Audio for DeFrancis Intermediate and Advanced Readers

[Qaamar]

Some time ago audio for the Intermediate and Advanced books and readers was made available via Itunes from Seton Hall at this link https://www.shu.edu/global-learning-center/chinese-audio-materials.cfm.

However, these links currently appear to lead nowhere, except for the Beginning Chinese material which seems to be available in full as a podcast.

Does anyone have a working link to a site where the Intermediate and Advanced recordings are available, or can anyone tell me what happened to this material?

[TheBigZaboon]

I don't think seton hall has had the audio since Abraham Lincoln and I were in high school. Use the search function on this site to look for DeFrancis audio and someting like the i university belonging to the Apple empire. The download is free and it was available as recently as five years ago. Someone else may come along and provide the exact search terms, but you should be able to find it with the babble I've given you here.

 

Edit: I think the reference I was trying to remember was more like i tunes university. I'm afraid I don't know much about the Apple empire, but try that.

 

2nd Edit: I tried out my previous advice on this forum, but didn't get clear, unambiguous, usable advice. So I now recommend that you use Google, inputting: defrancis chinese audio iTunes university...

 

That will bring up a number of responses that you can read to help you find what you want, including one from seton hall. I'm not sure, but I think that the Apple empire has modified the previous arrangement whereby you could simply use iTunes to download the files. I think that you are now required to register for a series of "podcasts" whereby they own your information in return for them allowing you to download and use what seton hall released for free use to the public nearly ten years ago.

 

(By the way, I think that I have used admirable restraint in not associating Apple, empire (lower case), and evil in any sentence other than this one; and in that instance, only obliquely...)

 

 

TBZ

[Qaamar]

Thanks for the reply. As far as I can discover, the Apple podcasts only have the Beginning audio. I'd prefer them on Itunes, but I'd take what I can get if I could find it at all.

 

However, the Intermediate and Advanced audio was archived https://archive.org/search.php?query=Seton Hall DeFrancis audio. I think these were all on Itunes University which Apple closed down in 2021. I don't know. The Beginning material migrated over to Podcasts, but maybe not the Intermediate or Advanced, as I'm not finding it there.

 

On the learn any language forum there are links to downloadable audio files for all of it.  http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=31539&PN=2&TPN=3. The quality of the audio on these does seem to vary. Some of the Intermediate and Advanced was not well preserved.

 

Archivists are Saints. These audio materials just like those that existed for Spoken Standard Chinese (SSC) series by Stimson and Huang should never have gone out of circulation. Yale U press was still selling the SSC cassettes until the (1990s?). They were much better sound quality than what survives from the DeFrancis Intermediate and Advanced audio, and in my opinion they were the best.  I'm still looking for copies/mp3 files/old cassettes from the SSC materials  if anyone can help.

 

 

 

[Jan Finster]

I wonder why you bother with these materials? They are over 30 years old and sound quality is pretty bad. I understand they had a good reputation, but over the past 10-15 years tons of material has been released that tried to improve on them. Surely, those people were aware of DeFrancis as a benchmark and copied, tweaked, improved on his materials. Listening to several of the samples from DeFrancis, to me this sounds pretty standard/generic minus the horrible sound quality... 

[Guest realmayo]

Looks like they're here but don't know if the quality is any better than the links you've already found:

https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q="Seton Hall University"&scope=podcast&only_in=author

 

On 6/3/2022 at 7:05 AM, Jan Finster said:

those people were aware of DeFrancis as a benchmark and copied, tweaked, improved on his materials

 

That would be logical, but things often don't work out that way. If I had a proven method versus a new-fangled one, I'd put up with a few imperfections to follow the proven method rather than the new one.

[Jan Finster]

On 6/3/2022 at 12:12 PM, realmayo said:

If I had a proven method versus a new-fangled one, I'd put up with a few imperfections to follow the proven method rather than the new one.

 

To each his own. I am not convinced. Firstly, what does "proven" even mean in this respect? Back then there may only have been 2-5 serious contenders. So, DeFrancis may simply have been the best of those 5. Now there are 100s. This is a bit like rooting for Helmut Schoen, because he coached Germany to win the 1974 FIFA World Cup...The game has evolved since then... 

[Qaamar]

On 6/3/2022 at 6:12 AM, realmayo said:

Looks like they're here but don't know if the quality is any better than the links you've already found:

https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q="Seton Hall University"&scope=podcast&only_in=autho

 

Thanks very much! I will check it them out. Now if only someone would put some mp3 files from the Spoken Standard Chinese series somewhere like this as well :).

 

 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

On 6/3/2022 at 1:59 PM, Jan Finster said:

This is a bit like

... booking a restaurant to take a special someone for a first date: do you choose a place with 30 years of history and a great reputation where you've eaten before and think is fantastic, or do you pick a brand new place that's just opened, and hope for the best?

[wibr]

There is nothing comparable to the DeFrancis readers. They start at 0 and smoothly take the learner up to 1200 characters and 6800 words, with an integrated repetition system. Modern readers don't provide such a systematic approach and cost more, relative to the volume of text they contain.

[Qaamar]

One of the advantages of the older series was that they contained much more audio than the newer books. We now have podcasts, tv, many other options, but for audio targeted at particular levels I don't think the older series have been improved upon. And the SSC tapes were a real pleasure to listen to.

[Jan Finster]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:17 PM, realmayo said:

booking a restaurant to take a special someone for a first date: do you choose a place with 30 years of history and a great reputation where you've eaten before and think is fantastic, or do you pick a brand new place that's just opened, and hope for the best?

That implies there is no evolution. More like: you give your son your pocket digital camera, you bought in 2001 and expect him to be grateful about it... ? 

 

 

On 6/3/2022 at 5:47 PM, Qaamar said:

And the SSC tapes were a real pleasure to listen to.

 

Similar to the FSI tapes: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/Chinese-Mandarin/Basic Course Audio/Mod2 Lesson 09a side a.mp3 

[sounds like it was recorded in orbit and reminds me of the moon landing...] ? 

 

 

Enough. I recede as I understand, I am the contrarian here... I do not want to spoil anyones enthusiasm 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

I think there's a false assumption that because something has been "modernised" it must have been improved. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I think there's an interesting question about why fans of the DeFrancis books (I've not read them) think they've never been improved upon. I mean, how come subsequent publishers have produced inferior material?

[Qaamar]

On 6/3/2022 at 11:55 AM, Jan Finster said:

Similar to the FSI tapes: 

 

The audio for Spoken Standard Chinese was in no way similar to either the FSI recordings (or DeFrancis, no insult intended). Why would you use FSI audio as a comparison? Have you ever heard them? Since I don't have any of the audio, what I might compare it to in quality that is still around would be something like the audio for Talks on Chinese Culture, an earlier version of which my teachers used with us after SSC.

[Jan Finster]

On 6/3/2022 at 6:12 PM, Qaamar said:

Since I don't have any of the audio, what I might compare it to in quality that is still around would be something like the audio for Talks on Chinese Culture, an earlier version of which my teachers used with us after SSC.

 

Sorry, I should not have quoted you and SSC. I do think the DeFrancis and the FSI sound quality are similarly bad though.

[Qaamar]

On 6/3/2022 at 12:14 PM, Jan Finster said:

Sorry, I should not have quoted you and SSC. I do think the DeFrancis and the FSI sound quality are similarly bad though.

Thank you :). Audio recordings were certainly better by the late 70s/early 80s when the SSC series was being recorded.  The dialogues were well-written and often fun to listen to. The grammar in Books I and II is still the clearest I've ever found. Some of it has dated a bit, but given a choice between a slightly dated text which throws in a bit of Tang poetry and Mencius to keep me entertained, and a more modern one which never seems to get past summoning taxis, finding my way to train stations, and discussing my family members, I'll choose the slightly dated one .

I don't think there is only one way to learn anything. But the SSC books were well done, and a pleasure to learn from. I can't really comment on the DeFrancis series yet, as I've just started to look through it and wanted the audio that went with it.

[TheBigZaboon]

I swore to myself I would keep my big mouth shut and stay out of this conversation, but I've never been one to follow good advice, even when it's my own...

 

Someone here seems to be equating the quality of a course, be it the DeFrancis, DLI, or FSI courses with the quality of some of the second- or third-hand copies of the audio when it was transferred to another medium by non-specialists in the past. I can assure you that the original audio was as perfect as the contemporary technology allowed at the time. The OP has also testified to this. FSI tapes were made for people (sometimes ambassadors and politicians appointed as ambassadors) who considered themselves deserving of the proper tools for learning the languages of their trade. And they were well used to getting what they wanted. These materials were sold to the public by the US Government Printing Office as a huge set of tapes with, as I remember, blue and yellow labels. And all were perfect at the time of sale.

The DeFrancis materials were likewise produced by the AV specialists at Seton Hall, and used for years both there and at Cornell as the mainstay of their attempts at providing an artificial full-time total immersion course environment for both student majors and outside specialists who paid big money for the privilege of studying there. No room for inferior stuff there either.

 

So the focus of the thread should be, as it originally was, on finding out whether or not better copies -copies!!!- of the  materials in question exist.

 

As to the quality, and relevance, of those materials themselves, that's a different issue deserving of a thread of its own. And to put to rest that old canard that the materials are old and out-of-date and therefore irrelevant, there's a mini-justification from the great Vivian Ling herself on using older materials in her preface to her edition of Talks on Chinese Culture.  

 

I mean, Holy Gutenberg, Batman!!! That's like complaining that books are irrelevant because they're made out of paper!!!

 

Kek, kek, kek... Snark, snark, snark...

 

Not really a contribution at all, just an uncalled for comment...

 

TBZ

[Qaamar]

On 6/4/2022 at 2:00 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

And to put to rest that old canard that the materials are old and out-of-date and therefore irrelevant, there's a mini-justification from the great Vivian Ling herself on using older materials in her preface to her edition of Talks on Chinese Culture.  

 

Since the DeFrancis beginning audio is in good condition, we can assume that potentially better copies of some of the other audio does, or could exist.

 

Vivian Ling's introduction is very interesting. Without the work of people like her and others we would not have books like TOCC and their audio at all. Twenty Lectures on Chinese Culture, which she mentions in her introduction (and which I used as a student) might as well be lost, since no one has revised it and the audio is gone or unavailable. As much as I liked Twenty Lectures, obviously ToCC is now the better choice (despite having fewer lectures ) since language books with no audio are hardly as useful as those with audio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[suMMit]

On 6/3/2022 at 11:55 PM, Jan Finster said:

Similar to the FSI tapes: 

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/Chinese-Mandarin/Basic Course Audio/Mod2 Lesson 09a side a.mp3 

 

[sounds like it was recorded in orbit and reminds me of the moon landing...] ? 

I don't use FSI or DeFrancis either. I listened to some of that sample though and in my opinion the voices(accents,speed,rhythm) sound really good, yeah there's some background static. To me they more natural than say the ChinesePod recordings. They sound like people in my neighborhood.

[TheBigZaboon]

I sampled the two recordings above. I didn't have time to listen to the entire recording, but I couldn't find any moon shot recordings. If you have any specific time settings, let me know.

 

By the way, those are definitely DLI recordings, not FSI. If you don't believe me, look at the URL.

 

I'm not sure because these materials were made in the 1980's, long, long after I had left DLI, but I believe that the production of this course was supervised by Claudia Ross of Routledge Chinese course fame. If ya can't get Vivian Ling, then you'd better be damned sure you got Claudia Ross on the team, preferably in a starring role.

 

And @suMMit has said what others, including me, shoulda said long ago.

 

TBZ