Chinese Zero to Hero Path to Fluency course review

[Longfellow]

 

On 6/14/2019 at 2:15 PM, Moshen said:

I just did a search in our regional library system, and a few Chinese books came up, all of them children's books.

This statewide system came up in a quick search: https://libraries.state.ma.us/

The catalog page:

 https://libraries.state.ma.us/books-and-ebooks#catalog

Quick checks listed 4,706 holdings (books, magazines, audio, ebooks, tv, etc.) from 14 sets of resources using the keyword 中文. The homepage also states that: "All residents of Massachusetts can use the Boston Public Library's electronic resources".

Most states & many regions have similar cooperative agreements. 

[suMMit]

I just started HSK 4 Standard Course. I am finding it a sizable step up from Hsk 3, so I decided to try Zero to Hero HSK 4 bundle as an add on. I just finished unit one and personally, I have found it very helpful. I had already gone through unit 1 with a teacher, but found the ZTH videos were a great way to review and clarify things I wasn't sure of in the class. I love the fact that it's narrated by a male voice. Ninety five percent of Mandarin learning materials are with a female voice, being a male, it feels more natural to shadow a male voice. These guys have pleasant, standard accents and speak at nice pace. I find myself repeating out loud most of the video as it goes along, just pausing now and then. I like the grammar explanations, as sometimes my eyes glaze over at written grammar explanations in books. Watching the videos is almost "entertaining". They give clear and concise explanations and examples. Short quizzes at the end of the videos are also useful. There are often prompts to re-read / listen to the dialogs in the book and answer questions, which I probably wouldn't otherwise do. I love how the course in almost entirely in Chinese, I'm picking up a lot of natural phrasing and its good listening practice. I also gave the ZTH 双人活动 and pair work exercises from the book to an 5 dollar an hour italki community tutor and we had a productive discussion. I don't feel like the suggestions about WeChat groups, books in libraries and so on are very important to me, so I only glanced at those. Overall, I'm sure the course is going to help me get a lot more out of the Hsk 4 Standard Course, well worth the relatively small investment.

 

*Oh, and it provides the workbook answers for each unit(and I believe transcripts as well)

Edited December 26, 2021 at 11:06 AM by suMMit

[Flickserve]

I am currently on the live YouTube stream. 聲張 vs 生長.

 

It’s pretty good teaching using a few video clips of different voices to test the listeners what tone they hear. He’s also using Praat to demonstrate the tones as well.

 

He’s picked male voice and a female voice from dramas to demonstrate.

 

I haven’t tried the website yet but as a teaching platform, I gather it has undergone sizeable development in the last couple of years.

[TaxiAsh]

On 12/26/2021 at 5:19 AM, suMMit said:

I love the fact that it's narrated by a male voice. Ninety five percent of Mandarin learning materials are with a female voice, being a male, it feels more natural to shadow a male voice. These guys have pleasant, standard accents and speak at nice pace. I find myself repeating out loud most of the video as it goes along, just pausing now and then.

I haven't purchased their courses, but I watch the youtubes, and recommend to others (most seem to already know them)

I agree, Jon's voice is far easier to shadow than most lessons! 

 

The website now https://www.zerotohero.ca/en/zh/ with all these youtubes and dialogues typed out is amazing. (almost too much for my brain to cope with!)

If I can work out how to download the script for a show to 'dub' over it, that would be amazing. 

They perhaps have already done it. 

Last year, all the Chinese in one of the wechat groups I am in, found an app that they could play a scene, and read the parts, then post them for people to comment. I haven't found anything like that... that would be a great reading/speaking tool (if anyone knows one!!)

Edited March 13, 2022 at 11:08 PM by TaxiAsh
forgot the link

[TaxiAsh]

On 3/13/2022 at 11:02 PM, TaxiAsh said:

The website now https://www.zerotohero.ca/en/zh/ with all these youtubes and dialogues typed out is amazing.

An example. https://www.zerotohero.ca/en/zh/youtube/view/fbQxXibXOxE/lesson (I'm watching all this series again) 

 

Do you guys all use this?

 

I think is excellent.