The FluentU Experiment

[lechuan]

So I've been looking at fluentU for a while, and decided to give the plus subscription a try now that they've released an iOS app which allows downloading locally (most of my study time is during my bus commute).

 

I'm hopeful that this will be what I need to help taking my learning up a notch. I'm going to try to use this exclusively for the next 6 months or so, and report how things are improving and how the method works (well, I'll finish the Peking University Intermediate grammar course, and keep up Skritter single character reviews, but I'd really like to improve my vocab/listening, which I think the fluentU will help with).

 

If anyone is/has using fluentU, I'd be interested in how it works for your and if you have any suggestions.

[peas02]

I used it up until they started charging, which was maybe 2 years ago. For an intermediate/upper intermediate learner I think the site is great. However, for advanced learners it's definitely not worth the monthly fee.

 

The idea of easily pausing (by dragging your mouse over the subtites) and then having a popup dictionary is ingenius, exposing yourself to real life Chinese. But I just think it's slightly overpriced.

[ChTTay]

How much is it? I couldn't find the price on the mobile version of the site ... it just kept asking me to sign up for free.

 

If it's not crazy expensive I might be interested in joining you, Lechuan, on your experiment... if thats okay

[giokve]

You may also want to have a look at Yabla Chinese.

[lechuan]

@peas02 Thanks for the feedback! I'm currently low-intermediate level.

 

@ChTTay pricing is here: http://www.fluentu.com/pricing/ I'm currently trying the plus plan to see how much of a benefit the vocab tracking with the learn mode is.

 

@giokve Thanks! That site looks great too.

[lechuan]

Day 1 Report:

 

After logging into my account, I set the level to intermediate, and set chinese characters to traditional (I have been learning simplified, but recently switched to traditional).

 

In the iOS app, I loaded up one of the intermediate courses, which is a series of fluentU produced videos. The dialog is slow and clear, with pauses in between phrases. I went through the first 4 videos (out of 9) in the "Dinner with a Friend" series. After watching each short video, I watched them again, mimicking the speaker, then went on to the "Learn" mode. It was slow going at first because it teaches you every single word in your first video. I was hitting "already know" a lot. The nice thing is that this rapidly improves as fluentU remembers which words you already know, and doesn't try to teach them to you in future videos.

 

One really nice thing is that, if you take the time to mark the vocab you know in each video, it will show the percentage of words you already know for all other videos. I read somewhere that acquisition is faster if you are using material where you already know 80% (can't remember the exact number) of the material, so it's really nice to have not only graded material, but a way of selecting appropriate videos from within that material.

 

I also tried out a video "How to Keep Ceiling Creatures" which is a 3.5 minute mini movie. There was more vocab in this one that I didn't know. Before I didn't know how to say "giraffe" and "koala", now I do. To help reinforce the vocab they first tell you the new word, let you listen to it (TTS), and quiz you with fill-in-the-blank, writing, translation. I found that the different type of tests helped to reinforce the vocab better than just studying it off a list.

[Zeppa]

I've been looking into this more seriously than I had, and it's recently been reviewed on the Hacking Chinese blog (which is critical of the text-to-speech function).

 

What I have been wondering is how Taiwanese it is. I think it should be made clearer.

 

Is it common throughout China to greet people entering a shop with 欢迎光临, or is that just in Taiwan?

 

It would be good if there were some indication of where the videos are from, but being from YouTube, they are not likely to be from the mainland most of the time.

 

The more advanced your Chinese, the less it matters, I suppose.

[ChTTay]

They welcome customers in that way in most places in China I've been.

How's it going lechuan?

[imron]

They welcome customers in that way in most places in China I've been.

They do, but the Taiwanese take it to a whole new level.

[lechuan]

Just an update: I got really busy and stopped using it. I think that qualifies as a FAIL on my part.

[abhoriel]

Was it useful?

[lechuan]

I found it useful while I was using it. I guess the hardest part was keeping my interest in short random video clips. I currently prefer just to watch a show and try to get the gist of it, picking up the higher frequency vocab and expressions, instead of trying to learn every single word from every scene.