Now Podcasting, Too !

One of the things which I learned in China is that many of the young, educated, professional Chinese view having good English language skills as a prerequisite to many of the top jobs in China. Apparently, the best jobs in China all require regular interaction with foreigners like me. I found they were a lot more interested in me helping them with their English than in helping me learn Chinese.

For some reason, I found that many found my voice, cadence, and diction easier to understand than most. (Maybe they were just trying to be nice to me?) Being from Tennessee in the American South, I mentioned this to an American from South Carolina that I met in Beijing. He laughed and told me that "the Chinese love Southerners because we talk slow." Whatever the reason, I took an interest in teaching English and came up with the idea of using a podcast with corresponding transcript to assist my new friends with pronunciation even when I am not around.

Off topic for this blog... but for anyone who might be interested I even got to teach English in a Chinese government-registered church. See My Chinese Church Away from Home.

I decided to start a podcast equivalent to this blog at http://artsciita.podbean.com/. If English is not your native language, I hope you will check it out. This is something of an experiment so if you try it and like it, you had better let me know. It is a little extra work on me and I might lose interest if nobody seems to be paying attention. Here's an online MP3 player with links to share our subscribe to the RSS feed. I went back and added voice for the most popular posts and a few of my personal favorites.

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