All the podcast transcripts of 2011, total 24 of them, are available now here: http://www.mslmaster.com/catalog/

I hope they will be useful as some supplementary reading and listening materials.

How do you know you are not in a dream?

Maybe we don't really know, unless we happen to wake up from it. In the movie Inception, it is nothing but dreaming and waking up, to the extent that a person is never sure whether he is awake or in a dream. There are many people believed that we just fall asleep in our clothes. Especially when we are preoccupied, the same thing will hunt us in life and in dream.

There is a close relationship between life and dream. That is the reason why so many literary works are about life is nothing but a dream, and at a certain time, the poet woke up and uttered, e.g. 苏轼：“人生如梦！”

The similarities between life and dream provoked people to believe that things you learned during sleeping will have real effect when you wake up. If it is really true, all the people will be able to speak fluent Chinese as long as they listen to it when sleeping.

Can trees have multi-colored leaves? I think so, at least in art. Actually, they are quite pleasing to see. I guess we need to add plenty of varieties to make learning pleasing as well.

Numbers are so hard. They are probably hardest part in a language.
Chinese numbers are really logical and easy to learn, but it's not easy to recognize them when listening to a speech, especially "5" and "10".
To overcome numbers really needs persistence and practice.

Study brings us so much joy when we are totally absorbed in it, when we are forgetting all other things that are not related to it, when we are laughing happily at our progress.

But this happy paradise can also turn into hell when we are totally absorbed in it, when we are forgetting all other things that are not related to it, when we are laughing happily at our progress, because, in the gloomy distance, we know we have enlist us to be a slave of its mercy.

The easiest way to kill a passion of learning Chinese is to do it too much and for too long. Our brain is just not wired this way. If a student goes to Chinese class for 4 hours every day and for three months consecutively , that probably translates into eight hours study every day and a very tired and unproductive student at the end of the third month. Still, people consider that is brave, hard working and with stamina. There is definitely something wrong.

My recent observation about class notes is that they are to the point of totally useless. I like to take notes during the class. And then I seldom, if ever, go back and check them. Most of the time, I give myself console of being a good student because I take notes quite diligently. The biggest function of my class notes is that they are there. For a lot of people who are learning Chinese, it is quite true that they never review their notes. They may have vocabulary cards they go back often, but practically nothing else.

Recently I made an effort of reviewing my old notes. Then the real reason dawned on me. Notes are boring. It's in a fragmented and chaotic manner. Therefore it really is fine not to take them too seriously. However, I am not so sure if I can ever dispense this habit. Probably I really should.