years. Pardon me but I can't recall the title of that show, but sometimes CCTV borrows old programs from the Beijing channels.

[roddy]

Oh, this was definitely the 'Chinese-learning' program they usually have - can't remember it's name, but it's the one with Daniu and some perky Chinese girl - but parts of it seemed to have been filmed more with Chinese viewers in mind.

The best 'foreigners on Chinese TV' thing I saw was on some random North-Eastern channel where they had a pair of foreign actors (probably press-ganged foreign teachers or students) reading through a long (English) discussion on the American political system. The two actors decided halfway through that it was all to boring, and started putting on a range of bizarre regional accents, walking around the set in the style of Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks and shouting their lines at each other. The best bit was the way they cut to the Chinese host every couple of minutes to recap on the English, and he carried on as if this was all normal.

Roddy

[JoH]

Yes, it's Kuaile Zhongguo, with kuaile Daniu and a string of (as you said) perky Chinese women who are all also extremely kuaile. As a regular viewer (they have the whole archive available online!) I noticed that they changed the format quite recently to include English learning stuff as well as Chinese. Seems like a deliberate attempt to cultivate two audiences at once. What is even more bizarre is that they have also started to include tedious travel sections with no Chinese or English at all, but just tacky music and scenes of this weeks favoured tourist spot...

All of the 'chinese learning' things that I've seen on CCTV have been pretty bizarre. Do they have any sensible ones? I mean ones targeted at specific ability ranges for example?

[BeijingSlacker]

I seldom watch CCTV as I feel its an insult to my intelligence.

[roddy]

Glad someone else noticed it - sounds like the producers are on holiday for the summer. It's a pity CCTV don't produce better stuff - the most useful Chinese learning thing I've seen them done was some 'after-School Chinese' with a bunch of kids who taught you how to order in McDonalds - but even that had a Canadian guy giving overlong explanations in English.

Roddy

[BeijingSlacker]

BTV(Beijing TV) once produced a Speaking English learning program that sucked as hell. It had two guys teaching: one Chinese guy with a very noticeable Chinese accent and a native Amerecan English speaker. It later turned out that the Chinese guy had never even been to any English speaking places and his English was far from perfect. However, in the program, 70% of the English was spoken by him and the American fella didn't even get to speak the rest 30% since they had other Chinese folks speak in their fake, tacky stories,where they tried really hard but failed to be funny. When I watched it, I wasn't trying to do any serious learning, but still I got pissed off since the Chinese folk, with his Chinglish, just wouldn't shut up. I bet ya if you had someone watch the program without sound, he would probably guess its a Chinese teaching program.

This and the program Roddy mentioned make you wonder if those producers have any common senses at all, not to mention any expertise in second language education, and how they got to produce programs for CCTV and BTV.

[geraldc]

I thought afterschool chinese was aimed at primary school children? I once watched a very entertaining program on a brother and sister going shopping for cuddly toys (they eventually settled on a snoopy).

I think Donald once mentioned something about how one of the characters in the show was a little chinese girl who had spent much of her early life the US and then had returned to China. So she probably might need help both with her English and Chinese.

I'm sure the producers of these kid's programs will be pleased to learn as well attracting their core demographic of primary school children, there are also a number of western educated graduates who spend a lot of time watching it too

[beijingbooty]

beggars cant be choosers, I have been watching "kuaile Zhongguo for the last year and a bit.

I have found it has been very helpful for me.

I know it is just a cheap throw away show, and not seriously designed to be of great assistance to mandarin learners, but is makes for something to look forward to each night. It is also really nice to use a program like this to learn chinese, makes a break from reading textbooks all day.

So for all its drawbacks I reckon this show is on the whole helpful.

Normally after each show I have learnt three or four good collouquialisms or new ways of using words.

[beijingbooty]

I want to know who is this DANIU guy. I cant say I like his style, but he does have REALLY good mandarin skills.

I have seen him front a couple of other chinese language shows, so he seems to be a minor celebrity in Beijing at least.

I would be very interested to know his background - was he born in China or is he the son of British Diplomats. He must have some advantage over the rest of us to be speaking such fluent mandarin at his age.

[roddy]

I thought afterschool chinese was aimed at primary school children?

And TEFL teachers who finish work at 3.30pm

Just seen Happy China again. It's a mix of not-great Chinese teaching, terrible English teaching, dull travelogue shots with subtitles and an SMS quiz on Chinese grammar at the end.

Roddy

[Quest]

I think 朱迅 was 可爱儿 than 韩佳。

[wushijiao]

I've watched "After School Chinese" almost everyday this summer. It's a pretty good show with a lot of useful stuff. They show you fairly realalistic conversations at just a bit slower than regular speed, then go back and work on the important vocab and sentence structures.

The host seems pretty good, too. The main problem is that it's geared for kids, as roddy mentioned. I wish they had something like that for adults.

I think CCTV-9 has become a bit better in recent months. I usually watch the news and Dialogue and Biz China.

I need my daily fix of which African country's leaders are in town, talking about mutual economic benefits and friendship.

[XiaoMa]

From JoH Fri Jul 30, 2004 6:51 p

As a regular viewer (they have the whole archive available online!) ...

Can you tell us where anyone can download episodes from the Archive?

Thank you,

Xiao Ma

[beijingbooty]

no, i think the other guy got it wrong. You cannot download the episodes.

Perhaps you can see transcripts with a few pictures from a range of episodes, but I highly doubt you can freely download video files each episode.

[gummylick]

I do like After School Chinese. Even though its geared at beginners, their body language in dialogues helps me recognize some words and get used to the sound of the language. It can be downloaded online:

http://www.cctv.com/english/TouchChina/School/51/index.html

Transcript:

http://www.cctv.com/english/TouchChina/School/Lesson/20030704/100314.html

Run thru Babblefish for idea of what they're saying:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

I'm recording these at home as well and am considering putting the episodes on my site for download.

[website]

Find out about the host of "After School Chinese" here:

http://www.cctv.com/english/TouchChina/School/Culture/20020301/100114.html

[ChouDoufu]

I want to know who is this DANIU guy. I cant say I like his style, but he does have REALLY good mandarin skills.

I have seen him front a couple of other chinese language shows, so he seems to be a minor celebrity in Beijing at least.

I would be very interested to know his background - was he born in China or is he the son of British Diplomats. He must have some advantage over the rest of us to be speaking such fluent mandarin at his age.

I don't know his whole background. Besides doing TV work he's most recently also studied graduate school at Renmin University (when I met him he was studying there--but that was about a year ago). I think he's just been in China for a while and he just worked hard on his sounds, tones, etc. His Chinese is definitely solid. I met him when I was on the tacky foreigner-on-display gameshow "Tongle Wuzhou". I came in second because it was rigged... The final part where they count how many votes the person gets... it was rigged.. that's all I can say. It was a fun experience though.

[JoH]

Here is the link for the archive. I don't think you can download the programs but you can watch them on line.

http://www.cctv.com.cn/program/happychina/02/01/index.shtml

For some reason, the first half a dozen on the list don't seem to have video, but all the rest have a little link next to the title as well as a transcript in english and chinese.

Jo

[roddy]

The final part where they count how many votes the person gets... it was rigged.. that's all I can say

Rubbish, that's not all you can say. You can tell us why it was rigged. Should you have won? How do they decide who should win? Do they chose the best looking contestant, or someone who's from a country with a China-friendly voting record in the UN? Someone from the producers alma mater? Come on . . .

Roddy