Is Chinese Pod worth paying for?

[simc]

I had a one year subscription at one point and I think it was worth it. Having all being mostly audio based was good as I would prefer to learn chinese while walking around rather than sitting a desk. The materials were a bit more interesting in than a typical chinese textbook like NPCR. I got a lot out of the back and forth chat between the hosts in the intermediate level lessons. For my money they are the best materials I know of if you are studying Chinese by yourself outside China.

[anonymoose]

Far more learners of Chinese live in Shanghai than Beijing.

Are you sure about that? There are lots of learners of Chinese in Shanghai for sure, but I thought Beijing was really the Chinese-learning Mecca.

[Flying Pigeon]

"I can download some audio lessons to listen to on an MP3 player while I cycle around town or potter down to the shops. Once I've let these wash over me a few times, I can turn to the PDFs to see exactly which characters are being used."

@count_zero

I think if that's all you're looking for, you might want to try CSLPod.

http://www.cslpod.com/LearnChinese/

They don't use English in their podcasts (except during the intro and outro), they're available on iTunes and they will email you the scripts. You'll have to sign up for a free membership first.

iMandarinPod offers free podcasts but the scripts might only come with a paid membership. Sometimes they appear in the lyrics section of the podcast file, which can be accessed in iTunes. All of their podcasts are in Chinese. They also have a newscast that includes a script with each episode.

http://www.imandarinpod.com/hoola/

BTW, What's your Chinese level?

[murrayjames]

Benjameno, David announced it when Popup lowered their premium subscription price a few months back. The free transcripts might be a temporary thing--I'm not sure because I have a paid subscription.

count-zero, This hasn't been my experience at all. Perhaps it was one of their first lessons? This is the Intermediate lesson from yesterday:

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/intermediate/the-saga-of-the-bottle-cap

[count_zero]

I tried the sample intermediate lesson on CSL pod but the PDF does not tell you the new words in the lesson so this is no good for me.

Murray, I cannot open that as I haven't paid the membership.

Does anyone have any ideas where I can download Chinese Pod PDFs from?

[imron]

Sign up for a free trial account which allows you to download a limited set of PDFs. If you decide they are worthwhile, then you'll have answered your original question

[Sam Reeves]

I, like others, used Chinese pod some years ago when there was a great deal of free downloads and PDF's available. It's one of the few ones I would actually consider paying for. The overall quality is great in my view.

As to accent, I haven't listened to all the hosts but where Jenny is concerned her accent is spot on standard. By the way, I'd like to point out her accent isn't the Beijing accent, and contrary to popular belief the Beijing accent isn't the standard, and never has been.

The standard pronunciation is from the North-east region (when they are not throwing in the dong bei hua). The Beijing accent sounds slightly strange by comparison. TV hosts on CCTV are supposed to have the pronunciation from the north east to be considered as having 'good Chinese'. It's not the Beijing accent. People just assume it's Beijing as that's the capital... to be honest even many Chinese are ignorant of this also... not to mention many Chinese who also assume the standard they hear on CCTV is a Beijing accent, when it's not.

In any case, Jenny's pronunciation is superb, and I think Chinese pod is definitely a service worth paying for. You would pay a lot more going to a Chinese university with what, in my opinion, is often times poor teaching.

[roddy]

Does anyone have any ideas where I can download Chinese Pod PDFs from?

Chinesepod.com should have them. Unless you think you're entitled to them for free, in which case you're going to have to ask elsewhere.

[count_zero]

I don't know if I'm entitled to them for free or not. It seems that some MP3s were released under creative commons but perhaps not the PDFs? I have no idea.

[honzan]

I think it's a great resource. I use it only from time to time as I am kind of lazy but I wish I had the discipline to listen to it every day and learn all the words and expressions they introduce. I get the feeling that you can really learn to speak Chinese very naturally if you follow their lessons, they introduce a lot of colloquial expressions that they you never find in textbooks......most of them are extremely practical and invaluable for your daily life in China and all sorts of real situations you can encounter....and teaches you how to handle them in Chinese. I feel like many textbooks lack this feature......it teaches you real and up-to-date language, which is what you need for living 'à la chinoise' !!!

[renzhe]

All podcasts before September 2008 are Creative Commons and can be distributed and obtained legally. This is also a good way to test it without a committment.

If you like the service, then supporting them through a subscription makes sense in any case.

[yaokong]

Quite a long while ago I tried out ChinesePod for free, used some downloader (I believe it was DownThemAll) to save many gigabytes (over 20) of their stuff. And then just moved it from drive to drive and never really used it. From time to time I listened to one or two lessons, but I got bored of it quite fast. I deleted it all a few weeks ago (although still available through my mac's "Time Machine"). My current level is roughly intermediate if it comes to everyday language. When I started listening to their podcast I was an absolute newbie. And my opinion has not really changed: I could not find any reasonable way to use these materials in my studies. I much more prefer actual speech with normal speaking tempo, right from the start, broken down and explained part by part. I am always looking for recordings of REAL Chinese speech, which are at or above my current level. I believe ChinesePod offers such material only at the High-Intermediate level, which would still be too advanced for me even now. I guess they still offer a free trial, so I think its best to judge for yourself. If you can benefit from the way they teach then it for sure is a remarkable resource!

[Mactuary]

I haven't read all of the posts.

As to Jenny's pronunciation, I've only noticed one shortcoming. She swaps "n" with "ng" at least sometimes, quite obvious is her pronunciation of “能” which is "nen", and also the other way around, but I can't remember exactly which words.

I heard that this is a common occurrence in the South of China. What people say is that they can't distinguish between the "n" and the "ng" sounds, but what I don't understand is why they systematically switch the sounds (subconsciously I guess) rather than using just one sound or even mixing them 乱七八糟。

Also, I have a friend from the South of China who cannot pronounce "l", so “来” sounds like “奶” and "light" sounds like "night" etc. I've experienced this myself when I went to Suzhou asking for directions, the reply to which contained “走路”, which she pronounced as "zou nu". So the point about learning to recognise accents is important indeed, but as for beginners I think they should be exposed to true 普通话。

[bluetortilla]

I got a hold of some old copies and while the scripts are imaginative and useful, the two teachers really blabber on and on in English, at least at the Newbie level. And it's quite annoying to listen to Ken Carol reciting the scripts half the time. This is China. Can't they get a native speaker? I found myself fast forward and reversing iTunes the whole time just to hear the pronunciation.

[WestTexas]

I am always looking for recordings of REAL Chinese speech

Yeah, I'm like this too. The way they speak in textbooks and on the HSK practice tests just sounds fake to me. Go ahead and play the HSK recordings for some Chinese people. Many will laugh at how the speakers sound.

[lechuan]

I got a hold of some old copies and while the scripts are imaginative and useful, the two teachers really blabber on and on in English, at least at the Newbie level. And it's quite annoying to listen to Ken Carol reciting the scripts half the time. This is China. Can't they get a native speaker? I found myself fast forward and reversing iTunes the whole time just to hear the pronunciation.

Intermediate and up use a lot more chinese. The newer lessons are of much higher quality than the old materials; I remember being quite elated when Ken decided to stick to English only and leave the Chinese to Chinese speakers. Start with the more recent recordings (in the past few years) instead of the beginning.

The biggest gains I have seen in using Chinesepod is in my listening skills. It did a tremendous job training my ears to listen and pick up chinese speech without first seeing it in writing. I also like chinesepod dialogs for sentence mining, learning new vocab in context, and having clear dialogs to copy and imitate.

[bluetortilla]

Yes, aside from whining, I agree with Lechuan. Chinesepod is the best material I've seen for a beginner to jump start listening and speaking. But you need a lot patience to get through (or around) the 'entertainment' aspect of it.

For a serious learner, there is definitely an advantage to an immersion approach, even for a beginner. That has been my experience at any rate.

As for Carol, he is helpful enough but I have no idea why he was hired to read Mandarin scripts. It goes against everything I've learned about language acquisition. In a pitch, a non-native speaker surely can teach a language. But that is absolutely unnecessary in a world-wide podcast coming from China. Good to hear he stopped.

[xiaoxiaocao]

Quote

I am always looking for recordings of REAL Chinese speech

Yeah, I'm like this too. The way they speak in textbooks and on the HSK practice tests just sounds fake to me. Go ahead and play the HSK recordings for some Chinese people. Many will laugh at how the speakers sound.

For beginner/elementary students the 'Making connections' listening series is very good. Real people speaking about everyday topics in a natural way.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Connections-Listening-Comprehension-Simplified/dp/0887273661/ref=pd_cp_b_0

[roddy]

How does anyone even find the old lessons with Ken Carroll in? You must be signing up and going right back into the archives for some reason...unless...it couldn't be...no, you're not opting to download the torrents of ancient lessons from when they'd only just started, rather than take advantage of the month-long money-back trial period so you can see what they're actually producing now and get a much more representative idea of the content overall? Carroll hasn't even worked there since when, 2010? And I don't think he'd had much of a role since your man Pasden signed up years before that.

As an aside, I suspect some Chinesepod users have been at the Wikipedia page:

There is a small clique of users who flood the comments section with personal communications, thus discouraging new users from asking questions. One user in particular has posted more than 12000 comments in less than 4 years, and appears to think that he is a Chinese language guru, when in fact his attempts to communicate in Chinese are poorly constructed. Other long-term users aggressively attack newcomers who don't use the comments section the way they believe it should be used.

[bluetortilla]

Hey, don't be so nosey dear sir. I assure you that I got from a friend or friend of a friend. Anyway, like that.

They're still valuable though. lol