Having had time to think about it a little more I am sure that listening to podcasts is going to be the main tool for me learning Mandarin. Apart from the wide-ranging material there is a key feature that I am not sure is being fully explored yet, the fact that the podcasts released at www.chinesepod.com are covered by a Creative Commons licence means that they can be remixed.
Having had time to think about it a little more I am sure that listening to podcasts is going to be the main tool for me learning Mandarin. Apart from the wide-ranging material there is a key feature that I am not sure is being fully explored yet, the fact that the podcasts released at www.chinesepod.com are covered by a Creative Commons licence gave me food for thought.
The Creative Commons licence means that you can remix the material and freely distribute (but you must attribute the original creator and distribute under the same terms). With software such as Audacity (which is free) you can easily remix your podcasts, now why would you want to do this?
- Make them harder (to aid with revision) trim out the English and /or speed up the language (you can do this without changing the pitch).
- Build up a revison mp3 of just the dialogues from a collection of podcasts.
- Build an 'Uber mp3' of a particular subject, for example make a mix from three different podcasts on the subject of food.
- Mix and match podcasts from more than one source.
- Build a vocabary mp3 of words and phrases you need to practice
There are many many more things you could do. Of course you could do this with CD courses (for your own consumption at least), but I have the feeling that there will be an awful lot more upto date material available via podcast. With enough material you can treat the audio elements of your study in the same way as you might text (cutting, pasting, adding your own content etc.). With the Creative Commons material you can even swap it with other students. I have some thoughts about where this will eventually lead but I will leave that for post three.
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