Audiovisual Chinese Breeze?

[spetsnaz84]

Imron asked me to start a thread to further dig into this subject.

 

Learning a language consists of four skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking. For me personally: my best developed skill so far is the reading because I have used a lot of SRS software (mainly Memrise and Fluentu) and have read a lot of graded readers (nearly all of the Chinese Breeze series). My listening has improved quite a lot by listening to the audio files of the Chinese Breeze series but sitting there and listening to an audio books... it gets boring pretty fast.

 

Ideally, there would be some graded 'sitcoms' in Chinese with optional Chinese/Pinyin/English subtitles on Youtube. In the past, I often watched 快乐汉语 with my wife but it was really too difficult for me. 家有儿女 was also too difficult for me. Fine, when I print out the transcript and spend a lot time analyzing it, I do understand most of it but it's not really an enjoyable experience then. For now, I just accept I am not there yet to understand native content.

I wouldn't even mind if they just played out the Chinese Breeze books (maybe could be a nice assignment for some students ;-) ) - I would consider paying some money for this kind of content.

[querido]

Your post led me to update my Zhongwen courseware thread. It isn't Chinese Breeze, but it does have "role playing" and "situational dialogue" sections, and goes up to the 2000 character level (don't know how many words).

[Silent]

Not really sure what your question is.

 

I agree that there is a big gap between the beginners level and native materials. I too agree that it's hard to find good material for intermediate/advanced learners. But in a way this lack of material is understandable. The further you progress the more practice and thus material you need to progress further.

 

But then, what's the market? Material created specifically with students in mind are usually not the most interesting. So many are likely to look for other sources, often native material. Obviously this is a big hurdle. A few ways that may make it easier is the use of material aimed at children, limit your material to a specific subject and look for easier native material.

 

I think your approach with 家有儿女 is a good one. Sure, not really enjoyable, but if you put in the work for a few episodes you can make quick progress. The effort it takes lessens every episode as within one sitcom or series the style and vocabulary will largely remain the same.

[Shelley]

May I suggest Plimseur and/or the audio/video that comes with NPCR. The videos for NPCR are on YouTube and the audio is available as mp3s. Not quite sitcoms but little short clips from the lessons in the text book. If you use the all the materials for NPCR you get textbook, workbook, audio and video.

 

This is what I use and I find it rounds the textbooks out well.

[hedwards]

As far as the audio visuals go, it's a great idea to start with minimal pairs with tones and proceed from there with the listening. The stronger a person is with that early on, the easier the rest of the stuff becomes. I hate dictations, but they do help a lot with listening.

 

Something like Glossika where you have both recordings and word for word transcriptions in Pinyin are also really helpful for developing listening skills. Even if you aren't hearing the correct tone or word, knowing what the word is supposed to be and listening specifically for it makes a huge difference over time.

 

@Shelley, Pimsleur is OK, but it's ridiculously expensive for a technique that's decades out of date. It does work, which is why people are willing to pay, but the materials are pretty inconvenient. As an example of what I mean, the length of the tracks is about 30 minutes. Which is all well and good, but it means that you have to have 30 minutes of uninterrupted time in order to make much use of it. The lessons for things like this should be from about 5-10 minutes so that you can use it between tasks over the course of the day.

[lechuan]

How about

(Happy Chinese)?

Edit: Oops. Didn't realize the OP already mentioned this.

[roddy]

He mentions that as being too difficult. 

 

If you have a look here for stuff with 'CD' or 'MP3' you might find some useful resources - Graded Readers list - see particularly elina's post, lots in there. 

 

Travel Chinese isn't quite what you're looking for, but might suit. However I'm inclined to suggest that you stick with 

 but bear in mind what Imron (you're getting me and Imron mixed up, by the way) says here - put the time in and it'll stop being difficult.

 

What we're ideally looking for here though is something along the lines of  

 - sitcom / tv show type content - but at a more basic level of Chinese. I guess there's also

, but those are really just textbook style dialogues played out. 

[耳耳语语]

"I wouldn't even mind if they just played out the Chinese Breeze books"

This reminded me this thread : http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42419-my-progress-201314/*

Two Children Seeking the Joy Bridge Parody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg9yv56MDdk Chinese 3 - 错错错！https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLiXZDFfhI

[spetsnaz84]

@耳耳语语： Haha, that's actually pretty hilarious and in fact more helpful than 快乐汉语. The level 1 books are really a bit to easy but I would mind watching this if it were level 2 or 3 (and if I could turn off the subtitles at my own discretion).

[Silent]

 

and if I could turn off the subtitles at my own discretion

unless they're placed at a strange place you can just put a window in front of the subtitles without too much loss of the video itself.

[spetsnaz84]

My wife is now watching '熊出没'. It seems not too difficult. Maybe we can try together ? You can watch it from Youtube