Paul is Learning Chinese #3
I am nearing the 5 month mark of my study of Mandarin with ChinesePod. I will answer your questions right away:
Yes. I am still studying (almost) daily.
Yes. I am continuing to make progress.
I have been seriously busy with work and family commitments over the past few weeks. Normally this busy period would have marked the end of any extracurricular activities, such as language learning.
What is it about the Chinesepod model that has allowed me to continue with my studies? I think it is the flexibility of learning options. I can pick and choose how and when I learn. Most importantly, I can decide on the intensity of my studies. When I have some extra time, I can study a lot. When I am very busy, I can lessen the intensity. But I never have to stop studying.
Here is what is currently working for me:
Daily Podcast: I continue to listen to a daily podcast. When I first started with ChinesePod, I attempted to sequence my podcasts in a logical progession. I spent a lot of time tinkering with the order of my podcasts. Now I am too busy to do that. I just listen daily to topics that interest me. It seems that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.
Rote listening: I have a playlist on my ipod with Chinese only versions of the daily podcasts that I have listened to over the past 5 months. Each day I listen at least once or twice to the complete playlist. This means that I am repeatedly going over everything I have learned. Again and again until it has become branded onto my brain. This memorization technique is pretty traditional stuff. But it works. See Ken Carroll’s recent post Listening and Learning for more on this, or look at my colleague Dan’s recent post on Back to Basics.
I am aiming for 1 year of continuous study of Mandarin. At the end of this period I will be able to make some solid observations about what it means to be a Web 2.0 learner.
Hey Paul,
You said something in your post which I consider to be quite interesting and worthy of some thought. You said:
“It seems that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.”
The implications of this idea goes quite deep from the perspective of materials design. But before I stop to consider the implications I’m curious how you came to this decision. Did you test yourself on any specific measures while using both methods (random vs. structured)? I’m interested in how truthful this statement might be because of the implications for materials design.
Michael
You’re right. This is a point worthy of some consideration.
I first signed up for Chinesepod in January 07. At this point there were nearly 500 lessons available on the site. Aside from a few collected lesson sets and a linear system of numbering the podcasts, there was no clearly strutured learning path for newbies like myself.
So the first thing I did was to sift through the available learning options and develop a fairly structured and linear learning program for myself. I tried to organize my lessons so that there was a clear progession from basic to advanced language functions, and from simple to complex language structures.
The second thing I did was to sign up for the “Practice” sessions with a Chinesepod teacher. After a needs assessment, we developed an 8 week program. The learning structure of my program became written in stone for at least the next 8 weeks. This gave me a deep sense of comfort and familiarity as my learning path had a clear linear progression.
This worked well for about 3 or 4 weeks. I worked diligently through the scheduled lessons and was very happy with my progess. Then, as often occurs, my needs and my interests started to change. On 3 or 4 occasions I decided not to study my scheduled lesson, but rather to focus on the Chinesepod podcast for the day that had been delivered to my itunes.
When I “skipped” my scheduled lesson I felt a little guilty as I was then not fully prepared for my daily practice session with my Chinesepod teacher. I started to feel like I was in school again, and in a sense I was because I had set up this very traditional learning structure for myself.
As I become busy with my daily life of work and family responsibilities, I found it increasingly difficult to stick with my schedule. I had scheduled myself to study 5 new lessons per week. This proved to be unworkable as in some weeks I only had time to study 2 or 3 new lessons.
Also, the length of time it took me to learn a lesson was variable. With some lessons, one day was enough to be comfortable with the material. With other lessons, I found it beneficial to repeat the lesson for a second or third day.
So, as you can see, several factors converged to make it a challenge to stick to my carefully structured program. Rather than giving up, I decided to spend less effort trying to structure my learning, and instead just focus on learning a little Mandarin everyday.
Currently, my learning program is more random and flexible to my changing needs and interests. If the Chinesepod daily podcast is interesting to me, then this will be my lesson for the day. If not, then i go to my bookmarked lessons. I have identified over 30 lessons in the archive that are of interest to me. I spend as much time on each lesson as I feel necessary, then move on to the next.
The end result is that I am learning Mandarin. I have tried on 2 occasions to learn Mandarin in a classroom setting. Both times I had only limited success. What is working with Chinesepod is that I can follow my own personal and ideosyncratic learning path.
So, I feel that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.
To answer your question regarding testing myself: No, I have not assessed myself in any formal way. Although I agree with you that a more formal understanding of just exactly what Chinesepod learners, including myself, are learning would be quite useful.
If a whole cohort of Chinesepod learners are in fact learning effectively, then this would have great implications for materials and instructional design.
Paul,
Thanks for being so specific. I’m doing my best to figure out this C-pod phenomenon and try to identify key factors for its success.
When you mentioned that, “It seems that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.” I thought maybe you were expressing an idea which I heard discussed 15 years ago about the advantages of structuring instruction in a random or chaotic fashion. On second thought, what I hear you saying is that the structure of the 8-week lesson is something that worked well in the beginning but eventually didn’t match your interests or available time.
I think this is less a criticism of the inherent structure of the lessons as it is a comment on how your interests and available time had not been taken into consideration on a rolling basis.
It is my belief that tutoring should be flexible and should be capable of adjusting to the EVER CHANGING needs of the student.
Another way of putting this is that, “the more tutoring responds to my interests and my free time (while also providing both hidden and explicit structure) the more successful I will be as a student.”
I am convinced that there are four main factors responsible for language learning: time on task, strength of a student’s motivation, review (related, but not equivalent to time on task), and how what you are learning is tied to things you already know.
The latter two factors are obviously tied to some degree of structure (first in term of arranging review and second in terms of ordering things so material can be related back to something learned earlier). You can see how I would be interested in anything that would invalidate the importance of “structure” in a language learning situation.
Thanks again for your lengthy and informative post.
Mike
I think the underlying structure of Chinesepod is very sound. By this I mean that the grammatical structures, vocabulary, language functions and topics selected for each level are relevant and appropriate to the learners. And there is a logical progression from newbie to advanced.
When I “randomly” select lessons at the newbie level, based on my own needs and interests, they form cohesive learning structure. Each learner can choose a different learning path, but the underlying structure remains similar. I think Chinesepod works because the underlying structure has been well thought out.
I agree with your 4 main factors for language learning. Review is particularly important to me as I attempt to learn Mandarin. I listen daily to the Chinese-only versions of the podcasts I have studied.
Are you also studying Mandarin with Chinesepod?
Yes, I am but I live in Shanghai so I take infrequent dips into the material. I like the forums. I’m hooked.