University of Cambridge Open Courseware

[HedgePig]

I recently came across this page, which I haven't seen mentioned before on this site:

http://www.langcen.c...ware/index.html

It contains links to free, downloadable courses for several languages. I downloaded both the beginner and intermediate Chinese courses. I've only had a very quick look but here my impressions

The Bad

- I couldn't get the sound on the intermediate course to work at all. It's quite possible I'm doing something stupid but I then downloaded the beginner course and and had no problems. (If anyone else has got the sound to work, please let me know.)

The Good

- these look quite thorough - more so than any other free courses I've come across on the web.

- for the beginner course, I liked the fact that you could play the dialogue without any subtitles, or with pinyin, or with characters or with an English translation. It is just any easy click to toggle.

- the intermediate course uses a largish font for the Chinese characters, although the beginner doesn't seem too. (I hate it when the Chinese font is so small that struggles to make out the characters, especially when it's teaching material.)

The Mixed

- The downloads are large - the intermediate course is around 1Gb. However, you can download it in sections.

- The intermediate course still seems to be fairly easy. (Not a criticism but just putting it in context.)

- No video (this doesn't bother me)

[edelweis]

the intermediate course contains a readme explaining how to configure the flash player in order to be able to hear the sound.

[HedgePig]

Ha! Thanks for gently reminding me to read the read me file, edelweis. That worked.

(I must admit I don't think I've ever had to go to a web address to set permissions for software, which is probably why I ignored it initially.)

[etm001]

Hi,

For anyone who studies Chinese using traditional characters: I contacted the University of Cambridge Language Centre, who confirmed that, due to time/resource constraints, there are no current plans to update the courseware with traditional characters.

If you'd like to use this courseware using traditional characters, then try the New Tong Wen Tang add-on available for Firefox, which will convert between simplified and traditional characters (and vice versa). (NTWT is also available as a plug-in for Google Chrome, but at least for me it does not work with this courseware).