VoA is a great site ...

[Petit_Scarabe]

... as long as you take politics and propaganda out of the equation, Voice of America has a nice site for anybody trying to learn chinese.

Especially, for those intermediate students like myself, who know enough to be able to read some stuff but not enough to go through an entire press article I would recommend their "Bilingual news" section : everyday, it has two short articles (just 2 or 3 paragraphs) about current events in chinese with the english translation right below.

It's great because although they are short (which is a good thing), these articles usually contain all the vocabulary relating to a certain event and give you the basis to go through larger, more "normal" press articles if you are interested in a certain topic.

I force myself to read both articles everyday and to learn the vocab. for at least one, and so far it really helps my reading. Hope it can help yours.

http://www.freexinwen.com/chinese/eng/news_bilingual/index.htm

[Scoobyqueen]

I used to read it daily too. However, I feel it can sometimes be quite heave on names and technical terminology and then just a few lines of other vocab to spare simply because is literally only a few lines. Incidentally, does anyone know how good the translations are? One of my concerns about translations (in any language) is that it sometimes reads just like a translation.

[YuehanHao]

I read these articles daily and find it helpful. I agree the proper names and terminology can be taxing, but I guess one has to learn proper names and some of the jargon at some point if one is to have true proficiency (although I use a pop-up window to cheat on the hard stuff rather than try too hard to memorize it all at once). It has noticeably improved my vocabulary recognition, particularly given the relatively small amount of time I spend on it each day.

As a novice, I don't have a great feel, but I consider the translations as not being overly literal for my level. Sometimes I have seen typos, and occasionally there can be entire sentences omitted from one of the translations however.

Seriously, though, is there propaganda mixed in with these stories...?

[wushijiao]

VOA also has a good podcast/vodcast series:

http://www.voanews.com/chinese/podcasts.cfm

I've been listening to the Cantonese one for only three or four weeks or so, but I'm really starting to feel like my listening is improving.