The Chairman's Bao

[erlenwein]

Is zhuyin support possible in the future? Preferably not tied to traditional (as in, I'd like to be able to use simplified + zhuyin combo).

Also maybe a streak/'articles read this week: 3 out of 10' or something like this?

[TheChairmansBaoTeam]

11 hours ago, erlenwein said:

Is zhuyin support possible in the future? Preferably not tied to traditional (as in, I'd like to be able to use simplified + zhuyin combo).

Also maybe a streak/'articles read this week: 3 out of 10' or something like this?

Thank you for getting in touch.

 

We haven't explored the potential for Zhuyin, however I will certainly look into this with our tech team to see what can be done.

 

With regards to study streaks and goals, this is something we are looking to implement in the coming months as we look to further 'gamify' the platform.

 

Thanks,

 

Sean

[kanumo]

On 4/4/2021 at 9:54 PM, Jan Finster said:

To improve my listening skills, I decided to listen to all TCB lessons. 

 

Starting with HSK 1 lessons (approx. 900) as extensive listening practice, I just completed all HSK 1 lessons in TCB.

 

The great thing about TCB is that they do not cling to the HSK levels rigidly. So, even though the lessons were supposed to be HSK 1, all HSK 1 lessons combined contained about 2687 unique words and 1418 unique characters (see stats below). 

 

The great thing about listening to them was that they were really fairly easy, but almost every lesson had 1-2 words I did not know or expressions, I was not familiar with even though I know the individual words or characters, e.g. "同桌同学" (for "classmate you are sharing your desk with"). Since the lessons were fairly easy, I completed several dozens each day, which meant, I spent several hours each day listening. So, lots of time on task and I feel my overall listening skills have improved quite a bit.

 

Hey Jan, thanks for this. I took your posts as inspiration follow you on your journey.

 

I started with the HSK 1 articles a few days ago - i listen to the article first (mostly 2 times) and then listen to it once more with reading the text in parallel. Lets see where it brings me ?

 

Vielen Dank!

[Jan Finster]

2 hours ago, kanumo said:

Lets see where it brings me

 

I am glad you are on board. Quite a few people contacted me and are trying it out. Please keep us posted

[NanJingDongLu]

I was also inspired by @Jan Finster to go through all of the TCB's HSK 1 content. I've been doing it for a few weeks now, and I've got ~480 articles in my "read" status (that does include Blogs, but probably less than 50 of them). I have ~460 left to go before I'm up to date with all HSK 1, but to be honest I've lost interest in it now, and am finding it hard to motivate myself to stick to a daily schedule.

 

My method was to try to tackle between 1-2 month's worth of articles per day (depending on how much time I had), which was usually about 20 articles. At first (once they added the feature) I was completing the quizzes they added, but they quickly become repetitive and I didn't feel they were adding much value.

 

I would copy and paste the article into CTA to see if it had any words that are not in my "known" list, which would usually only be a couple of actual words (i.e. not names) that I hadn't come across before which were usually related to the article's main topic. Then I would listen to the article on the fastest speed the player will allow, and follow along with the text. Mark as read. Move to the next article. Repeat. I would estimate this takes between 45-60 minutes depending on the number of articles covered.

 

Overall I would say it's been a great learning experience. It's given me lots of repetition for saying similar things but with different wording, and seeing the same grammar structures be used in many different ways. My main issue now is that since the articles are, by design, short in length, in combination with the limitations on vocabulary I'm finding the actual content of the articles to not interest me anymore. Many of the articles follow a similar pattern, which has become formulaic. (Title: Man opens X-style restaurant. Man from X-place opens a restaurant. He cooks X-style food. Lots of people come to eat his food. They like eating his food. He is very happy they like to eat his food. He plans to open another restaurant in Y city selling X-style food. The End.)

 

My current plan is to add in the HSK 2&3 level articles, and go back to the beginning, doing a similar method. It may be that those articles are harder to follow, and so I won't be able to fast forward. It may need either some previewing of vocab, or repeated listening to properly understand and digest the content.

[Jan Finster]

Just a quick update:

 

I am still doing the listening marathon with TCB and I am now at "HSK 3". Been quite busy lately, but managed to listen actively for about 1-1.5 hours per day and maybe the same amount passively (during exercise, cooking, etc). 

It is quite obvious that the so called "HSK 3" level of TCB is bigger step to take than the HSK 1 and 2 levels. In previous levels I could basically just listen and did not really have to read the text (unless there were specific words I did not know). Now with the HSK 3 level, I often have to read the text at some point to fully understand the content. The good thing about this, yes, I am getting somewhat faster at reading.

 

There are about 1500 lessons in this level and I am about 1/3 done (533 lessons). The statistics for these 533 lessons so far are (known word count relative to HSK 2.0 (2010-2021)):

 

Words:

    Total    126.577
    Known    86.400
    Percent Known    68,26%
    Unknown    40.177
    Percent Unknown    31,74%
    Unique    7.120
    Known    1.923
    Percent Known    27,01%
    Unknown    5.197
    Percent Unknown    72,99%

 

Characters:

        Unique    2.280
 

As you can see, the total unique word count is already higher than the whole HSK 1-6 system. So, for everyone turning up their nose at TCB-HSK.3, it is quite clear that "HSK 3" at TCB has nothing to do with "the" HSK system. It is just the third level at CB. 

 

I am still feeling the progress, but I will probably want to stay another 1-3 months at this level to fully absorb it.

 

Will keep you posted.

[Jan Finster]

Update:

 

I took a 2 months break from Chinese, but now I finally finished all HSK 3 lessons (approx. 1500). It is by far the biggest section of TCB. I had completed about 25% of them already in 2020. The audio per lesson is about 2 min, so there are ~3000 minutes (50 hours) of listening.

 

Here the statistics (known word count relative to HSK 2.0 (2010-2021)):

    

Words:

Total    261.963
    Known    179.557
    Percent Known    68,54%
    Unknown    82.406
    Percent Unknown    31,46%
    Unique    10.712
    Known    2.468
    Percent Known    23,04%
    Unknown    8.244
    Percent Unknown    76,96%
 

Characters:

      Unique    2.785
 

 

Here the statistics for all lessons HSK 1-3 all combined:

Total words    382.650
Unique words    11.759
Unique characters    2.930
 

I noticed I am picking up more when I watch Chinese TV dramas and even though I only read about 30-40% of the texts of the lessons, my reading speed and character recognition also improved significantly.

 

OK, let's tackle HSK 4 lessons

 

[Balthazar]

Anyone know if it's no longer possible to synchronize bookmarks between android app and webpage?

 

It used to be the case that I had to chose on or the other (i.e. either copy bookmarks from app to web view or the other way around). But now I can't even find this option. Maybe it's just me being slow though.

[TheChairmansBaoTeam]

Hey @Balthazar, this should be automatic. Can you please send me an email to sean@thechairmansbao.com if you're still having issues with this? I'll get our tech team to look into it for you to get it sorted. Thanks.

[Balthazar]

@TheChairmansBaoTeam: Thanks, e-mail sent.

 

Glad to hear it's supposed to be automatic. That's a huge improvement to the earlier functionality (as I remember it a couple years back).

[Jan Finster]

I am still using TCB, but recently have not had much time.

 

Just a feedback to Sean from TCB:

 

Maybe you could also include some mult-media content to TCB and have some news "reported" by a real person with video and supporting images (e.g. like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LSjOuxbAts&ab_channel=MandarinClick)..

 

I know this may not be cost-effective, but it would make learning even more fun.

 

You could also include some CCTV news-style, weather reports ? 

 

[TheChairmansBaoTeam]

Hi Jan, thanks for the feedback! We have some exciting new plans in the pipeline for some different types of content. Thanks for the suggestion. In the meantime, have you also checked out the Video Series and Frank Talks?

 

Sean @ TCB

[Singe]

The Chairmans Bao app has just been upgraded and released and I'm so far finding it a huge improvement on the previous version which I found to be really slow and clunky. I've been a big fan of TCB and have used it a lot, especially in the last 6 months as I've had more time on my hands.

 

I was particularly motivated by @Jan Finster efforts of working through all the levels. I've made certain that I've done two text exercises every day, currently at HSK4, and the constant repetition has really helped fluency (which is probably obvious, I guess). I've been a bit sheepish at trying the listening, but now that the app looks much easier to navigate I'm really motivated.

[suMMit]

After wanting to for a long time, I finally subscribed. I was kind of waiting until I was working on Hsk 5 since I feel like that's where news kicks in, though I see it's graded from Hsk1 up. My Du Chinese subscription ended a while back and I prefer reading non-fiction and news, so decided to take advantage of the Black Friday discount and go for CB. Love it so far. I'm glad to see that these are current, real news stories that are graded, rather than "made up news stories". For example yesterday I read an article about lockless sharing bikes, and while I've used those many times, I never realized how to distinguish them from a distance(the ones with yellow baskets). So today when I saw one I ran the story back though my mind. Also cool that you can download the mp3s and re-listen to review. Post story exercises are good too. 

[Singe]

I've really enjoyed using TCB and have managed to keep up doing two reading exercises every day since the start of June. I started with a month around level 2 and then the next 3 months on level 3. I've done October and November on level 4 and i think I'm ready to move up to a mix of 4 and 5 for December. I've worked backwards from most recent on level 4 and have done over a years worth now but I've only really scratched the surface as there's now well over 9000 exercises across the grades. Still tentative on listening and need to improve - that's my goal for December and the New Year. Just started an iTalk teacher for the first time and enjoying it.

 

As you mention @suMMit, I've found the news articles interesting and overall I feel it's an excellent option. I bought the lifetime subscription and it's already paid for itself as far as I'm concerned. 

 

The new app is definitely an improvement on the old one, though when doing the exercises the 'Keyword' exercises don't work well. I like that the 'Question and Answer' section now tells you which answer you have correct on the new app (rather than having to guess which answer you have incorrect before proceeding). It would be nice if the website could do the same.

 

Although not colour-coded, I did wonder if @Friday has tried TCB having read his/her post earlier this week on a different thread?