Although I’ve studied Italian for years, and more recently German in the last several, I’ve been bitten by the Chinese bug this week - what better day to start studying Chinese than on the USA’s Thanksgiving Holiday ;).
Here is this morning’s speech-to-text of the 1st Pimsleur Chinese lesson. If you don’t know, or have not watched Steve’s video “Why I’m not a big fan of Pimsleur”, Pimsleur is ALL audio - NO TRANSCRIPTS. And they are VERY strict about letting people post transcripts online. This is why I like what I call “LingQ Central Station” - it’s where I can LEGALLY keep all my personal imports PRIVATE in one place in various languages.
In this transcript I recognize the fact that THERE MAY BE MISTAKES. But as I pointed out, playing with software is what keeps me motivated. I need to SEE what they are saying. I would be bored and frustrated and quit Pimsleur in 5 minutes if I did not do the transcriptions to keep me engaged: WARN ING: You must NOT fall into the trap of doing “busy” work and not studying. The studying MUST be done as your doing the transcriptions - if not, you’re just fooling yourself into thinking your spending all this time doing something worthwhile when you’re just fooling around with technology and learning very little. As I paste each sentence or vocabulary word into LingQ, I’m always studying and repeating it: “对不起 (Duìbùqǐ) 对不起 (Duìbùqǐ), 对不起 (Duìbùqǐ)” etc. The characters seem to me, a hopeless endeavor. I don’t see how ANYONE can learn these in the short time we are given on this planet LOL :). But I’ll try…
Daniel Léo Simpson
Composer
San Francisco
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You created this by using software? I’m doing the same thing by hand for Korean, so I wonder how well it would work for that. On the other hand, I bet doing it by hand would keep you even more engaged 
As I read your post, I kept thinking “What a strange reason for doing the transcript himself. I’d give an arm and leg for a completed transcript, which would save me 30-60 minutes per day”. But at the same time I must admit I’ve grown used to doing it myself, and know that it’s a very beneficial exercise. Let me list the other reasons why I insist on using a Pimsleur transcript:
- To be sure about pronunciation. This is especially important in my case as my hearing is sometimes marginal.
- To practice reading through flashcard creation.
- To practice writing and spelling through flashcard creation.
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