Is Chinese Pod worth paying for?

[roddy]

The early lessons were actually put out under some kind of Creative Commons license which allowed for redistribution, so you can torrent 'em to your hearts content. And they're no doubt of some value. But using material from back then to form an opinion about whether you should pay for Chinesepod now would be somewhat dubious.

How many current Chinesepod subscribers do we have? Or even anyone who's used the month's trial in the last year?

[li3wei1]

A while back they had a one-month-for 99 cents deal, and I tried it out, mainly on upper intermediate and advanced. Ratio of English to Chinese in UI was good, and in Advanced there's no English. One of the readers they use frequently has a really strange and annoying accent, but then so do many of the people in China, so might as well get used to it. I'd say the combination of interestingness, educational value, clarity and ease of use is as good as anything I've seen, but I tend not to pay for things, so I haven't tried any of the other pay-for sites.

[Glenn]

I was listening to the free portion, which I had subscribed to via iTunes, but it only goes up to intermediate. I thought it was a good format, especially the 請問 episodes where they take a family of words and talk about their uses and the similarities and differences between them. There's a good amount of Chinese spoken there, and almost all of it is by Jenny and Connie (native speakers). I found it to be pretty good, especially for a free resource.

[icebear]

I've been subscribed for a long time. I find the intermediates too easy but some of the banter and explanations are helpful due to "controlled exposure", while the UI are great.

[mnspg]

@roddy

That wikipedia comment actually sounds pretty accurate.

[Dawei3]

I'm a current user of Chinesepod and have used it for >5 years. I definitely think it is worth it.

A strength is that Chinesepod gives situation specific language. It has over 2000 lessons on a huge variety of topics. If you need to know the language for a specific situation, you can likely find a lesson on it. Also, the instructors, Jenny, John & Dilu are fun. I listen to Chinesepod all the time - instead of music. I never get bored of listening to them.

They also teach culture along with the language. It's amazing how many times I've been in conversation and I know about an issue or a cultural aspect due to Chinesepod. This is invaluable.

As some have noted in the basic levels, i.e., Newbie & Elementary, the instructors speak mostly English. However, for each lesson, they also offer "dialog only" mp3s, which is only in Chinese. To study, I would load on my ipod 5 or 6 copies of the dialog-only before the Ele lesson.

All lessons are available in pdfs that include Pinyin, Hanzi & English. They also offer on-line quizzes & comprehension tests (which I normally don't have time for).

The instructor's accents & most dialogs are standard, but some dialogs have different accents. Unless your goal is to only listen to Chinese newscasts, it's good to be exposed to different accents.

Chinesepod is a great resource & I highly recommend it.