Chinese practice while driving - recommendations?

[Mei_Na_De]

你好-

My name is Doug and this is my first time on this forum. I'm looking for thoughts on various options for continuing my Mandarin practice while commuting. My commute is short (~20 minutes) but it's the most reliable "free" time that I get to study and I want to take advantage. Let me give you some background on where I am in my study and other relevant bits:

• Two years (four semesters) of Mandarin in college (though I'm a professor of psychology not a student, I was able to audit these courses and took it fairly seriously)
  
• I've already completed the entire Pimsleur series in Mandarin, though going back through again is a possibility
  
• We also have the Rosetta Stone levels 1-3 which is fine, engaging and I pick up a bit of new vocabulary now and then, but I find it hard to get the time at home to work through it.
  
• I just now have started meeting with two students at my college who are Chinese - I will be spending an hour separately with each of them, probably spending half of our time talking in Mandarin and the other in English.
  
• My daughter is Chinese American - we adopted her last year at the age of 6. She's from Guangzhou so she's a native Cantonese speaker but she understands (or understood) Mandarin. She seems to like that I'm studying Chinese but isn't really excited about keeping her own language skills honed, at least not yet. There's a bit of Chinese spoken in our home but really not much (we have fun with some vocabulary though, like 坏蛋 ("bad egg," translating as "stinker" or something like that)
  

So, there we have it. I would describe myself as being an advanced beginner when it comes to speaking and listening, and perhaps just a touch better than that with reading/writing. So, given that I have 40 minutes a day I can use to practice listening/speaking, what would you suggest I do? As I've said I've done the Pimsleur already. I've tried podcasts from ChinesePod and PopupChinese and I like them (I enjoy PopupChinese a bit better - the Elementary level seems about right for me now) but they seem to unsystematic and scattered to give me much lasting benefit. Plus you have to pay a fair amount to get transcripts of the conversations etc.

Anything else out there (CDs or MP3s) that I should consider?

A side issue I haven't decided on is how much to keep studying the characters because I feel that it takes away from time working on becoming conversational. But I do enjoy practicing reading, so I'm not sure whether to keep trying to juggle both.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

谢谢!

Doug (梅纳德)

[renzhe]

You're driving, right?

So your only option is listening to audio. Either podcasts or an audio course.

Have you looked into FSI tapes?

[jbradfor]

SlowChinese might be another option for you. Free, has transcripts. But it's also scattered.

Personally, I find listening to podcasts requires too much of my attention while driving. [Or, I should say, listening closely enough that it's beneficial requires too much attention.] YMMV, but don't let learning Chinese put your life in jeopardy!

[Mei_Na_De]

Thanks, renzhe. I had run into the FSI tapes at some point but had since forgotten about them. They look promising for my needs, based on people's impressions here. And free! Iffy audio quality is not something I'll get hung up on since I have car noise anyway.

[Mei_Na_De]

Thanks, jbradfor. Luckily, my commute is an easy one - relatively rural, no highways, light traffic, and until recently, only one stop light.

[giraffe]

I liked Assimil's Chinese with Ease audio as a follow up to Pimsleur.

I've also been listening to the audio from a Chinese TV series (Wo Ju) - just the first 12 episodes over and over and over over and it seems like every time I hear it, I get something new. It's probably much "too advanced" for me, but I still think there's a lot of value in tuning the ear, even if you're only picking out the odd word here and there.

[大肚男]

I would greatly recommend Pop-Up chinese. It's a podcast that is informative, while still being fun (and funny) to listen to.

They have four levels to pick from, as well as some different things, like KTV Wednesday, and Movie Friday.

I think they have more that 1,000 podcast, at bout 15 minutes each.

In the beginner and elementary levels, they use a lot of English, but they phase out the English during the intermediate level, and the advanced level is completely in Chinese.

This is what I listen to, whenever I can, during my daily commute.

I tried other podcasts, but I have noticed that I retain way more of what I hear in Popup

[马盖云]

My commute is maybe double that of yours everyday... so I get to listen to a LOT of podcasts! :-) My thoughts...

I subscribe to Chinesepod and Popup Chinese as a paid member. Its great to get the variety of topics and levels every week. (I do all my downloading and transfers to my mp3 players and remote hard drives every Sunday night). You will typically get a few beginner, elementary and intermediate lessons each week.... and I download the more advanced lessons too, for "the future" With Chinesepod, there is typically a QingWen (grammar topics, and specialized vocab discussions) and Bejing Standard Time (a general Culture/special topics and interviews with natives) each week, too.

Popup - I love to death, David, Brendan and Echo and Gail... very cool, smart and laid back. But the lessons are so very random and bizzare! The dialogs are 100% native speed and accents, and very 口语, so it is difficult at first to pick up on the meanings. That, and some of the dialogs are so wacked out, there is no way to use context to guess what the next word may be! One I listened to yesterday... someone was freaking out because his roommate had rolled up his underwear and put it into a liquid yougurt bottle in the refridgerator... Whaaa? And an unhealthy fascination with zombies and gay pirates, and such! :-)

A few others I download/listen to , which are 100% mandarin (both the dialogs and the teaching explanation) are CSLPod.com, and iMandarinpod.com They both have graded lessons every week. iMandarinpod also has the "special Chinese" podcast series, wich is a nice, slightly slowed-down news broadcast. It is produced in conjunction with a TV network, and has transcripts available.

Finally, 2 others to mention...

I have the complete collection of Serge Melnyk's lessons ( a few hundreds) and also ChineseLearnOnline (almost 400 lessons).

Serge is still producing lessons, but pretty infrequently. He is a Russian ( i think) dude, whose 普通话 is pretty good. His English is accented, but very understandable.. his lessons are situational topic based, and you can get a good idea of what they are about from the name of the lesson (A visit to the doctor, Buying a computer, Divorce in China... whatever)And they tent to be very heavy on new vocab for the topic at hand. It is hard to retain vocab for me when it is 'dumped' at you this way, but the lessons would be good to prepare for any of the named topics.

I saved ChineseLearnOnline for last, since I really like to recommend it.

This is as close to a "Progressive Course" as you are going to get. The vocab is 100% controlled in such a manner that every lesson only uses previously taught words. At first there is a decent amount of english explanation, but as soon as the vocab is bootstrapped to a point, they begin converting some of the teaching phrases and the introductions into Chinese, untill finally, the lessons are mostly in Chinese, except the occasional translation of a word or concept. The words are used in proportion to their relative frequency, and are reviewed briefly the first few times they are re-encountered, and the lesson number of the first mention is given, so you could go back and review if you forgot it!

The owner of the site, and host Adam, is a Canadian, I think, and speaks in a very slow and careful tone. You need to remember that his audience is worldwide, and some people are using English explanations to learn Chinese, but it is not their native tounge. So he speaks so all can understand him. If you are a fast-talker like me... it will drive you batshit crazy! But stick with it...soon his native speakers carry the program, and he basically just says hello at the top of each lesson! :-) The program is based out of Tawian, so I detect the occasional southern accent, but one of the speakers is Northern, and the Mandarin is quite standard, usually.

So, even though your level seems advanced beginner, lower elementary, it is worth starting at the beginning because of the progressive nature of the course. But if you want to skip ahead, the website offers the first 4 lessons of each level (there are 7 levels of 60 lessons each) for free, including transcripts available in English, Pinyin, Simp or Trad Chars. vocab lisats and character writing worksheets. I don't know how the pricing is now... when I was a member, I spent several days rightclick>save As and downloaded all the lessons and transcripts. But you can also buy bulk downloads per level, or short term subscriptions so you can download them like I did. They are not presently producing new lessons, but they are still very much a good choice in my opinion.

Hope this helps!

[Mei_Na_De]

Thanks, 马盖云, for the detailed review. It's really helpful. I think my plan will be to the FSI tapes, followed by ChineseLearnOnline. I do enjoy PopupChinese and will probably keep listening to those to break up the more graded approaches now and then.

[liuzhou]

Thanks, jbradfor. Luckily, my commute is an easy one - relatively rural, no highways, light traffic, and until recently, only one stop light.

Famous last words?

90% of RTA's happen within one kilometre of the driver's home or workplace. In places they feel comfortable.

But never mind. I'm just as likely to be mown down by some Chinese driver practising their sleeping, shagging their mistress, trying to remember where they live, trying to remember where they work, trying to remember who they last bribed or who they should next bribe, trying to remember who they are.

I really could do with one less distracted driver, thanks.

[Saluki]

I've been learning Mandarin for 8 months, lurking and learning in Chinese-forums.com, and in the nearly exactly the same situation as Mei Na Da, albeit a step or two behind. Ditto thanks for these responses.

[Mei_Na_De]

liuzhou: You could make the same (valid) argument of anyone talking on a cell phone (hands free or otherwise), holding a conversation with someone in the car, managing a child in the backseat, singing to their music, smoking, thinking about stuff going on at work or at home, etc. We're all distracted drivers.

Point taken, though. I'd probably be safer not doing this while driving. And I'd probably get a little more out of the time spent studying if I'm not trying to do two things at once. I just need to find a way to carve that time out.

So your comment has given me something to think about, even if you could've made your point just as well without the sarcastic tone.

[laurenth]

@马盖云

But the lessons are so very random and bizzare! [...] That, and some of the dialogs are so wacked out, there is no way to use context to guess what the next word may be! One I listened to yesterday... someone was freaking out because his roommate had rolled up his underwear and put it into a liquid yougurt bottle in the refridgerator... Whaaa? And an unhealthy fascination with zombies and gay pirates, and such! :-)

That makes me want to use it! In fact, I believe that it's often easier to learn new words when they are studied in a weird context, used in bizarre sentences, associated with more or less disturbing/baroque/ridiculous mental images, etc.

Thanks for the very interesting info.

laurenth