Review: Chinese Pod
April 9th, 2006 by MarkI guess it’s time to write what I think of Chinese Pod. Unless JT really ramps up the volume of his podcasting and gets friends to help out, Chinese Pod is the only game in town. There really isn’t any other large collection of podcasts for Chinese learners out there… yet. There’s a pretty fearsome argument about Chinese pod going on over at Sinosplice, and I want to toss in my $0.02. One commenter, named Roy, said:
I have downloaded an intermediate lesson. First thing you are greeted in ENGLISH. The Chinese person also presents themselves in ENGLISH. “I am Jenny”. Are those at an intermediate level not expected to understand “I Am” in Mandarin?
The tones used by the Chinese person are very unimpressive to say the least. I would not hire her as a private tutor. It’s like she was thinking about ENGLISH while she was speaking Mandarin or something like that. Anyhow, the above commenter already stated this. I would not listen to their casts if only for this reason — her bad “tones” and pronunciation. I am very disappointed by this.
Not only this, but it followed by the English speaker in ENGLISH. Why is it necessary for the student to her this repetition from a native English speaker (I hope) in an unaccurate Mandarin? What does this achieve exactly??
Bottom line: get a grip, focus on Mandarin and dump the English wherever you can. And decent Mandarin as much as possible.
I agree with much of what he said. I tried out Chinese pod recently, listened to a few podcasts and didn’t like them too much. I didn’t mind Jenny’s “southern” accent that much; since I live in Taiwan, it sounded “northern” to me! But, the absolute deal breaker is all the English.
First, I tried pod#37, an intermediate lesson. As soon as I started the pod, I was greeted by a loud gong and an anouncer saying, “great resources on the web, blah blah blah learn Mandarin with Chinese pod!” in English. After that, it was “Hello, welcome back to Chinese pod, ah… coming to you from Shanghai China, my name’s Ken Carol (sp?).” in English. Then, “I’m Jenny” in English. Jenny tosses one Chinese word, 加薪, into an English sentence really slowly, Ken makes a half hearted stab at duplicating it, and then it’s back to chatting about the word in English. By the time the dialogue starts, 12% of the pod is over. Between all of the random bantering in English, the damn classical Chinese stringed instrument that won’t stop, and all of the branding related stuff, I felt like even if the pod were at the right difficulty for me, less than half of the time spent listening to it would have been productive.
They did say pod#37 was a “low intermediate” pod, though. So, I gave pod#33 a try. The same gong and intro routine took about half a minute, but at least Jenny introduced her self in Chinese, sort of. I guess she doesn’t like using her real name as much as an English one. Considering that foreigners didn’t have the luxury of learning Chinese names in elementary school, that many Chinese people prefer to use English names with us, and that we have a hard time learning new Chinese names, this sucks. Still, they got into the dialogue a lot faster on this pod. The guy’s pronunciation was appalling, though. It seemed like he just freely swapped “jue”, “zhui”, and “zui” sounds for each other whenever the heck he felt like it. He reminded me of a coworker I had at an HFRB, known for barking out a constant stream of mispronounced commands to his poor students in a language nobody could quite consider “Chinese”. I couldn’t take it. I quit the pod halfway through.
Next, I tried an advanced one- Murder over a Steamed Bun. After the gong and stuff, I was greeted by “Hello, I’m Jenny and today with me is Liv (another English name). And whenever Liv is here, it’s a good lead that it’s going to be an advanced show…” all in English. She goes into a little speech about how there are lots of levels at Chinese pod, if this is too hard, pick a different one, blah, blah, blah. I understand that they’re throwing that stuff in because they’re afraid of scaring beginners away. Personally, I think the risk of some beginner getting on their site, going to the advanced section, downloading an advanced pod and then getting scared away is much less likely than the risk of pissing of potential subscribers who don’t want to hear that junk in every pod they download. Once they got started on the actual dialogue, though, it was pretty good. I noticed Jenny pronouncing “eng” as “en”, but as somebody living in Taiwan, I’m used to that.
In summary, I’ll say this: I’m willing to spend $300USD/month on Chinese self-study related expenses. However, they way the podcasts are now, I don’t even listen to them for free. For a Chinese student in the west who can’t get to a China town and doesn’t have any way of getting a conversation partner, though, Chinese Pod is the best resource there is for listening material. It could also be greatly improved pretty easily. If the English were trimmed out of the intermediate and advanced pods and replaced by written vocabulary lists and explanations, it would be a service worth paying for. I’m not sure if $30USD is reasonable to expect college students to pay, but at least the service would be a good use of their time. Here are what I see as Chinese Pod’s strengths and weaknesses:
Pros:
- Downloading podcasts is free.
- The selection of podcasts is growing.
- Some of the dialogues are interesting.
- There are no real alternatives.
- They hired John, and he’s going to fix everything!
Cons:
- Too much time is wasted with branding, sound effects, etc…
- The constant classical Chinese music in the background is damned annoying.
- Way too much English is used in the intermediate and advanced lessons.
- They all use English names, despite the fact that they’re teaching Chinese lessons.
- The foreign host doesn’t speak Chinese very well.
- None of the hosts speak “standard” Mandarin; they’re all southerners.
Rating: 2/5
Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Update: Chinese Pod has changed quite a bit since I wrote this review. Make sure to check out my more recent review.
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April 9th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Sounds like that format is a real winner for a big market. Just think of the most successful English learning programs in Taiwan. When I first came to Taiwan, I listened to 大家說英語 not to learn English, but to learn Chinese! Every English word has a ton of Chinese words. For the majority of people, the depth of their dedication is not enough to go off the deep end, so this type of approach lets someone feel he/she is doing the right thing, even though the speed of movement may not be very fast.
April 9th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Good review. I’ll do my best!
The thing about the long annoying English intros… I am also totally against those. The problem is that most new ChinesePod listeners come from iTunes, and if a beginner hears all Chinese the first time he checks out the podcast, he won’t be back. So they’re trying to save those potential users, but unfortunately it’s at the expense of potential users like you. You’re still the minority.
I will fight the good fight though.
April 9th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Here’s a possible solution to that problem: leave the English intros and lengthy branding stuff in the normal podcasts, but either remove it or replace it with Chinese for the podcasts downloaded by paying users.
April 9th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
As John mentioned, it’s the iTunes and the way podcasts are delivered automatically each day that makes it necessary for the short English intros.
Is it that big a deal to hit the ffd on the mp3 player? I usually download three or four Cpod casts, a Jpod cast, and an Englishpod cast–I listen to the Chinese there–and ffw thru the English.
About the English names: is that even a real critique? There are two hosts, so even if they used their Chinese names, which Ken used to do until everyone told him to stop speaking Chinese, what’s that two names?-so that’s four to eight possible characters? Jenny’s name is 朱琦, Liv’s is 吴小波, and Ken’s 凯恩.
I think most of the recent commenters are missing the point about the casts and their allure. It’s hip–and yah so all the young Chinese hosts use English names, the personalities make the shows interesting, this is not too easy to find–insert all the boring Chinese people in the various video’s about learning Chinese made over the years.
This makes the language instruction accessible to a larger subset of people, I firmly believe that longevity and daily exposure is probably most key to learning a language.
Any tinkering of that will be a disservice to teaching the largest number of people Chinese. With that, I welcome any foundation building that John can bring to Cpod. The intermediate grammar bank, exercises and pedogogy is quite lacking there.
If I could raise a more general question, does a perfect model make for a perfect student in terms of pronunciation? Does exposure to non-perfect models negatively impact a learners pronunciation or are there other more pertinent factors limiting proper pronunciation. Second-language learners are notorious for their language fossilization and inability to reach a native-like level of pronunciation/fluency despite having perfect models.
BTW, if Cpod can find a native-Chinese speaker that is as familiar with typical laowai questions, interests, is as conversational and as good a teacher as Ken, I’d support that transition. BTW, if John hasn’t met Steve from Jpod–I’d consider him a good candidate, but for a host of other reasons I doubt such a switch is a good strategic move.
April 12th, 2006 at 7:17 am
A little late on the comment, but I just read the post and thought I would give some input as an absolute beginner. (I haven’t had any formal education in Chinese, but it is my second time on a language, so there is an advantage of sorts)
Before I had access to a tutor, Chinese pod was the only way to hear spoken Chinese. And it’s free. That in itself is a huge plus. I’m sure down the road I may run into problems with incorrectly learned pronounciation, but I’m willing to forgive that for sure. Now that I have a tutor, my progess has nearly tripled, which says something. But, I still rock the podcasts in between sessions to keep my mind/ears in the game. And from the podcasts I’ve used so far, the content of the dialogue feels pretty relevant. (As compared to to some of the textbooks I’ve looked into)
And personally, I don’t mind the music in the background. It makes it feel more natural! (well, considering I usually listen during my commute, I think it’s nice.)
Basically, I think its been great for me, a beginner, and it’s bloody free! (not the review and flashcards, but hey, were not getting that lazy are we?)
Just thought I would have a say.
Thanks and I love your blog.
April 14th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Very interesting discussion going on here.
I’m currently listening to Mandarin Chinese with Serge Melnyk. (www.melnyks.com) I think you can check this out as an alternative.
April 15th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Most of the things you state as fact are just plain inaccurate. I’ve just seen a real review on Slate.com, and it has nothing in common with yours. That speaks for itself.
There are thousands of people learning and being really motivated by chinesepod. I’m one of them. You just sound like sour grapes. Chinesepod is a work in progress that was started just a few months ago. If you had done even the most rudeimentary research you’d know that they are constantly improving it. You completely ignore the brilliance of the idea and the fact that they have made it work. In the space of a few months they’ve gone from nowhere to the dominant force. Why not include that in your ‘review’ instead of gurgling on about their English names. This is absurd.
I would give your ‘review’ a 1 out of 5. Poor effort and a shame that you would deter newcomers from the best resource for Mandarin on the web.
And then someone suggests Serge Melnyk in the comments?? What is it with you people?
April 16th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Ted, can you point out any specific things in my review that were inaccurate? I’m more than willing to post corrections.
For the record, I think that Serge Melnyk is a worse alternative to classes or conversation partners than ChinesePod is. I also agree that ChinesePod is the best resource of its kind on the web and has the potential to be really useful for students. It just isn’t there, yet, and I don’t feel any “shame” in saying so.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:48 am
Mark, it is good to see somebody with his head screwed on straight. It looks like Chinese Pod the business is doing very well to have so many fans with such an emotional connection to it that they lash out at you like this for giving it a balanced review. It also looks like nearly all of the gung-ho Chinese Pod fans are beginners who don’t know much about what they are debating.
I can’t stress enough that learning names DOES matter. I had similar problems to the ones you mentioned in your post. Many Chinese acquaintances used their English names with me, and I wasn’t really that comfortable with all the common Chinese names until after finishing my M.A. in Chinese literature. In the end, I learned most of them from reading about politicians in the paper. *They* don’t use English names. Names are an important part of the language, and for beginners, just learning ten or so is a big step in the right direction.
I’m not sure if most Chinese students value their study time as much as you do, though. Most college students I’ve known would accept wasting 10-15% of their listening time with branding and English chatter.
The biggest problem with Chinese Pod is the lack of material. Nobody could possibly work through all the beginner pods and then be ready for the intermediate ones without outside study from other sources. The next biggest problem is the massive pronunciation problems of the host. People acquire language from the input to which they are exposed. If 1/3 of the Chinese a student hears is from Ken, there WILL be a negative effect.
Spot on with the review! Chinese Pod is the best podcast resource on the web, and it has a lot of potential, but it’s not ready to replace textbooks just yet.
-Jake
P.S. Mark, with your interest in Chinese, why are you still teaching English? There’s quite a bit of scholarship money available for students as motivated as you seem.
April 20th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Jake, I’ve looked pretty hard for that sort of scholarship in the past, and from what I’ve seen it’s pretty much all ear-marked for full time college students as opposed to people such as myself who want to go to a language school. I’ve already graduated, but I’m not in grad school. Do you know of any scholarships in particular that would apply to people such as myself?
P.S. I find teaching pretty rewarding. It’s also interesting to see my students’ own language acquisition.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:30 am
Chinese Pod
Chinese Pod is an amazing learning resource for Chinese. There really should be one of these for Korean learners, but I haven't been able to find one. If anyone knows some good Korean listening resources I would be eternally grateful.
If someon…
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:25 pm
I’m a complete beginner in Chinese, and I love Chinese Pod the way it is. I need to hear a lot of English in the lessons, otherwise, someone at my level would be too intimidated. This handholding is essential for people like me to stick with it.
I actually took a college class three years ago, so CPod at this point is a good review for me. That class was extremely hard, and although I finished with an “A” in it, I lost interest in keeping the study up because I felt it was just too much too soon for me.
Now, when I get to the intermediate level, maybe I will share some of your concerns. I read your follow up review and I’m glad you are now enjoying the CPod even better, and that the more advanced lessons are to your liking. After I get through the free intro lessons, I will definately pay for the one year subscription.
October 15th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
[...] Since my initial review of Chinese Pod, I’ve received more email related to that one review than any other article I’ve written. Several Chinese students appreciated my perspective, and expressed similar feelings I had about Chinese Pod. On the other hand, I also received more angry emails regarding the review than I had ever previously seen in my life. After suffering insults about my site, insults about myself, insults about my family, and even one email that included vague threats against me, it became very clear to me that there are some CPod fanatics out there. [...]
November 25th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Your review was extremely uninciteful as you yourself admitted you don’t listen to the podcasts for free (maybe because you have already attained a level past that presented in the podcasts), but for the rest of us who still need a little help the podcasts are filled with useful new words and the music is non-intrusive as well as giving the podcasts a more pleasant sound. The small amound of English they use is okay because 90% is in Mandarin and if Jenny prefers to call herself Jenny then that’s just a matter of her own personal preference.
I ONLY agree with the fact that her “eng” sounds like “en” Ke Cheng sounds like Ke Chen etc.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:39 am
I have been studying chinsese for a year and half and the university, in the area I live in, doesn’t offer an extensive curriculum for studying the language. So, for me, chinese pod has become useful in learning new vocabulary words, with an explanation to what they mean, that I wouldn’t learn in class and it is also entertaining. My girlfriend, who is Taiwanese and studying english, finds the lower levels useful for her english and in turn helps her learn how to explain chinese words to me in english. They do have vocabulary lists and alternative uses for these words which is also helpful. I tried listening to all the levels when I first discovered this podcast. Now I only stick to the intermediate or elementary. If you ever get a chance you should listen to the upper advanced level (Gao高Ji级). In these podcasts Jenny and the other female only conversate in chinese. I have only listened to two of them, “Shanghai Expo” and another one about the olympics in Bei Jing where they talk about the ticket prices and stuff. Overall it can be a useful resource for students of chinese as well as a student learning english.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:51 am
I agree almost completely with the post…spot on! The main problem I had was the atrocious accent and tonal mis-pronounciations of the host at beginners level (Ken I beleive).
Still with over 500 lessons now, its a hard resource to beat, and not too expensive (I would not subsribe as premium…the $10/month option is good enough). This coupled with pimsleur and FSI should be enough resources for beginner-upper intermediate learners who are not in China.