Challenge! Your! Chinese!

[feihong]

Announcing an awesome new blog, 中文挑战.

What is 中文挑战? It's a new blog designed to test your hard-earned Chinese skills. Reading, listening, and writing skills will all be covered (though not all at the same time). The focus will be on appreciating media intended for native Chinese speakers.

Who is it for? 中文挑战 is intended for intermediate to advanced learners. Not all challenges will be at the same level, but we won't explicitly label them as easy/hard/insane. Most challenges will be short, so you can quickly assess whether they're appropriate for your level. Also, many challenges will have multiple parts, some of which may be tackled by learners at lower levels.

How do I participate? Just read the blog and try to beat the challenges. Ask questions if you're not sure about something. Share your solutions by posting them as a comment. Suggest new types of challenges. If you're awesome, you can also contribute challenges to the blog!

How frequently will these challenges come out? We will publish at least one new challenge every week. Depending on the number of contributors we have at any given time, it may be more frequent.

What form will these challenges take? Most challenges will follow a basic "media + quiz" format. That is, we present some media clip that you read, listen, or watch; after reviewing the clip you answer some questions on a short quiz. Examples of media we'll use are audio clips from TV shows/audiobooks/podcasts, videos, comic panels, photographs, pop songs, etc. However, expect us to quickly branch into different types of challenges.

Who will be creating the challenges? Regular forum contributors and media junkies Gleaves and feihong. Mike N and jbradfor are our first guest editors.

[renzhe]

Oooooh, I like it!

I think I disqualify myself though, as I recommended (in one way or another) half of the material the challenges were taken from.

[feihong]

I see no reason why you should be disqualified from the caption challenges.

Also, don't worry, I'm sure we'll have a few challenges that are so insane only you, imron, roddy, etc. would be able to solve it.

[jbradfor]

I challenged my Chinese and Chinese won

Actually, I love that already. I'm going to be pretty much a no-show on the audio quizzes, but keep them (and others!) coming.

[Glenn]

Yeah, if it's comics I can probably handle it, but the writing stuff (i.e., the captions) and the audio quizzes are a bit too much for me for now. I'd have to spend a half hour just trying to match all the speaking with the transcript before I felt comfortable enough that I knew what they were saying before I could think about answering questions. Although that's not a bad exercise....

[xianhua]

The second listening exercise (#4) was pretty tough going. I had to consult the transcript to understand a fair bit of it. I think the fact that they were talking quietly made it trickier.

[roddy]

Excellent stuff, and best of luck with this!

[missbrokensmile]

Awesome! I'll definitely be having a go later on in the week

[Gleaves]

It has been fun thus far and we will definitely keep the challenges coming. Like feihong mentioned, let us know if you have suggestions or want to contribute.

[feihong]

Our very first word puzzle is out. Check it out!

[feihong]

I just posted our first lyrics-based challenge. I'm curious to hear people's opinion on the difficulty of this one.

[jkhsu]

Giving you my opinion on the difficulty of the lyrics-based-challenge. I thought it was not too bad because it didn't require that you understand all of the lyrics; you just had to know enough so that you can recognize them from the song. The other thing is that I listen to a lot Chinese music and watch a lot of Chinese TV shows so that could have made it easier for me. But, I've never heard of this song (I'm more into the slower sappy stuff).

[jbradfor]

Where do you come up with these ideas for these challenges?? You rock.

[feihong]

@jbradfor

The 中文挑战 idea has been gestating in my head for a long time. I used to go to a Chinese study group in the town where I live. It didn't exist very long so I didn't get to implement very many of my ideas, but I wrote them down and now they go on the blog.

[feihong]

I think I made a mistake in the challenge #8.

那颗巨大的肥皂泡让两个小孩子很开心

I know that 颗 is a measure word for small, round things, so isn't the bubble in question too large? For example, you wouldn't ever say 一颗篮球, I think.

So, in this case, I should probably use 个, right?

[roddy]

Don't know, but you can have 一颗行星. Course, the fact that I thought of it and it turns up on Google isn't a guarantee of correctness.

[feihong]

Your memory is also validated by MDBG. Some searching reveals that some dude on the internet said "好大一颗气球" in response to a picture of a blimp. I'll just leave it the way it is.

[jkhsu]

Also, don't worry, I'm sure we'll have a few challenges that are so insane only you, imron, roddy, etc. would be able to solve it.

So I think that time has come. I'm giving a plug to creamyhorror's Cloze Sentences challenge. Check it out.

[feihong]

Hey everyone, it's Bunny Suicide week at 中文挑战. I bet you haven't written anything morbid in Chinese lately. Go rectify that now!

[feihong]

I thought jkhsu's challenge was quite interesting. Since I didn't recognize all the food items from the get-go, it looked quite hard, but with a bit of well-applied googling it was actually not too bad.