I just uploaded a new deck to Anki (I'm back!) containing all the vocab and example sentences from Practical Audio-Visual Chinese Books III and IV. The deck contains vocab recognition, vocab production, and example sentence reading cards when the book contains an example sentence (some have none, some have up to 5). Since the example sentences only use previously learned vocab and grammar, it makes for a nice i+1 deck, if you've studied the first two books. I made this deck based on a previously uploaded deck that I just cleaned up and separated information into separate fields, where previously it was a jumbled mess.

Which brings me to something else. A deck containing all the same type of info from Books 1 and 2 would be a great addition. I don't have time to create such a deck, but obviously someone does (hence the previously existing version of this one). Having decks for all 4 books in the series would be a great thing. There is a 5th book but I've heard it sucks, and almost nobody at MTC uses it (which should tell you something since MTC publishes it). Anyway, this would be a very good answer to the Kore decks used for Japanese since it is pretty much i+1 from the very first word through the last, and teaches nearly 4000 words using almost 2000 characters. It should be very easy to dive into comic books and even newspapers after this (many people take newspaper reading at MTC soon after finishing Book 4).

Anyway, just wanted to get the word out. A complete set for the first 4 books would be an absolute godsend for beginners wanting to have something similar to the excellent Japanese material on this site, but for Chinese.

I will check your new deck and see what's what.

I know it takes quite some time to do such a deck, so just wanna say thank you.

There is also a deck for Far Eastern chinese 3 but not 100% sure about that though. (the book that most of people use after studying PAVC 1-4)

Book 1-4 (around 3300 words and around 1800 unique characters)
Then Far eastern chinese 3. (yes book 5 is rubbish)

I know that people study newspapers and stuff right after Far Eastern, however I'm not quite sure you could pick up any newspapers. The "newspapers book 1-3" they are using in MTC must be kinda "beginners oriented" or something. (After all 2500-3000 hanzi + ~6000 words is not that much.)

Anyways PAVC 1-4 is a solid base for anyone who wants to start studying (traditional) chinese.

There are likely a fair few errors, since I just used an existing deck and didn't exactly go through it with a fine-toothed comb. I was probably a little overzealous with find/replace too. It should be quite usable though, and any errors should be easy to pick out and fix.

Unfortunately the Far East 3 deck is vocab only, no sentences.

To be clear, I'm not claiming you'd be able to just pick up any newspaper and read it after finishing book 4. The fact that people have to take a newspaper class after Far East 3 should be evidence enough that at that point you're just beginning to be able to look at newspapers, but I'm a big believer in diving right in as soon as possible and just working through it (as are many members of this forum I believe).

I should have mentioned the deck's name, but it was late when I posted it. It's called "PAVC Books III-IV vocab with sentences".

Turns out there is a deck for book 1, it's just not in a very useful format. It shouldn't be too terribly difficult to separate everything out into separate fields, but I'm too busy with class this next month or so to be able to do it.

bflatnine Wrote:I just uploaded a new deck to Anki (I'm back!) containing all the vocab and example sentences from Practical Audio-Visual Chinese Books III and IV.

Interesting. Maybe a little confusing (multiple models for the sentences, multiple fields and many empty ones), but that's just me; it's the first time I see a deck like this, so I'm not used to it. The difference here is that the focus is on vocab, not sentences, which act more like add-ons. To 'study' the sentences a little cleanup is needed, as there are many duplicated ones.

bflatnine Wrote:this would be a very good answer to the Kore decks used for Japanese since it is pretty much i+1 from the very first word through the last, and teaches nearly 4000 words using almost 2000 characters.

It could be an option for those studying vocab; for the sentences the problem is that there's no audio, no transliteration and no translation at all, at least in the deck you've shared. TTS could be an option to generate the audio—good ones such as the NeoSpeech voices—but I think at the early stages it's better for the student to hear the real thing, explained (ChinesePod does this very well, actually.)

As for the words, I'm all for audio with words—especially compounds—recorded by real voices (not that thing the Pinyin Toolkit does), and that's not hard to find for the more common ones; there's for example a pack with 8500+, all the ones in the old HSK test, in the Project Shtooka website that can be used; it's just a matter of downloading and renaming them accordingly, with the hanzi or pinyin as the name, and updating the model. That's what I did for my custom vocab deck, plus the ChinesePod words for those not available in the Shtooka pack, and TTS for the rest.

bflatnine Wrote:A complete set for the first 4 books would be an absolute godsend for beginners wanting to have something similar to the excellent Japanese material on this site, but for Chinese.

What do you mean exactly? I mean, what kind of study material would you say it's available for Japanese that's really missing for Chinese? (Not specific books, but the type of content you'd like to see.)

Yeah I really didn't explain the deck well the first time around.

I put multiple models in the deck so that people can use it however they please. I personally deleted a lot of it from my own copy of the deck, so all I have is vocab recognition and sentence recognition. This is because I get plenty of writing practice in my classes. I prefer to keep the vocab cards in there so you can learn the meaning of the word first, and then see it used in a sentence. I'm a big believer of learning in context. There's a guy in my class that know the meaning of a ton of *words* (ie, their translation into his native language), but has no idea how they're used in context and thus makes some pretty weird usage mistakes because he's trying to translate phrases and concepts from his language into Chinese. It just doesn't work like that, which is a constant source of frustration for him. An example, 瞭解 and 明白 are both often translated as "to understand or comprehend", but they carry different connotations.

And you're right, cleanup is needed; I've found several errors already in the sentences. Some errors are just lack of punctuation which makes for confusing sentences, and some are strange typos (I found 聼 for 聽, for instance, and 新 in place of 心) made by whoever originally entered the data. At this point I'm thinking it might be best for me to just post the spreadsheet up on Google Docs and make it public so people here can edit it, add to it, and work with it as they see fit. Also, things like cloze deletion could be added, etc.

As far as audio, I don't think it would be OK to use their recordings due to copyright issues. I would think example sentences are OK, because they're just sentences, but recordings are a different story. TTS may be a possibility if it sounds better than it did a couple years ago, but I neither have the time nor the knowledge to do such things myself. I'm studying Chinese full-time in Taiwan right now, and also studying Classical Chinese and Japanese (and occasionally French) on the side, in addition to preparing to go to grad school when I return to the States, so my time is very limited. I'm just hoping this can be a useful resource for other people.

As far as having no transliteration, they don't in the books either, the idea being that since you've already learned the words contained in the example sentences (as I said, apart from the word being introduced, the sentences only include previously learned vocab and grammar), there's no reason to define them or include pronunciation.

Ideally the deck would be used by someone who owns the book, similar to the KO2001 material for Japanese. This will take care of the audio problem for sure (the included MP3 CD has recordings of all the dialogues, vocab words, and example sentences from each book). The deck is there to be an additional resource that can turn a fairly mediocre textbook into something really useful.

I don't like ChinesePod all that much in lower levels. There's too much English, too much irrelevant banter, etc. Too much focus on being cool and not enough actual teaching going on per unit of time (though I know they must have thousands of lessons by now, which only somewhat makes up for the lack of efficiency). I do like their lessons in the Intermediate stage and higher, especially once they move to Chinese only (I believe Upper-Intermediate or so). It makes for excellent listening practice when your listening skills aren't up to speed for real native material.

The type of material I'm talking about in that last part you quoted is the sort of thing you'd find in, for example, NukeMarine's beginner guide. Something you can point beginners to and say "if you follow this diligently, you will end up with a great foundation for more advanced learning." Not the "Only Way™" but a good, clearly laid-out way. A good, solid progression of material designed to be as smooth-going as possible for the student, using the learning principles generally espoused on this site (i+1, comprehensible input, etc.). The recent thread "Core2000 for Mandarin" leads me to believe that there has not been any real progress in this area since I was last active on the forum. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

PS: I may be wrong. I just saw your most recent post in that thread, and I'm going to take a look at the deck now. Is it sorted in any sort of progressive way, or does it stick to the original order from Smart.fm? I thought the original order was not all that great because there tend to be too many new words per sentence.

Edit: I should have said the last several posts in that thread. That looks like an awesome resource! I must have been thinking about a different deck when I said the order was no good, this looks pretty decent. I'll post some comments in that thread soon.

bflatnine Wrote:I'm a big believer of learning in context. There's a guy in my class that know the meaning of a ton of *words* (ie, their translation into his native language), but has no idea how they're used in context and thus makes some pretty weird usage mistakes because he's trying to translate phrases and concepts from his language into Chinese.

That's my thing too, which is why I'm always after sentences, dialogs, stories, etc. My vocab deck is more of an addition to the 'learning in context', so I can remember the tones precisely and how to write the words with a short prompt, among other things.

bflatnine Wrote:As far as audio, I don't think it would be OK to use their recordings due to copyright issues. I would think example sentences are OK, because they're just sentences, but recordings are a different story. [...]

Ideally the deck would be used by someone who owns the book, similar to the KO2001 material for Japanese. This will take care of the audio problem for sure (the included MP3 CD has recordings of all the dialogues, vocab words, and example sentences from each book). The deck is there to be an additional resource that can turn a fairly mediocre textbook into something really useful.

So they have audio? Great! I believe hearing the right pronunciation, all the time when studying is just that important, given that many people spend too much time "reading it wrong" for lack of that. Audio helps a lot when it comes to orthoepy and prosody.

bflatnine Wrote:I don't like ChinesePod all that much in lower levels. There's too much English, too much irrelevant banter, etc. Too much focus on being cool and not enough actual teaching going on per unit of time (though I know they must have thousands of lessons by now, which only somewhat makes up for the lack of efficiency). I do like their lessons in the Intermediate stage and higher, especially once they move to Chinese only (I believe Upper-Intermediate or so). It makes for excellent listening practice when your listening skills aren't up to speed for real native material.

I agree they are not very efficient, but in the end they do really cover a lot of stuff—and not only words and grammar but also many different contexts and situations. I think it's good for complete beginners that they explain things well and don't leave anything open, even though they repeat things a lot throughout the lessons (the same explanations and stuff, as there's no progression from one lesson to the other, they're mostly just individual units.)

Would anyone be interested in working together to attach audio files to these sentences? I lack bflatnine's scruples and have no qualms about sharing the audio files, but perhaps it would be prudent to make this a VIP deck that isn't shared on ankiweb (rather, used only by those who contribute to its creation). Let me know if you're interested in sharing the workload; I could use the help as it seems like it might be a bit of a pain (a lot of the cards are out of the order they appear in in the textbook). Obviously it'd be ideal if you already own PAVC 3&4 but if you don't we can still figure it out.

Cheers

Unfadeable, are you at a school in Taiwan?

I should amend what I wrote earlier about MTC's program. After PAVC 1-4, most people take Far East 3 (like khanifinolu mentioned above), and then they do indeed go on to PAVC 5 before taking Newspaper. But screw that. I finished PAVC Book 4 Chapter 4 (out of 14), and tested well enough on the final that I was able to skip Book 4, and take Mini Radio Plays instead of Far East 3. That suits my needs more than Far East 3, which is reading-focused and largely a review of PAVC 4 from what I've heard. My reading is just fine for now, much better than my listening and speaking.

Anyway, I still think PAVC 1-4 is a great start for people, if they're used right. I'm going to try to skip PAVC 5 if at all possible.

I'd love to help out with further development of the deck, but unfortunately I just don't have time. I'm studying intensively nearly 8 hours per day on top of plenty of other stuff, so my spare time is precious and not very willingly shared.

bflatnine Wrote:Unfadeable, are you at a school in Taiwan?

I am indeed! And an avid reader of your blog, btw. I think I've commented there a few times as "Matt," although now I get the direct inbox option and thus rarely stop by the site itself. Gotten tons of great ideas from you though! I too will be skipping the latter portion of PAVC4 and doing Mini Radio Plays next semester at National Chengchi University. I'm hoping that's going to help with my weak listening/speaking, but I figured some extra anki driven listening practice couldn't hurt. This is my last semester, unfortunately, so I've got to pull out all the stops.

bflatnine Wrote:I'd love to help out with further development of the deck, but unfortunately I just don't have time. I'm studying intensively nearly 8 hours per day on top of plenty of other stuff, so my spare time is precious and not very willingly shared.

You've done enough man! No problem. If and when it's all done I'll be sure to PM you a link.

Cool, glad you like the blog! Thanks for reading.

Mini Radio Plays seems like a great book, though it doesn't seem to teach a whole lot of new vocab. I'm going to be studying Newspaper I and 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture on the side, plus an "advanced" 文言文 book and the first Harry Potter book, so learning new vocab should be no problem.

With MRP though, I plan on taking the "ICLP" approach, which I'll try to make a post about soon. Basically, at ICLP you're not allowed to open your book, use a dictionary, or look at notes at all in class. You're asked questions about the text and expected to respond using grammar and vocabulary from the lesson, so you have to know the material really well in order to do that. So I'll be doing my best to follow that idea this term, and see how it works out.

Hey, I've started studying using book1 of this series after seeing it mentioned by bflatnine in a few threads. It's really great!

I had been studying using core and redblue decks, and had made ok progress (slightly over 1000 vocab words and 600 sentences), but it's nice to go back to basics with simple grammar points well explained. Plus having Taiwanese vocab and audio is soo good!

There are some dodgy OCR scans of the books floating around online, but OCR still makes many mistakes; might be easier to enter manually. I might be interesting in making a sentence deck; splitting and adding audio will be the tricky bit..

I'm glad my recommendation was useful. At Book 3 or 4 level I'd recommend also going through Taiwan Today (今日台灣). It teaches more written-style Chinese, and was seriously helpful for improving my reading skills.

Quote:Plus having Taiwanese vocab and audio is soo good!

Yup. Just don't listen when they use 兒化! That's one thing that really irritates me about the books used here, they nearly all use 兒化 to a ridiculous degree. I'm sure you know by now, but nobody here uses it, with the exception (so I'm told) of people with mainland parents, usually middle-aged and wealthy, and only when they're trying to make themselves look good in front of other influential people. I guess it's some sort of status thing that allows them to look down their noses at people. Anyway, I really wish they (in the 華研所s around Taiwan) would abandon this ridiculous notion that Mainland Mandarin usage is somehow "correct", and that the Mandarin that 99% of the people in Taiwan speak 99% of the time is "wrong". Most people don't come here to learn 共產話. (oops, too far off-topic!)

Anyway, I also recommend making use of the 漫畫 rental shops found all over the city if you feel up to the task. I just found out about these places last week, and I've been reading Death Note (死亡筆記本). It's much better than trying to read online, for one because the traditional Chinese version you can find online is just as often from Hong Kong as it is from Taiwan. The HK versions are usually in Mandarin, but they tend to be in a more formal written style rather than a conversational one (Mandarin is essentially just a written language there, after all), and with a lot of HK-specific terms. I've found myself more than once going "What? Nobody talks like that!" when reading HK translations. When reading the translations from Taiwan, it's much smoother, more natural, and more useful for learning conversational usage.

bflatnine Wrote:I'm glad my recommendation was useful. At Book 3 or 4 level I'd recommend also going through Taiwan Today (今日台灣). It teaches more written-style Chinese, and was seriously helpful for improving my reading skills.

Thanks, I'll take a look. I'm blasting through the first book at a rate of 1 lesson every 2 days; vocab is ok, but need to study the grammar, dialogs and do each chapters questions with my finance.

Yes odd they included R sounds, though haven't noticed any so far; i'll watch out in book 2!

bflatnine Wrote:Anyway, I also recommend making use of the 漫畫 rental shops found all over the city if you feel up to the task. I just found out about these places last week, and I've been reading Death Note (死亡筆記本). It's much better than trying to read online, for one because the traditional Chinese version you can find online is just as often from Hong Kong as it is from Taiwan.

Thanks for the tip! there's actually one right next to my apartment block, that doubles as a cat-cafe (you can sit inside, read manga and play with various cats and kittens). Funnily enough I joined before Xmas and first book i rented was Deathnote; but it was far too difficult . I really need to put more study in and break my current teach/drink/sleep cycle..

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I was wondering how you would suggest going through each of the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese books. Do you recommend doing every single exercise or is there a certain strategy that will make getting through the books easier? Right now, I have all the books (don't ask me how I got them O_O) and I'm just wondering how best to use them.

I don't think there's a real answer for that. I hate doing workbook exercises, and I don't find it useful for me at all. You may be different. So the answer is to do what you find to be most effective for the way you learn.

i had done any in ages (laziness), but i started with the first book, and for each lesson I:

- added all unknown vocab to anki
- made sure i could understand the dialog.
- did the workbook writing exercises (and got my wife to check the answers)
- did the speaking exercises (with my wife)

I have found the last parts the most helpful, as currently i do little structured output practise.

Basically i just recommend you dive in and see what works for you.