Chinese Podcasts (w/ transcripts?)

[renzhe]

Thanks leosmith and Luobot.

I'm basically looking for interesting intermediate-advanced content to listen to. I'm not interested in transcripts or flashcards or progressive lesson concepts, so subscribing makes very little sense for me.

I'll look into some of those recommendations.

[atitarev]

Try this as well. Add to your list. ABC Radio Australia in Chinese. The news are from Australian only. You only need to listen to the first sentences without the transcript then the podcast follows the text. Quite good, updated daily, I think. It's a bit too much over my level but I am going to start using it more regularly soon.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/chinese/news/topic.htm

I only use the MP3 download from the one page in the link, you probably won't get an audio file for each page.

Here is SBS in Chinese, unfortunately, it's only audio, no transcript, only some description.

http://www20.sbs.com.au/podcasting/index.php?action=feeddetails&feedid=1&catid=1

[leosmith]

I'm basically looking for interesting intermediate-advanced content to listen to. I'm not interested in transcripts or flashcards or progressive lesson concepts, so subscribing makes very little sense for me.

Same here, although I think you are at a higher level than me. Big thanks for asking about reviews, because I'm seeing now that there are podcasts which are better suited to me than chinesepod. For some reason, chinesepod had a hard time figuring out intermediate.

Incidently, I'm going to continue to review and edit that earlier post of mine.

[imron]

I haven't really listened to it much, but I've always thought iMandarinPod to be quite decent, although it seems to focus a little too much on cultural elements and themes for my liking.

Production standards are below that of Chinesepod, and the hosts aren't nearly as personable, however they provide transcripts plus it's completely in Chinese. If you've been following along with shows on the GFEP, you'd probably be able to handle the difficulty level easily enough. Despite the fact that it's all in Chinese, they do have tendency to speak slowly and clearly.

Personally, I've found that recently, if I want to get some listening practice, I just open up CRI's online radio: http://www.globalfm.cn but the content there isn't downloadable. It's good for listening, but maybe not so good if you want to study the content.

[imron]

Looking at them now, the more advanced lessons on cslpod also seem quite decent, and although each one seems a bit short, they come out quite regularly.

[renzhe]

These are some excellent recommendations, everyone! I'm looking forward to testing many of them in the following days. I was getting a bit tired of the "lesson" podcast format, but I'm not sure if I can handle native-level radio broadcasts at this time, so topical conversation/essay podcasts look very promising.

EDIT: First impressions on the few podcasts that looked promising for me:

CSLPod: I found this too short, and a bit hard to follow at advanced level (perhaps I simply hit a lesson with specialised vocab and lots of transliterations, though). A good resource when using the transcripts, but 2.5 minutes is simply too short, especially when half a minute seems to be reciting "www.cslpod.com". It's nice to see that they follow and comment on current events, but not all of them are very interesting.

Clavisinica Voices: An interesting set of essays on interesting topics, clearly read, and not too difficult to follow. Just as short as the CSLPod ones, though.

Learning Mandarin Podcast: I was expecting to give this a quick listen and dismiss it. Surprisingly, I liked it a lot. It's a woman reading short essays on things she finds interesting, and they are easy to follow, include explanations of the less common words, and they are clearly read -- even though she doesn't have a presenter's voice. The length is also nicer, being close to 5 minutes.

iMandarin Pod: This one has a nice length, between 10 and 20 minutes, and is structured around lessons explaining a concept and introducing the relevant vocabulary. However, I can only locate intermediate-level lessons, and these are decidedly too easy. I can see using this for some listening practice, but I'd like to find the more difficult lessons here.

Overall, they are lacking the polish and, more importantly, enthusiasm of the ChinesePod podcasts. Those are fun, and most of these feel like coursework. Still, I find them to be a good resource, and will probably use a combination of them. At the moment, Learning Mandarin Podcast and Clavisinica Voices seem the most interesting. If only they were longer...

I still have to try the radio stations, perhaps those will be a better fit.

Edited September 3, 2008 at 06:06 PM by renzhe

[leosmith]

http://www.chineselearnonline.com/ (CLO) – All their podcasts and some online resources are free (e.g., dialogue transcript in pinyin and course outline with mouseover translations). This, by itself, is a pretty good deal, but I subscribed to this site in their early days and am presently still a paying subscriber. They have the best progressive lessons coupled with the most complete transcripts that I’ve ever found anywhere to date. Their lessons start at the newbie level and are currently at maybe low-intermediate (depending on how you rate these things). If you’re not above their level, then you’re in luck. If you’re over their level, then you should keep your eye on them because they will eventually catch up with you.

Luobot - the english speaker is computer generated, right? Or maybe I have a screw loose...

[Luobot]

Luobot - the english speaker is computer generated, right? Or maybe I have a screw loose...

Sorry, I'm no one to comment on loose screws, so I'll just stick with some thoughts on CLO:

I think Adam speaks English in a clear and measured style. This might be especially good for ESL learners who are using CLO to study both Chinese and English. If you take a look at his PDF’s, you’ll find that he has a complete series of PDF’s with Spanish and various other languages replacing the English portions. So I would conclude that he’s appealing to an international audience. As the lessons get progressively more advanced, there's less and less English in them anyway, so the Mandarin speakers are far more important and prominent. Eventually, the lessons are supposed to be entirely in Mandarin.

Regarding your comment that “these podcasts contain drills” – actually, it depends on the podcast. Some of the podcasts are specifically review podcasts. Others introduce new material and contain vocabulary reviews at the end. Still others have none of that and are entirely about the dialogue. There’s a lot to CLO’s lessons -- such as, listening to the podcast, studying the complete word-for-word transcript, reviewing with the audio review podcast and vocabulary review transcript, doing exercises, and a bunch of other stuff -- but I have to say that my favorite feature is watching the dialogues acted out in videos. The visual element adds the context and sense of immersion that I find missing otherwise. There are videos for a number of lessons, but my deepest desire is to have videos for every lesson. After watching the video, when I go back to review the podcast dialogue, I can visualize the entire scene. It has far more impact for me than just listening to the podcast dialogue any number of times.

The best thing about CLO is that all of their material hangs together. I don’t think you can drop in on one lesson and get a sense of that. However, it’s obvious to me that there’s an enormous difference between what CLO is doing and other sites that offer lots of good but random content. … Which is not to say that I don’t dip into the random content on other sites, because I do, in order to mix it up a bit, add some spice, and, well, for the sake of some randomness. No single resource can ever do it all, so keep the suggestions and reviews coming!

Btw, good job with your post #57.

[doumeizhen]

in iTunes, you can search for 德国之声. It has news broadcasts, about 30 minutes long, perfect for advanced students. Don't think they have transcripts, although I haven't checked....

[imron]

From the Chinesepod thread, mikeedward posted a great link to the University of Texas' Cultural Interviews with Chinese-Speaking Professionals (also mentioned by woliveri much earlier in this thread). It's a series of video interviews with native Chinese speakers over a broad range of subjects, with transcripts in Traditional, Simplified, Pinyin and English. It's an excellent resource.

[roddy]

There's also Olechina.com - not sure if they've been mentioned, they're new to me. You need to sign up, but if anyone wants to check them out . . .

No prizes for guessing from where they draw their inspiration . . .

[Luobot]

I think ChinesePod is starting to clone itself like Agent Smith in the Matrix. Must mean that it's almost time for the universe to reboot.

[imron]

Wow, Chinesepod must be almost 100% flattered, giving that imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery. Talk about direct rip-offs.

Anyway, you don't need to register to hear the lessons, I just took a quick look at the beginning of one then (the advanced mooncake one). Unlike chinesepod though, it appears to be video podcasts instead of just audio.

[renzhe]

I have to LOL at that site. That was a conscious and remarkable ripoff effort. Unbelievable.

[roddy]

To be fair, they seem to be putting out some solid pedagogically-based content, such as

on youtube. And anyone who's been complaining of podcasts with too much English waffle will enjoy

.

[leosmith]

I reviewed them. They copied the chinespod website, but their presentation is quite different. If it wasn't for their poor sound quality, I'd have given them a 4. This is really strange though. They appear to be brand new, but already have over 100 podcasts. And they must have a big budget, because it looks like it's all video based. So I have to wonder - how much more would it cost them to have good sound quality?

[roddy]

Better audio quality is one of their premium features, so it's maybe pitched badly to get people to sign up. They're listing Cengage and McGraw-Hill as partners, so I'd assume there's funding coming from there.

[lokki]

They copied the chinespod website, but their presentation is quite different.

Exactly. The web interface is an exact copy of Chinesepod ie. same structure, functionality and visual appearance, but the actual content is very different.

Apart from the videos, most lessons can be downloaded in mp3 format as well.

[Meng Lelan]

So where are the video podcasts? I want to see Chinese dialogues acted out by real people.

[roddy]

here - situational dialogues. They seem very 'acted' rather than 'natural'