Lingly - The only native Mandarin podcast website you need

[linglyofficial]

Hi，大家好（da jia hao)：

     Welcome to Lingly listen. We are a group of native Mandarin speakers who are currently making free podcasts for Mandarin enthusiast. Feel free to leave comments below or on our website @ http://ling.ly/listen/  

     We've divided the podcasts into different interests and difficulty levels.  Level 1 is the easiest suited for people who have zero knowledge of Mandarin. Well, level 5 is the hardest which require you have sufficient knowledge and understanding of Chinese culture and a sufficient amount of Chinese vocabularies. 

     We are looking forward for your feedback and ideas about new topics. 

 

Thank you. 

Lingly Official 

 

[ChTTay]

I'm in Beijing and the site's homepage doesn't load very well for me. When I click 'listen' it just gets stuck on 'loading'.

 

It could be a problem my end... however, it could also be that China blocks something that's used on your site.

[imron]

I have Ghostery installed which I use to block webtrackers and the like, and when that's running, your site doesn't load - there's just a spinning icon on the screen.

[joshuawbb]

Can confirm that it works fine for me in Fuzhou through a VPN - I'm thinking as has been said, something on the site is being blocked within China.

 

Thank you very much, your podcasts are refreshing and interesting. I'm enjoying the level IV and V lessons.

[HerrPetersen]

The website works fine for me. Some comments for the 3-4 Podcasts I listened to:

Pro

1.) The recordings are very good from a technical perspective (No unwanted background noise etc.)

2.) Some of the speakers are very good.

3.) Chinese and English pronounciation is very good

4.) The topics have been carefully selected, interesting and fun

 

Improvable

1.) Pinyin for the voacb would be nice

2.) When reading a supposed to be natural dialogue the whole situation seems to be a little "fake". I prefere the Chinesepod approach: A text is read and then a host or mutliple hosts talk about the text without a rehearsed script.

 

I am not sure what I think about the whole format (alternating between Chinese speech with English speech).

[dnevets]

Just tried a level 5 and at least half of it is in English. Because of this I won't be using the site again, which is a shame because it looks like there are some interesting topics, the sound quality is good, and the site itself looks nice. But why would you use so much English on the highest level podcasts? Make them 100% Chinese please!

[linglyofficial]

HI guys:

   Thank you for your comments. In term of the non-able to access in China. I think it might be because the firewall blocked the site. And we will try our best to make the scripts more "natural" and "unscripted". The reason the level 5 has English is because we were concerned that the topic or culture background might be too difficult for the learner to grasp. That's why we had English to translate those concepts and ideas for easy understanding. However, we will make more level 5 with limited English. Thank you for all supporting and giving out comments.        

[Demonic_Duck]

To be honest, I think the seemingly random code-switching between Chinese and English is distracting; if anything it makes it more difficult to understand. It also restricts your audience to only Chinese learners who can understand English. Would recommend cutting it out entirely for higher levels, and replace it with Chinese explanations of 生词. For lower levels, spend longer on those 生词, have more detailed explanations in English, and try for some more repetition. From a pedagogical point of view, I can see how English is useful at lower levels for explanations, but that's rarely what it's actually being used for.

 

Also, you state that level 1 is for people with "zero knowledge of Mandarin", yet (for example) at one point in this episode, one of your hosts suddenly says “然后她就痊愈了？就这样？怎么可能这么神奇？” at normal talking speed. This is most definitely not zero-level, and no explanation is given of any of the words, grammar etc. To a "zero level" learner, the sentence will just go in one ear and out the other, they won't understand it and won't learn anything from it.

 

For something like that example, I would suggest splitting it into individual sentences, and going through them one by one. For each sentence:

1. Grade the language (“痊愈了” could be replaced with “没事了” or “完全治好了”).
2. Repetition of the sentence several times at a slower speed.
3. Explanation of every word/phrase/grammar point beyond the absolute basics (“然后” means "after", “就” expresses that it's a short time, “完全” means "completely", “治” means to treat and “好” is a complement of result expressing that the treatment was successful, “就这样” means "just like that", “神奇” means "mysterious" etc.) Each one of these explanations should contain several repetitions of the word, ideally with a short space (maybe 2 seconds) after each one in which the listener could repeat it if they wished.
4. Repetition of the original sentence again.

[Silent]

 

The reason the level 5 has English is because we were concerned that the topic or culture background might be too difficult for the learner to grasp.

It is obviously possible to approach a problem in different ways. I think however that you should stick to Chinese as much as possible. I can imagine you want to use some english explanations at a very low level. At higher levels I think everything should be Chinese and if harder concepts are covered an explanation in simpler Chinese should be the way to go.

 

Also agree that at the easiest level the Chinese is not really that simple (0 previous knowledge) as is claimed and an awfull amount of English is used which obviously does not help learning Chinese. I would recommend to take some kind of classified vocabulary (e.g. HSK) and write a podcasts with that vocabulary instead of codeswitching. Of course no reason to be too rigid as that would restrict the subjects too much. But say 95% of the vocabulary should come from the list and 5% more advanced and subject specific vocabulary is allowed. That way it's fairly easy to determine the level of the podcast and your podcast will contain usefull content instead of English that does not contribute to learning Chinese. Basically the approach of graded readers.

[wushucrab20]

I think if you are assuming that having the advanced level podcasts entirely in Chinese would make them "too difficult for the advanced learner to grasp" I think you are highly underestimating the level of a lot of the learners that may be interested in your podcast and also the ability/motivation of students to work things out and understand challenge content.

 

I also agree with what others have said that at some point you should have the exchange be entirely in Chinese otherwise it has little value for advanced learners.

[Michael H]

I tried a Level V one (Metaphors of Eating) which was 95% Chinese, which seems appropriate for this level. I first tried a different Level V one (Two-part Allegorical Saying), but something is wrong with the link and it took me to a different podcast about Chinese chess which I think was a lower level and had lots more English.

[Demonic_Duck]

Oh, that makes sense. I didn't listen all the way through, I assumed they were going to move onto 歇后语 later in the conversation.

 

The “‘吃’字隐喻” one is a lot better, and does contain plenty of explanations in Chinese. I still feel the English code-switching is unnecessary, although there's much less of it. Really, the only reason to use English at this level is where the English is specifically relevant (e.g. you want to remind listeners that 比尔·盖茨 is Bill Gates or 麻省理工 is MIT, or explain the brilliance behind loanwords such as “脱口秀” or “蹦极”).

[imron]

Hah. I've been learning Chinese for years and it never clicked that 脱口秀 was just a transliteration of talk show!

[wushucrab20]

I had the same problem as Michael H. I just realized the link on one of the level five ones is misdirected too. The actual level V lesson was actually pretty good, but it would still be even better to have lessons completely in Chinese. Good work though!

[Demonic_Duck]

Hah. I've been learning Chinese for years and it never clicked that 脱口秀 was just a transliteration of talk show!

 

That's exactly where the brilliance lies, though: it's not just a transliteration, it's a translationiteration!

[linglyofficial]

Hey everyone:

          Thank you for all of your comments again. We will be changing our Level 5 contents to all Chinese. In terms of the link of Two-part Allegorical Saying | 歇后语 the link has been replaced with the correct one. We will reconsider a new way to record level 1 script. And slow down the talking speed along with providing more Chinese vocabulary instead of code switching between English. In terms of grammar stuff we have simple grammar lessons for some of the podcasts which you can find under "application" tab. We are currently still looking for a better way to implement this feature on our site. So we do apologize for people who are looking forward to learn grammar. However, we are doing the best we can to implement this feature ASAP.  I have two questions for you guys. Do you think the podcast length are suitable for each level ? And what kind of future contents that you would to learn about?

[Demonic_Duck]

Good to see you folks are responsive to feedback!

 

I'm not sure if the comment about grammar is directed at me, but if so, I wasn't suggesting you take that as a particular focus in future (although there's certainly no reason why not if you think there would be demand for it). I meant things like explaining grammatical constructions used as they crop up (depending on suitability for the level, of course).

 

Podcast lengths seem OK to me, but a bit longer wouldn't hurt, maybe around twice the length (10-12 minutes). That's still a fairly manageable, bitesize chunk. The main issues I have with the site are technical issues (sometimes stuff doesn't load, trying to skip back/forward in the podcast doesn't work, plus I guess what other people said about the GFW, though I use a VPN most of the time myself). As for future topics, I think anything related to Chinese pop culture trends will go down well, along with interesting current events within/relevant to the sinosphere. Basically, the kind of things you will tend to find being posted and reposted in your 微信朋友圈.

[ChTTay]

"plus I guess what other people said about the GFW,"

... I can't even load your site to give you feedback!

[Silent]

 

Do you think the podcast length are suitable for each level ?

I think 5-10 minutes is fine, specially for the lower levels. Higher levels may be a bit longer as you may cover subjects more in dept and consequently you need a bit more time to cover it. Also, when more advanced it's easier to handle longer podcasts.

 

 

And what kind of future contents that you would to learn about?

Very subjective. The obvious choice is Chinese country, culture and history. Many people learning Chinese have above average interest in China and Chinese culture. But your competition does pretty much the same. Alternatives may be news items but this has the disadvantage the the podcasts are likely to lose their value quickly as few people are interested in old news. you might temper this by not so much covering the news but to write some background inspired by news. E.g. drowning refugees might inspire a story about war, living in war conditions, poverty, the journey of refugees etc etc that may be more durable then real news subjects. I think it might be a key to a diverse and interesting portfolio of podcasts.

 

Personally I appreciate varied subjects with 'serious' content. I tire easily about more 'frivilous' and 'funny' subjects like a pets that make amazing journeys, hilarious marriage proposals and famous people their lifestyle choices etc. Considering the popularity of such subjects in tabloids and social media I may be alone in this. So, beside some news background stories I'ld prefer some science, technology, economy, geography, etc subjects. Perhaps also some politics and religion though these may be a bit sensitive and result in controverse.

[ChTTay]

For future topics, I'd say anything that might be useful to take and use/talk about in my life. As above, that's pretty subjective. But also as Silent says, I don't really want to listen to a podcast based on a king fu movie or James Bond scene which is what I've encountered before.

You could pick big, current stories or issues and expand a bit. For instance, pollution in Beijing would be a useful one as it seems everyone is always talking about it. My students knew the word "smog" before they knew "storm". Summer is coming and there is always stuff about not eating cold food as it'll make you sick haha. For new people to China, even talking about stuff like how Chinese people drink hot water all the time and why, where is that from ... Etc might be worth knowing and interesting.

If you can then take the stuff you learn from the podcast and apply it directly to a conversation in real life ... Then that would be perfect.