Peggy Lee you rock! (Not as much as the REAL Peggy Lee, of course, whom you can Google) but still… I bet SHE couldn’t speak Chinese, but she SURE could sing. Start with Manana and move on to Don’t Smoke in Bed. You’ll get the picture.
I like what you’re doing.
We’ve reached that point peggy, sorry. My advice now, quit doing this.
I’m out.
Hey guys,
sorry I have been so busy that I haven’t got time to get on here and take a look.
I’ve got a new video uploaded and it talks about the usage of 了Le5 in Chinese.
Check it out:
youtube.com/peggyteacheschinese
Thank you for your support. 
Peggy
Hey Bob, what’s wrong? I have really appreciated your every single advice and most of them are pretty good, but I got to take the ones that are feasible for my current situation to make those videos. (Like I don’t have extra money to buy props, all I do is to manage what there has to offer; I don’t really have time to make a done video all over again as I only got some time on weekends.) So please do not take offense if I don’t follow every advice you give, though I appreicate them! I did slow down with the tone instruction in my latest video about 了Le5, you might wanna check it out if you want.
Anyways, if you continue taking time to advise me, that would be great. But if you decide to quit doing that, I still thank you for your support. 
Thanks alot!
Peggy
Peggy
If you do that in order to boost your number of subscribers, you’re gonna miss since people will wait to be the 100th.
Your vids are pretty well done, but I’m always uneasy about these sort of things. What do you expect by putting these lessons online, what is the final goal?
Obviously, it’s kinda made to give sluggish english teachers some peace of mind. I mean, why would someone bother following these vids while he hasnt even had a glimpse at his 2 pages LP phrasebook (except for staring at your beautiful eyes) ?
Anyway I’m not judging the quality of the vids which is very good imo. If you to that in order to get noticed for a tv show or whatever then it’s all good.[/quote]
I realized that later on so I changed the rules. I will take one lucky draw out of all the 100 subscribers, that would be much more fair too.
Thanks alot for pointing that out though. And thanks so much for the support!
I realized that later on so I changed the rules. I will take one lucky draw out of all the 100 subscribers, that would be much more fair too.
Thanks alot for pointing that out though. And thanks so much for the support!
Peggy
Thanks so much for the support!
Peggy
(I wonder why Google stops sending me emails when there is a new post on this topic!)
We’ve reached that point peggy, sorry. My advice now, quit doing this.
I’m out.[/quote]
Hey Bob, what’s wrong? I have really appreciated your every single advice and most of them are pretty good, but I got to take the ones that are feasible for my current situation to make those videos. (Like I don’t have extra money to buy props, all I do is to manage what there has to offer; I don’t really have time to make a done video all over again as I only got some time on weekends.) So please do not take offense if I don’t follow every advice you give, though I appreicate them! I did slow down with the tone instruction in my latest video about 了Le5, you might wanna check it out if you want.
Anyways, if you continue taking time to advise me, that would be great. But if you decide to quit doing that, I still thank you for your support.
Thanks alot!
Peggy[/quote]
OK honestly the thing I thought was a bad idea for you was the “subscribe” thing you were doing. I don’t want to have anything to with anything like that. It’s OK to be human as a teacher, you just need to be subtle about it and not make it the heart of what you are doing.
The last video (the one about ge) was really a lot better. You need to indicate the tones essentially like that but even more distinctly. Your number five looks like a one. Five should look like a dot.
If you want to be a good Chinese teacher one of the very most important thing is that you indicate tones clearly and consistently. You are probably sick of hearing that so I’ll make you a deal. When you start indicating them clearly and consistently I’ll quit saying it. Deal?
You should be recycling words from prior lessons and you should be teaching the things that you are definitely going to use to “communicate” with your audience in the future.
Skip the grammar section. There are very good reasons to believe that grammar study is a complete waste of time, worse actually.
Anyway, you know more than I did when I started teaching and I didn’t listen to anybody then either. If you actually succeed in teaching anybody to speak manadarin to any level you will likely come to understand that the advice I’m giving you isn’t “pretty good.” It is correct. And it is what I had to be taught. I don’t think there are more than one or two original ideas in what I have shared with you so far.
Oh, and chinese bums are pigu not baozi. 
[quote=“PeggyLee”] I’ve got a new video uploaded and it talks about the usage of 了Le5 in Chinese. Check it out:
youtube.com/peggyteacheschinese
Thank you for your support.
Peggy[/quote]
That was awful. Don’t try to teach grammar. You are making mistakes all the time and people don’t learn languages very well by studying grammar anyway.
Ge* doesn’t “describe” anything. It serves the grammatical function of indicating something or other.
Le* doesn’t “describe” anything either. It serves the grammatical function of indicating something or other. I recall something about “completed action” or “currently existing situation” that I tried to think through till it got boring.
Anyway I know that “Le” doesn’t mean “encouraging”.
“Ni hao” usually means hello and is sometimes used to attract attention.
The more you try to talk about language the deeper you will sink. Skip it. What you want to do is use the language to “communicate” and you want that language to be comprehensible by virtue of the context you provide, the actions you perform, and the vocabulary you taught in the past.
[quote=“bob”][quote=“PeggyLee”] I’ve got a new video uploaded and it talks about the usage of 了Le5 in Chinese. Check it out:
youtube.com/peggyteacheschinese
Thank you for your support.
Peggy[/quote]
That was awful. Don’t try to teach grammar. You are making mistakes all the time and people don’t learn languages very well by studying grammar anyway.[/quote]
What mistakes did she make? Bob, once your Chinese gets past basic level, you will quickly learn that these grammar points are completely necessary. Keep up the good work, Peggy. 
“Ni hao” means “when you draw somebody’s attention”?
I don’t think so.
“Ni hao” means “hello” and can be used to draw somebody’s attention.
Of course peggy knows that, but what she actually said was just odd. The things that people say when they talk about language are quite often odd. Odd and a waste of time.
The video was really very good from 11secs to 1min 3seconds because you were listening to Chinese and knew what was being said. The subtitles should be in P I N Y I N though. If people are going to learn a language they have to process it.
After 1min 3 secs to 4min 46 secs we went back to listening mostly to English. That was time that could have been spent re-inforcing the chinese. Her air tones were more like an after thought. They were often absent.
I think peggy likes speaking English. The problem is that people don’t learn Chinese by listening to English.
“Ge” shouldn’t be explained at all. It should be used between numbers and nouns and as part of short answers “Ni yao ji ge baozi?” “wo yao san ge.” That kind of thing. Over and over again. (Maybe much later when her students get what might be called a musical sense of where it should go, then maybe she could explain it but the explanation needs to be clear and correct.)
Nobody can argue that this kind of no explicit grammar approach wouldn’t work because nobody ever tries it. Nobody but ironlady, for sure the most trained, skilled, succesful Chinese teacher on this board.
If your curious about my level go to chinese pod dot com and click on an upper intermediate class. I can understand about 60% of that like I was listening to English. Another 20% I can guess at I suppose. The other 20% not at all. What I can tell you is that the less I think about grammar the faster I improve.
Different students have different learning styles.
For me, explanations in English help a lot, while simply repeating things in another language results in me parroting the sounds but not understanding them very well.
For example, when I first took French lessons at age 8-9, my teacher used the “full immersion” method, and I ended up simply parroting back sounds and guessing at their meaning. I figured out that “tres bien” (very good) was a form of praise, but I deduced wrongly that “c’est bien” (it’s good) was a much stronger form of praise. And I didn’t understand much else of what was going on. I became adept at memorizing and parroting sounds, and earned good grades despite understanding very little of what was being said. (It was all speaking and listening; no reading or writing.)
If that happened the teacher wasn’t skilled enough at illustrating the difference in meaning. It would have been easy to do.
Use “Tres bien” to describe something that is “tres bien” and use a “tres bien” expression and tone of voice.
Use “C’est bien” to describe soemthing that actually is “C’est bien” and use a “C’est bien” expression and tone of voice.
Easy peasy.
Problem is, although I know what both expressions mean in English, I couldn’t tell you what a “c’est bien” tone of voice is, or what that would mean.
If the student and the teacher share a common language outside of the one being taught, the easiest, fastest and most certain way of establishing meaning to attach to new items is translation. You can point upwards all you like, but at the end of the day, when you meant “sky” and the student thought you meant “ceiling”, everything after that is wasted time. A quick translation takes less than 10 seconds and ensures that everyone is on the same page.
Since most classes (not all these days, but most classes that take place in some structured environment like a school) rely on a set curriculum so that the teacher knows which items will be worked on on a particular day, there’s really no excuse not to get a translation somewhere even if the teacher and student don’t share a common language. It’s called “preparation”. 99% of the class is still delivered in comprehensible Chinese, but that 1% is what makes it comprehensible, along with other input-based instructional skills.
Different students have different learning styles.
For me, explanations in English help a lot, while simply repeating things in another language results in me parroting the sounds but not understanding them very well.
For example, when I first took French lessons at age 8-9, my teacher used the “full immersion” method, and I ended up simply parroting back sounds and guessing at their meaning. I figured out that “tres bien” (very good) was a form of praise, but I deduced wrongly that “c’est bien” (it’s good) was a much stronger form of praise. And I didn’t understand much else of what was going on. I became adept at memorizing and parroting sounds, and earned good grades despite understanding very little of what was being said. (It was all speaking and listening; no reading or writing.)[/quote]
That’s no different from any other method of language teaching. It’s merely a system that students manipulate. Students don’t progress because they don’t have the mindfulness, self-awareness and meta-linguistic knowledge to process what they have learned into an active rather than passive skillset. A teacher can help with this, but won’t produce it in the majority. 95% of students will flounder at intermediate level because that is where the ‘system’ becomes complex.
‘Immersion’, in the language school sense of the word, is often nonsense and is shorthand for either blasting students with constant, inappropriate input, or a 60s style drill-fest.
Bob,
‘Ni Hao’ does mean ‘hello’, I taught that in my previous video. And yes, it is also USED to draw someone’s attention. But I made an unclear mistake in my articulation so when I was editing it, I still put ‘hello’ as the meaning of it on the video.
As far as I’m concerned, I do think ‘Ge’ needs to be explained as it is a measured word in Chiense. It doesn’t only serve a grammatcial function. As for ‘Le’, I did said that it only serves a grammatical function, but NOT literal meaning. When ‘Le’ is considered to be an expletive is a result I searched on a Taiwanese website and I do think it makes sense so that’s why I put it that way.
I’m unable to provide a complete Chinese Chinese lesson on YouTube because I don’t think it would make it easier for some students(although you have your points), but if students who want to learn Chinese in such a scenario, what they can do is to watch/listen to Chinese film; that’s how I learned my English. But a basic language learner still need to know the ground rules, unless you live in a country to learn its language with active assimilation but then that’s a totally different thing. Moreover, I’m teaching via videos on YouTube, I don’t have live interactions with students, therefore, I have to learn to explain it as clear as possible in a limited time, the pressure is really there.
I hope you notice that I have been trying to come up with related lessons and the previous lessons can be reviewed.
Last of all, mistakes need to be made sometimes. I’ve never been trained to be a teacher who has to teach my native language. Likewise, many english speaking foreigners find it difficult to explain their own language. I can explain English grammar better than Chinese because that is how we learn as a second language learner.
[quote=“PeggyLee”]
Last of all, mistakes need to be made sometimes. I’ve never been trained to be a teacher who has to teach my native language. Likewise, many english speaking foreigners find it difficult to explain their own language. I can explain English grammar better than Chinese because that is how we learn as a second language learner.[/quote]
English teachers don’t have a problem explaining their language. It’s just not the best way to do it; kind of old-fashioned and pointless. You aren’t a talking book: an adult student can google ‘ge’ and ‘le’. Your job is to provide context and practice, not to explain. If it were a two hour class, there’s a place for those kind of explanations, but that’s not really what you are doing. You can’t provide an extensive, entire Chinese via youtube, so focus on your strengths.
You have to tailor your methods to your learners, though. Stick with bob: he only talks 50% rubbish.
Peggy, I think you are fantastic. I thought it was ingenious when you started this and I think it is ingenious now.
In fact, I hereby officially volunteer to write a script for you and to direct one episode. Really. Let your audience decide if it was an improvement. I’m doing this out in the open so nobody thinks that I am pulling some dirty old man shit.
You need a script writer and you need somebody watching you who has some idea what a really good job would look like. I mean in terms of language teaching. The other stuff, the technical aspects of it I haven’t got much of a clue. The way that you behave as a person etc. is all delightful, aside from the part I mentioned earlier which IMHO was not a good idea. Anyway, that’s in the past I am sure.
The stuff you did in the convenience store was awesome. The rest… well, I don’t have the energy to discuss it. I’m sure you have had English teachers trying to explain English grammar in Chinese. You could only forgive them if they got it exactly right, right?
You are perfectly correct about people needing to make mistakes. The problem is that you having been making the same mistake for quite a awhile despite the fact that a number of people have pointed it out. You are using too much English, and you are not teaching things that you are going to use in the future to communicate with your audience. You have a number of videos made now. The material you taught in the past should be in use now and used to teach more material. It is called “recycling”.
I’m serious about writing a script for you, but if I do it I want one thing: A list of all the words and expressions you have “taught” so far.
I wish to express my deep appreciation for such a kind and insightful comment. You are like an angel of mercy and forgiveness, the sweetest of dew drops on a warm spring morning, etc.
Sure thing, Bob. Write the script for me. Thus, I save much more time too and your technique could probably be much better, that would depend on the audience in the future though.
Thanks!