NEW Youtube Channel for Beginners Learning Chinese

[Andrew1556]

I'm a bilingual native speaker in Chinese and English, and I want to help YOU learn Chinese with fun and relaxed videos! If you're sick of traditional classroom teaching, then this is the channel for you

Search "ABChinese" on YouTube, and don't forget to subscribe to stay notified! 

 

https://youtu.be/qMdfXC-eh3Q 

 

**NEW Videos every Thursday @ 5:30 pm CT

[abcdefg]

There are millions of resources for beginners. Something to help intermediate learners and beyond would be more welcome. 

[Flickserve]

I think that’s true. It’s extraordinarily difficult to differentiate yourself from the other masses of beginner videos. 

 

There are are fewer resources for intermediate so try making a video with that. Having a partner would make it more interesting. 

[Andrew1556]

Thanks for the input! @abcdefg @Flickserve Something I CAN use to differentiate myself is that I'm a voice over artist. Would professionally produced tracks like this be of interest to you if they were intermediate material? https://youtu.be/p6qgZcVfPKY

[Jan Finster]

12 hours ago, Andrew1556 said:

Search "ABChinese" on YouTube, and don't forget to subscribe to stay notified! 

 

https://youtu.be/qMdfXC-eh3Q 

 

**NEW Videos every Thursday @ 5:30 pm CT

 

Thank you for helping people with Chinese

 

If I can give you some advice: there are tons of channels out there. So, look for a niche! For instance, you could focus on teaching Chinese by explaining lyrics from Chinese songs, Chinese movie subtitles, etc.

Also, if I were you I would first create 100-200 videos and only then go "online". If you publish only 1 video per week and you have only 5-10 videos in your channel, then your channel will get little traffic and will be "irrelevant"  (i.e. people will not register it compared to Chinesepod, Mandarincorner, etc) 

[suMMit]

Meant with no offense intended, but I don't see much use of just "reading out" single words - for any level. I also don't understand the reading out of the English so many youtube videos - whats it for? We are learning chinese, we already know how to pronounce it in English, why not just display the word as subtitle? Maybe its meant for people just listening? Ive seen a lot of other videos by Chinese speakers where there is so much time spent on English/ saying everything in English. I kinda suspect some of these are actually meant for the creator to practice their English. Which is totally fine, but of little interest to me personally. Just my two cents

[Flickserve]

8 hours ago, Andrew1556 said:

Something I CAN use to differentiate myself is that I'm a voice over artist.

 

Hmm. I am not sure about just reading out words.

 

I realize I wasn't helpful about intermediate learning material.

 

What I have seen is some people post interviews where the same question has been asked of a few people with different accents for training listening skills.

 

What you could do is grab a 3 minutes long dialogue from a TV program that has Mandarin which is slightly non-standard, block out the subtitles so that the viewer can't any clues from the words and then explain what dialogue said,; explain how they said it differently to standard Mandarin. The beauty of that is there is always material around in a TV drama - e.g. someone talking with their mouth full or a bit drunk etc. Even voice over the dialogue so we hear two versions.

 

It's just an idea off the top of my head.

 

I would rather you not waste time on beginner videos. You won't make any impact. 

[Jan Finster]

11 hours ago, Andrew1556 said:

Something I CAN use to differentiate myself is that I'm a voice over artist. Would professionally produced tracks like this be of interest to you if they were intermediate material? https://youtu.be/p6qgZcVfPKY

 

Personally, I do not think reading chinese vocabulary is very useful. There are already loads of videos on HSK vocabulary. You have a great voice. So, if you could read any longer text (novel, short story, news) and provide the transcripts for them, then this would be super helpful. 

[vellocet]

 

15 hours ago, abcdefg said:

There are millions of resources for beginners. Something to help intermediate learners and beyond would be more welcome. 

95% of Chinese learners are at the beginner level.  Something I think the users of this website forget.  

[abcdefg]

12 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

So, if you could read any longer text (novel, short story, news) and provide the transcripts for them, then this would be super helpful. 

 

Agree. Thank about "audiobooks" in Chinese for people studying Chinese at an intermediate level. Not "simplified" or "dumbed-down" texts, just material that is read clearly and then linked to a transcript. That would be of interest to me. 

 

If the idea catches on and you get enough subscribers to indicate a lively interest, then find a second reader, perhaps a female, and record some dialogues and conversations. Some could be from "real life" and some could be from literary sources. 

 

The Pleco dictionary on my phone will read out individual Chinese words. I can even select a male voice or a female voice. Having another on-line source in which someone just reads out words would be of zero interest to me. 

 

Need to search for innovative ways to help learners; need to find a need that has not already been filled over and over. And I hope that you will keep in mind lots of people studying Chinese are not 19-year old university students. Don't aim everything at them. 

 

[Andrew1556]

@abcdefg I think I will definitely do audio books in the future! But it might not be until next year... Thanks SO much for your input!

[Flickserve]

9 hours ago, vellocet said:

95% of Chinese learners are at the beginner level.  Something I think the users of this website forget.  

 

True but that doesn't mean 95% of the material out there should be catered for beginners. If anything, beginners can get overwhelmed with choices.

[vellocet]

3 hours ago, Flickserve said:

True but that doesn't mean 95% of the material out there should be catered for beginners. If anything, beginners can get overwhelmed with choices.

If you want to make money, should you tailor your content to 5% of the customer base or 95% of the customer base?

 

One reason that beginners never make it to intermediate is the awful state of beginner material.  Telling them that the third tone is the "falling-rising" tone and teaching them to write characters like 我 on their first day.  Moreover beginner material is often dismissed as boring by experienced teachers, leading them to put little effort in it as opposed to the "good stuff".  I get the idea the terrible state of beginner material is one reason there are so few intermediate and advanced students.

 

I'd like to see some sales figures on what Book 1 of some series sells vs. Book 2, 3, 4, etc.  

[Pall]

@Andrew1556

It's great! I would recommend to say each phrase in English and then in Chinese and to show Chinese phrases in characters. Novels, dialogues are 'artificial' in any case, they relate to fiction. And the way how you express yourself in reality is interesting.

 

And tell your own stories, without writing them in advance. About you, your experience, some interesting things that happend to you, what you think about this and that. They will be in real conversational language then. And give all phrases in English and then in Chinese, showing the latter in characters. (You coud made a video first and then add Chinese text in order not to write it in advance.)

[Pall]

Or it's even better to say a phrase in Chinese first and then in English. Otherwise it'll be a translation from English to Chinese, but the opposite is more important.

[Flickserve]

@vellocet

 

I haven't assumed straight off the bat that the OP is trying to make money out of this.

[Andrew1556]

Learn 25 basic, but USEFUL phrases in Chinese! Check out the video on my YouTube channel and subscribe for new videos every Tuesday!

 

WATCH on Youtube: https://youtu.be/t-gQoG2Du-U

[Andrew1556]

I made a video of 6 ways ANYONE can celebrate Chinese New Year. Check it out!

 

WATCH on YouTube >> https://youtu.be/V8ULYqXlbjg

[Andrew1556]

This is the second story I recorded on my channel, with characters, pinyin, and clear audio, of course. A Chinese translation of an Aesop's fable. Feedback and suggestions for future content is always welcome!

 

WATCH on YouTube >> https://youtu.be/q9mus6Sato4

[roddy]

Merged - please keep all announcements of new videos to the one topic.