Phrases and sentences -- downloadable audio drills

[rherschbach]

Hi all,

I've been using various audio lessons (ChinesePod, iMandarinPod) for awhile and have found them useful. While they're excellent for building overall listening comprehension, they're perhaps a little less effective for practicing and mastering individual sentences and phrases. What would be needed here, I think, is a more drill-like lesson which feeds the student the phrases again and again, in random order, with pauses for the student to repeat. That would enable one to get the tones down and really learn all the elements of the phrase or sentence.

Just to be clear, I'm not knocking the conversational approach used in these podcasts -- just looking for a supplement.

Can anyone recommend some downloadable audio material that provides this kind of practice? And preferably not for mucho dinero?

If this overlaps with a previous discussion topic please feel free to move -- I looked around but didn't see this particular question addressed.

Thanks much!

[edelweis]

FSI?

Edit: there:

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese

A bit outdated and dry though.

[jbradfor]

I recall a month or two ago someone posted a program that takes normal audio files, and adds spaces between the sentences, for just such an application. I don't recall it changing the order, but that could possibly be added.

If that sounds promising, I'll try to find the post....

[ChouDoufu]

Actually my website, Lingomi, might be able to do some of the stuff you're looking for.

It lets you create mp3's out of lists of words. Each word is repeated twice with a gap in between.

It also has a simple audio/flashcard feature that lets you listen to words and type in the pinyin.

Right now it doesn't have phrases, but that is one of the areas I'm looking to improve on.

It has a 7-day free trial.

Hope it helps.

[rherschbach]

Looks interesting -- will check it out! Any discounts for Chinese forums members? ;)

@jbradfor: that might be an idea. I think I saw that post too.

[ilprincipe]

on the issues of tone practises, I have been thinking for a while to create some audio files with pairs (or triplets), of any pinyin and any tone (what is it 250x250x250E4?).., including pairs/triples that have no actual meaning. In fact, I think this is the most useful part, because often we don't recognize the pairs of tones, but simply know the meaning and through memory we get it right...for example, if I say cheng shi, most people will revert to 'city' no matter what tones they hear. of course, I will take care of tone changes..

What do you think? good idea?

I will look at lignomi, to see if it 'randomise' the process enough..again, the point here to separate memory from listening, hence it must be pure random and the list, well..infinite, or so..

[jbradfor]

You might want to start by looking at what John has already done: http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/tone-pair-drills

[ChouDoufu]

on the issues of tone practises, I have been thinking for a while to create some audio files with pairs (or triplets), of any pinyin and any tone (what is it 250x250x250E4?).., including pairs/triples that have no actual meaning. In fact, I think this is the most useful part, because often we don't recognize the pairs of tones, but simply know the meaning and through memory we get it right...for example, if I say cheng shi, most people will revert to 'city' no matter what tones they hear. of course, I will take care of tone changes..

What do you think? good idea?

A word in Chinese isn't a word without the proper tones.

I don't think it's very useful to study sounds and tones without meaning. Wanting to practice more tones is great: there are plenty of real words that you can practice listening to. Listening to sounds with no meaning would be like teaching someone English by making them listen to random sounds that occur in English words. It might help their ability to differentiate sounds, but it doesn't help with the overall goal, learning the language.

At the same time, you don't have to know the meaning of the words you're listening to if you're just practicing listening.

@jbradfor, ilprincipe: Please do check out my site and let me know how you think it can be improved.

@rherschbach: That's a good idea. I'll do some sort of discount next month. Sign up for my newsletter and you're guaranteed to hear about it early.

[chinopinyin]

@ChouDoufu: Do you plan to provide mp3s with example sentences in Lingomi for each of the HSK levels? I feel learning words in isolation to be very unnatural

@rherschbach: Your idea is a really good one

[ChouDoufu]

@chinopinyin: That's a good idea. I've been thinking about recording sentences since the start. I've been working on building a corpus to provide sentences for recording. Then one must select the sentences. It's not a simple process. Plus their's all the recording and and audio processing. But despite all of that, it's something I really would like to do.