What would be the perfect Chinese podcast?

[Tyler79]

Hey guys! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I work at a school in China that teaches Mandarin and I'm thinking of starting up our own podcast. The biggest issue, of course, is that there are so many China and Chinese related podcasts that it's hard to think of a format that can really bring something new to the table. I was never personally a huge fan of any of the Chinese language learning podcasts, but I know a lot of people have their favourites.

So I'm trying to think a bit outside the box here. I thought about doing a news podcast once a week that delivered a news story from China (or international) cut down to about an intermediate level. I figured that could help even more advanced students who sometimes don't know all the news-related vocabulary that's not in textbooks. I thought also about doing a simplified story podcast - something like writing our own shortened/simplified version of Journey to the West and doing it chapter by chapter over podcast. Both of these options, obviously, would come with new vocabulary + sample sentences + an online transcript & vocabulary list.

My question to you guys is...what would you like to see? I figured the best way to look into this was just to be straight up about it - how can we help you? What would you love a podcast to do?

Let me know if you have any super awesome suggestions!

Tyler!

[Flying Pigeon]

Hi,

They're not super, nor are they awesome, but here are some random ideas:

If you're aiming at intermediate and advanced learners, I suggest using only Chinese in the podcasts.

iMandarinpod has a news program. It's a newscaster reading a script. She reads it twice, first slow and then at natural speed. It would be nice to hear a news podcast where Chinese people are interviewed, something that would give listeners a more organic feel for the language, where they could hear different voices, accents, speaking rhythms, etc. Most podcasts sound textbooky and stiff.

I like the idea of stories, but I'm not interested in stuff like Journey to the West, or Dream of the Red Chamber. It'd be nice to hear contemporary stories. I've heard some on the radio. I've also heard some radio dramas, complete with cheesy sound effects.

That's all that comes to mind now. I'll update if I have more ideas.

Good luck!

[Guest realmayo]

Two thoughts:

1) If a news podcast, choose a type of story which comes up all the time in Chinese news, ie corruption, disputed islands, official visits, weather forecasts --- not necessarily the most exciting but if you're able to introduce vocab then you'll be helping people who use your podcast as a springboard to actually watch/listen to Chinese news in the future. Also zero-in on vocab that is not topic-specific but frequently used by news broadcasters.

2) Do a video-cast of a popular TV gameshow (different TV show each time) walking your viewers through the format, the hosts, introducing the vocab and phrases that are used repeatedly, as well as taking say a 10-minute excerpt and providing the specific vocab/grammar needed to understand those 10 mins really well.

[Shelley]

I like the idea of a story, Journey to the West or Dream of the Red Mansions would be great in a simplified form. Also maybe something modern, maybe Sci fi or fantasy.(Terry Prachet could be loads of fun, lots of choice of shortish novels, or maybe something from one of the great SciFi masters-Asimov, Clarke, Hienlen, etc etc) Done in 15 to 20 minute installments, it would be really fun to look forward to the next installment

I would like there to be transcripts in characters and pinyin, that I could print out, to be able to follow the podcast with and to help with understanding. Also a vocab list of words that are story specific and names.

It could be in chinese only, this dosen't bother me as long as there is not too much english, but a transcript in english for when it just doesn't make sense would be encouraging, but make this not available for some time period after original podcast is released to stop people being lazy

I think as long as the topic is interesting (i know this is subjective, but a varity should satisfy a large sector of people) and the duration is shortish, it could be good fun and educational at the same time.

Good luck

[Flying Pigeon]

Maybe an episode that examines TV and radio commercials. There might be some copyright issues, though.

[anonymoose]

I was never really into podcasts, but from my limited experience, I agree that English should be kept to a minimum, and if English is used, speak it quickly. Nothing is more irritating than wanting to listen to Chinese but being bored with slowed-down or repetitive English.

[yaokong]

Even on beginner levels speak Chinese at natural speed, you can speak slow and clear for demonstrating, but also have each dialogue/etc. recorded at normal speed!

[stoney]

1.) I would prefer modern, everyday vocabulary and topics.

2.) More repetition of vocabulary and grammar in subsequent podcasts. A more progressive structure. I don't know how you would do this and I'm sure it would make it more difficult to produce, but it's something I don't see in most podcast services out there that I've tried.

[xuexiansheng]

Some good suggestions, (I'd like to second #7) but I would like to recommend you make sure you are doing a podcast that will hold your own interest. Its a lot of work and you may not make any money to start with (or ever), so make sure you're passionate enough about the content/format to keep it up. Good luck!

[abcdefg]

#8 mentioned having a progressive structure that re-uses things several times again after their initial introduction. That's important to me too, whether the material is news reports or stories. I like the thrill of recognizing something I learned recently: "Oh, yeah, that's the phrase I just learned last week. Here it is again." Makes it stick in my mind.

[Tyler79]

Thanks for all the input, guys! It's been really tricky trying to come up with something that's fully doable without repeating a lot of what some of the other great podcasts already do. Just as a note - we're not intending to make this a profit thing, it's intended to be freely available to all.

I'm personally a huge fan of 余华, especially his short stories in 战栗, and I kind of thought of using the first story, a sort of murder-mystery/slow-psychological-thriller as a cool launching pad. I actually used to use it when I was tutoring translation to more advanced students. The problem, of course, is how to make something like a murder mystery relevant to a beginner student.

I'll let you know if we start tossing around any other ideas and see what you guys think.

Thanks for the input!