Overpass Experiences

The Eric Wroolie Blog

DLI Today

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Here’s an interesting video on the Defense Language Institute (DLI) from the History Channel.  I attended the Chinese Mandarin Course for all of 1991.  It’s so hard to believe that was twenty one years ago. 

The video is interesting.  We didn’t have whiteboards or the internet.  We worked with photocopied articles from the People’s Daily.

Also, the narrator (the Full Metal Jacket guy) says they study their “chosen” language.  Yeah, right.  My recruiter told me I would be studying Russian.  Imagine my surprise at the end of Basic Training when they told me I would be learning Chinese.

I can still speak Chinese and do it whenever I can—the internet helps.  I’ve been to China on business where it really came in handy.  Now, my kids are enrolled in a Chinese class on Saturday afternoons.  It sticks with you, I guess.

Popup Chinese

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I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts—far more than I do watching TV these days.  There are so many good podcasts out there dealing with so many specialised topics.  The podcasts I regularly view or listen to include Diggnation, NBC Nightly News (nice to able to do this in England), Scott Hanselman’s  “Hanselminutes”  (along with DotNetRocks to help me keep up with the .Net tech industry), and the new 37 Signals Podcast.  From time to time, I’ll add or remove other podcasts based on what I’m interested at the time.

There are a lot of podcasts out there to help you learn Chinese.  A few years ago I sampled loads of them and even subscribed to a few.  Most of them were too much on the beginners side for my liking (I’m not counting the news broadcasts in full-speed, faster than fast, Mandarin).  Most of them were very dry and not much different than listening to a short Pimsler Basic Chinese Course lesson each day.  “Today’s lesson: Should we bring an umbrella because of the rain?”Learn Chinese

So a few weeks ago I took another look at the Chinese learning podcasts out there and found one that I now include among my favourites.  It’s called Popup Chinese.  The Popup Chinese podcasts gives 3 lessons a week at Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced level which each last between 5 and 10 minutes in length.

The dialogs in the lessons are really what differentiate the lessons from all the other ones out there. Here are a few examples of the lessons they’ve had in the past few weeks:

  • How to Start a Business in China – Dialogue between a school principal and a child’s parents about how their child has started the other children with gambling and sniffing glue.
  • Performance Anxiety – A dialogue between a performer on an American Idol type show and the judges.
  • How to Defuse a Bomb – A bomb is about to go off and a former policeman comes to the rescue but is not sure which wire to cut.

Each lesson is pretty funny and irreverent.  Even with some vocab that you will never use, there is a lot of very good instruction on grammar and common speech.

The show is presented by two American and one Chinese teacher in Beijing. 

It’s a great podcast.  If you are past the beginner stages and into the intermediate and advanced stages of Chinese learning, you should check it out.

Next, Shanghai and Dalian

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I went to China for the first time in August (after 20 years of it being the one place I wanted to see more than any other).  That was for a family holiday in Beijing.  I had a fantastic time and was able to practice using Mandarin more than I ever have before.

Next week, I will be in both Shanghai and Dalian for business.  I have several meetings lined up and I am very interested in seeing the up-and-comers in the software development market.

Shanghai is the fastest growing city in the world.  I’m really looking forward to seeing it.  I suppose there will be a lot of construction in preparation for the World Expo next year.

Dalian is a place I’ve been wanting to see for the past few years as it has a vibrant software outsourcing market.

I’m spending a lot of time this week preparing and am really looking forward to the trip.

Exciting times.