New Online Course: Chinese Cursive

[OneEye]

Hi all,

 

I wanted to make a quick announcement about our new online course, the Chinese Cursive Crash Course.

 

Over the course of 8 weeks, I'll be teaching the principles of how cursive forms are created—how certain shapes/components can be abbreviated, etc.—and we'll be working through brief texts written in cursive each week. I'll also teach about 160 cursive forms (20 very common characters per week) in detail, and will provide an Anki deck that will help you drill both reading and writing these cursive forms. We'll also take a look at a few famous works in cursive (both 行書 and 草書), so there's a cultural/art appreciation element to the course as well. We'll also explore how a lot of simplified characters are derived from cursive forms. There's something here for everyone.

 

You can also watch the replay later if you can't make it live, so there's no need to stress about keeping pace. Life gets busy, but you'll have lifetime access to the course in case you need to come back to it later.

 

I'll also be holding "office hours" via Zoom each week, so you can pop in and ask questions if you'd like, and we'll also have a private community where students can collaborate, share notes, discuss, etc. We already have over 60 people enrolled, so there will be a great community of learners taking the course together.

 

The course starts on Tuesday, 20 June. We're pricing it at $299, but you can get a $100 discount using the discount code 'cursive' at checkout if you sign up before the course begins.

 

Happy to answer any questions!

[jannesan]

Hi, this looks cool! Could you provide exact dates and times for when the classes will be held? I guess with it starting on Tuesday it would be Tuesdays every week. But what time? I’m interested to join, but not willing to pay that much if I can never make it to live classes. 

 

Also you mention 60 people being enrolled already, will all of these be part of the same session or will it be broken into multiple sessions? Basically how much opportunity to ask questions is there gonna be?

[Moshen]

Hi Jannesan,

 

I took two previous courses with Outlier and I have to say that John bends over backwards to make sure everyone gets their questions answered.  Because of time differences, I was not able to make any of the live sessions.  But:

 

1)All sessions were recorded on video to play or replay at your convenience.

 

2)There was an interactive forum associated with the class where you could ask questions, which got answered by John or other participants.

 

3)He also held "office hours" at two different times - additional opportunities to ask questions.

 

The value of each class was much, much more than the $199 charged.  (And I get no benefit from saying that here.)

[pon00050]

@OneEye

 

Has anyone ever complained about the length of each session?

 

So I paid for the Classical Chinese course.

Sounds wonderful in theory but I completed only the first or the second session.

You see, I don't seem to have the patience for patiently sitting for 90 minutes trying to decode what the speaker is trying to convey.

Yes, all the recordings were made available so that they can be played anytime that suit me.

But, the "length" of those recordings made it really discouraging for me to get started going through them.

Maybe, I didn't actually want to learn Classical Chinese that bad after all. I don't want to make it sound like it's fully Outlier Linguistic's fault.

 

With that being said, as for myself, I think I'd prefer seeing more structured and concise presentation styles.

 

Thanks for creating the courses!

[Jan Finster]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:27 AM, pon00050 said:

You see, I don't seem to have the patience for patiently sitting for 90 minutes trying to decode what the speaker is trying to convey.

Yes, all the recordings were made available so that they can be played anytime that suit me.

But, the "length" of those recordings made it really discouraging for me to get started going through them.

Maybe, I didn't actually want to learn Classical Chinese that bad after all. I don't want to make it sound like it's fully Outlier Linguistic's fault.

 

You should ask yourself if you cannot sit through a 60-90min "lecture" live or on Youtube in general. If so, you are not alone, but it is not the speaker's fault. Our ability to focus has been ruined by Youtube and in particular Tiktok. It is scary! People cannot listen to 15 min podcasts or watch 20 min of videos anymore, their attention span is so damaged that the absolute maximum is 1-5 minutes. And twhose 5 minutes should better be filled with animations and gimmicky sounds that have no connection to the content whatsoever. This is actually particularly bad with Chinese Youtubers. I have lectured to Chinese audiences (with translators) and my Chinese co-lecturer went overboard to be enthusiastic as if he constantly had to keep them awake and focussed and to prevent them from using their phone. Tony Robbins would be jealous.

 

Having said this, maybe the easiest solution for long videos is to have time-stamps that lets you jump to whatever part you like.

 

[黄有光]

I can't find any information about what time the lessons are to be held at? @OneEye

[OneEye]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:29 AM, jannesan said:

Hi, this looks cool! Could you provide exact dates and times for when the classes will be held? I guess with it starting on Tuesday it would be Tuesdays every week. But what time? I’m interested to join, but not willing to pay that much if I can never make it to live classes. 

 

On 4/20/2023 at 3:21 PM, 黄有光 said:

I can't find any information about what time the lessons are to be held at? @OneEye

 

As it says on the page, the course starts on June 20. Live sessions will be at 11am on Tuesdays and 6pm Thursdays, Japan time. Q&A sessions are Fridays at 11am Japan time.

 

On 4/20/2023 at 2:29 AM, jannesan said:

Also you mention 60 people being enrolled already, will all of these be part of the same session or will it be broken into multiple sessions? Basically how much opportunity to ask questions is there gonna be?

 

Anyone can come to any of the sessions, or they can watch the recordings later—it's entirely up to each person and their schedule. In practice, there are usually around 20 people in each live session (even with as many as 250 students enrolled), and the rest watch the recordings.

 

The live lectures are done via private YouTube livestreams (private meaning it's hidden from people who haven't joined the course), so it's not like a Zoom session where everyone is live in the session. There's a chat function on YouTube where you can ask questions or interact with other students, and I try (usually successfully) to answer all questions during the session. The dedicated Q&A sessions on Fridays are done via Zoom. There are usually 6-10 people on each Q&A session, most of whom are simply there to listen, so there's plenty of opportunity to ask questions and get some more one-on-one help in those sessions.

 

And as Moshen mentioned, there's a community discussion board which is always very active, and really enriches the course a lot. 

 

On 4/20/2023 at 6:18 AM, Moshen said:

The value of each class was much, much more than the $199 charged.  (And I get no benefit from saying that here.)

 

This is exactly the type of feedback we've gotten from a lot of our students. In fact, we haven't had a single refund request for the history course I'm teaching currently, or for the intermediate Classical Chinese course I taught last fall. That's almost unheard of—most online courses consider a 5% refund rate to be expected, and we're always far below that.

 

On 4/20/2023 at 9:27 AM, pon00050 said:

Has anyone ever complained about the length of each session?

 

 

You are now the second person!

 

I like your suggestion though. It may be a while before we're able to do it, but I think making shorter, edited versions of the videos after the live sessions are finished is probably a good idea. That being said, I think there's generally a lot of valuable information in my tangents, even if it isn't directly related to the lesson in question. But I'm biased. ?

 

Hope that helps!