I wasn’t kidding when I said I liked the new dictionary at labs.chinesepod.com. After getting used to using it all the time via the search bookmark I made last week, I started wondering why I still had the MDBG searchbar up on my page.

After I quick consultation with David (CPod’s CTO), I had my answer. There wasn’t a searchbar for CPod’s uber-adsotated dictionary with audio recordings. So I decided to be bold and make one. You can see it in context in the picture below, and it’s now a part of toshuo.com’s sidebar. I’ve already run this by David, and if anyone would like to copy and distribute the image or the code to make the searchbar, go ahead!

Here’s the code:

<!-- CPod Dictionary Search -->
<div id="cdict">

<form method="get" action="http://labs.chinesepod.com/" target="_blank">
<div style="border: 1px solid rgb(192, 192, 192); padding: 0px 3px 5px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: 200px; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://labs.chinesepod.com/dictionary"target="_blank">
<img alt="Chinese Pod Chinese-English dictionary" src="labsdict.png"
title="Chinese Pod Chinese-English dictionary" border="0"/>
<input value="node/4" name="q" type="hidden"/>
<div style="clear: both;"></div>
The Dictionary<input name="search" size="26" value="" onclick="this.focus();
 this.value='';" type="text"/></div></form>

</div><!--End Dictionary-->

And here’s the image (which you’ll have to upload to your blog host):

I have no design skills! If anyone can improve upon the look of the searchbar, I’m sure people would appreciate it.

I’ve long been a fan of David Lancashire’s Chinese-English dictionary and anotation engine Adsotrans. I’ll admit I’ve had my share of frustrations with its previously poor support of traditional characters, but I’ve always loved the engine.

Since he David joined Chinese Pod, his various technical marvels have been springing up here and here throughout their service, and I love it! Their new dictionary is huge and growing at a good clip– rapidly closing in on the total size of ABC Chinese-English dictionary. More common entries also have example sentences, which are fully adsostated with pinyin pop-ups and accompanied by voice recordings.

Here’s my Firefox search bookmark for the CPod dictionary: http://labs.chinesepod.com/?q=node%2F4&search=%s

Ever since I visited the Chinese Pod office last summer, I’d been meaning to really put in some time listening to their podcasts. Unfortunately, one thing came up after another- I changed jobs, I moved twice, Martin and I got really into watching DS9, etc… It wasn’t until this last couple of weeks that I actually bought an MP3 player and started listening to multiple CPods every day.

Almost as if they sensed my intentions, Chinese Pod immediately broke my image link to their site, canceled their affiliate program, and did a site redesign that made it harder for me to download their podcasts. Oh, well. I guess that’s what I get for being such a procrastinator. On the good side, the fact that I waited for them to stop their affiliate program before really blogging about them makes my comments appear more genuine

The plan

I chose to listen to the first 50 intermediate podcasts. Admittedly, I’m a bit beyond that level, but since my plan was to do all of my listening while out and about, I wanted them to be on the easy side. I’d say that I did about one pod a day while walking to and from work and while going out to get food. I also listened to several podcasts each morning I went to the park for a run. Not all of the pods I listened to were Chinese Pod, though. In total, I’ve averaged 4 CPods a day.

The results

Since they’ve all been easy pods, I can’t say I really learned that many new words. I did learn the Chinese word for scorpion, which I promptly forgot, but the vast majority of the vocabulary items I picked up were mainland versions of words I already knew. Now, I know that they say 火 for something popular instead of 紅, they say 鼠標 for a computer mouse instead of 滑鼠, and northerners say 嗓子 instead of 喉嚨. It’s not the most useful stuff for someone living in Taiwan, but it’s something at least. I definitely feel like it was worthwhile, though.

Before, when I reviewed Chinese Pod, I was listening to podcasts at home. I still don’t think that was the best use of my time. While running at the park, though, it’s great to be able to pick up any Chinese at all. Additionally, I feel like it does some good to just be thinking in Chinese, even if I don’t pick up any new vocab items. The input must have some beneficial effect.

The chinesepod.com site reorganization

I can’t say I’m a big fan of chinesepod.com’s new layout. It used to be that the front page had previews and links to download new lessons, and the archive pages had excerpts and links to fifty numbered downloads each. Now, there’s only one lesson on the front page, and the archives only put 10 lessons on a page. Those pages don’t have excerpts to give an idea of what each lesson is about, and the lessons aren’t numbered, either. The only information given now, is the lesson title, the date it was recorded, and some various tags and meta-information. It’s really inconvenient to say, go download the first 50 intermediate podcasts.

I’m guessing they want users to search for topics that are interesting to them and download them one by one, or something like that. Maybe my desire to systematically download them all is an uncommon one. Or, maybe the changes were made with paying customers in mind. I’m not sure. In any case, I’ve been thinking about expanding my CSL podcast directory to include links to more of their lessons. The nice thing about the internet, is that it’s pretty easy to route around these sorts of organizational difficulties.

Yesterday was my first whole day in Shanghai, and it was awesome. After showing late the night before and crashing at John’s place, I was psyched enough about finally being here that I was still able to get up pretty early. John had a final in the morning, but after he got back from that, he showed me around the subway system a bit, and we grabbed some lunch. After that, he took me over to the Chinese Pod studio to check the place out. It was quite a bit different than I expected, but still very neat.

CPod StudioHosted on Zooomr

After that, I headed for a bank to see if there was anything I could do to solve my money problem. Since, I only use my US debit card (from Netbank) when I’m outside of Taiwan, it had been quite a while since I’d last used it. After mis-remembering my PIN, an ATM had eaten my card, and left me a bit stranded. With all the horrors I’d read about Chinese banking, I have to admit I was a bit worried. After taking a number at the bank and sitting down, I got in a conversation with a Dutch ex-pat. He seemed like a pretty affable, likable guy. Until ten minutes later when I saw him at the teller window, yelling, pounding his fist on the counter, and demanding to talk to the manager, that is. My sense of unease only grew worse; by the time my number was called, I’d mostly abandoned hope of being able to get anything done. Amazingly, though, I was able to set up an account (with only a visitor’s visa), make an electronic transfer from my American bank into my new account, and get a debit card while standing at the counter. Electronic transfers have always been time consuming and frustrating in Taiwan, and I haven’t managed to get a debit card in three years and trips to dozens of different banks. Maybe getting stuff done on the mainland, or at least in Shanghai, isn’t so troublesome as most Taiwanese people tell me it is. Other than the long waiting line, I was quite pleased with the banking.

After having access to my funds, I started to feel a lot more confident about touring around the city and did a bit of sight-seeing. Then, I went back to the Chinese Pod studio, chatted with some of the guys there a bit, and Ken took us out for beers. They were a fun group of guys, and it was a blast. I really felt some of the same start-up vibe as I did when I was in Redwood City, California six years ago.

Drinks with the CPod crewHosted on Zooomr

John and I took off early to meet a couple of his friends, both of whom are impressive translators, for dinner. We went to a heavily China-fied Thai restaurant, where the waitresses make you dance with them at least once during a meal. None of us were able to escape.

Finally, after a long day of running around town, meeting neat people and seeing the city, it was time to head back to the apartment. On the way, John talked me into buying the nastiest, most vile drink I’ve ever imbibed in my short life- a $2RMB bottle of baijiu. With that in hand, I took a crack at the PS2 that had been sitting on the desk in the room I’m staying in, beckoning me ever since my arrival here. I tried out The God of War. It was a good ending to a good day.

BaijiuHosted on Zooomr

Oh, yeah! I learned ten new Chinese characters today, entirely through osmosis and I can write all of them. Woohoo!

They are: 让,认,识,东,间,厂,号,着,对,业, and maybe 龙 and 咙.

Chinese Pod has changed quite a bit in the last two and a half months. Some new features have been added, there are many new podcasts, the quality of the podcasts has improved, and there have been several minor but important changes in the lessons since the last time I wrote about them.

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.

That’s not why I’m re-reviewing the service, though. I’m re-reviewing it because it has improved dramatically in the last two months. When I first took a close look at Chinese Pod, there were quite a few things that frustrated me. Though the service was unquestionably the best of its kind, it still didn’t offer very much value to me. Now, some of the things I didn’t like at that time have been changed, and none of the things I did like are missing. First, I’ll review the newest podcast from each category, and then I’ll talk about general improvements I’ve seen in the lessons. All the podcasts are free for anyone to listen to or download.

Newbie Pod #95 – Finding A Seat

Much as its name suggests, Finding a Seat teaches new students how to ask if a seat is free and how to ask if they may sit there. At the very beginning of the podcast, Ken and Jenny explain that it’s a beginner’s level lesson and that there are also more advanced lessons, etc… However, they only spent a minute on it. They bantered back and forth a bit about how the material taught in the lesson was important, and when it could be used- a good idea for a beginners lesson, in my opinion. The dialoge was very short. Here it is, in its entirety:

這裡有人坐嗎?
Is anybody sitting here?
沒有.
No.
我可以坐嗎?
Is it ok if I sit here?
當然可以.
Of course it is.

They went over the dialogue a few times, with Jenny reading the Chinese, and Ken translating into English. After that, they broke it down into each individual word and explained the literal meaning of each. Truth be told, it was a little boring to me to listen to such a short dialogue being taught for 10 minutes. So, I ran it by a friend who’s barely studied any Chinese before. He loved it, and thought it was interesting. One other thing I noticed, is that Ken’s Chinese sounds much better. There wasn’t anything about it that detracted from the lesson? Did he have a run-in with the tone police?

Elementary Pod #38 – He’s boring

This podcast was similar to Finding A Seat in terms of the amount of English support used, but the dialogue was quite a bit more substantial. In the dialogue, Jenny explains to a friend how she doesn’t want to have dinner at her neighbor’s place because he’s boring and because his wife’s a bad cook! It’s definitely a more interesting topic than finding a seat, if you ask me! They went over the vocabulary several times and explained some basic grammar. It was well presented, and pretty useful stuff.

Intermediate Pod #48 – Girly Talk

The best introduction for this podcast is the one on Chinese Pod: “Combine Alicia Silverstone with Wang Faye and you will start to understand the basis of today’s show.” The difference between this lesson and the intermediate lesson I reviewed last time was nothing less than jaw-dropping. They cut past the English intros and marketing related stuff and switched into Chinese in ten seconds. From there out, it was interesting, easy to understand, and educational. I learned a couple of phrases from it, I got more practice hearing Chinese at the right level for my needs, and it was fun! As an intermediate student myself, this is exactly the kind of listening practice I needed. I highly recommend this pod. Oh, yeah. John’s Chinese is really good. Readers of my blog probably all knew that already, but it still had to be said.

Upper-Intermediate Pod #4 – Bargaining

Ahh… bargaining. If there’s one part of the “China experience” I feel like I’ve missed out by living in Taiwan, it’s the bargaining. I can only imagine all the interesting things that foreigners living on the mainland experience in the course of buying their daily necessities, but this podcast gives me some sort of idea. I also found this pod interesting and educational. Jenny and John explained quite a few vocab items, such as 殺價 (”kill” the price), 吹牛, 一分錢一分貨 (you get what you pay for), as well as others.

Advanced Pod #20 – Studying Abroad

Jenny and Aggie discuss what it’s like for Chinese students who study abroad. Since it’s a topic that I’ve heard discussed so many times, I don’t have a lot to say about it. As I’d hoped it would be, the lesson was completely in Chinese. I could follow it, and I suppose it was good listening practice. I have to admit I feel a little disappointed that it wasn’t any harder, though. To be honest, it seems like it wasn’t really noticeably harder than the Bargaining lesson was. It’s fine for me now, but I’m worried that after my Chinese improves a bit more, there won’t be much for me to listen to. Who knows, though. Maybe I’ll be able to understand normal TV shows by the time that happens.

Some general thoughts about Chinese Pod

The more I think about it, the more I think Chinese Pod’s biggest strong point is simply that they can and often do make changes based upon suggestions users make. Textbook publishers rarely make any changes based on feedback from students who have used it. Usually, feedback is taken indirectly from instructors, and it takes years to incorporate suggestions into the next edition of a book. A podcaster, on the other hand, is making new material continuously, and can make changes to it at any time. For all I know, some of the improvements I see have been made in response to my previous review, or in response to feedback from other people with similar Chinese learning goals.

That said, I still wouldn’t recommend that any of my friends stop attending Chinese classes and abandon them in favor of listening to podcasts. Podcasts are useful, and convenient, but nothing replaces having a teacher who can tell you what you need to work on. I have met people who have studied at ICLP, and gone from having minimal Chinese skills to speaking better than I do and being able to read newspapers pretty well within a single year. The material on CPod isn’t enough to do that… yet. Still, I can’t help but recommend it. The free version has become a great supplementary source for listening materials and it’s only getting better. The paid version is even better, but that will have to wait for another review.

Improvements over the last couple of months:

• The selection of podcasts is growing quickly.
• The hosts’ Chinese sounds much better.
• The new lessons are really interesting.
• There’s a lot of English support at the low levels, but the lessons are almost completely in Chinese at the higher levels.
• Now there’s grammar instruction for those who want it.
• There are a lot of new features.

Things that could still improve:

• The classical Chinese music is still there all the time (though it does seem less obtrusive).
• Nobody uses Chinese names in the lessons- learning Chinese names is difficult for foreigners who study Chinese but it’s still an important part of learning the language.
• It would still be nice to see more variety in the hosts. There aren’t any male Chinese hosts, and everyone on the show has a southern accent.

Rating: 4/5

Notes: I know Chinese Pod is usually written as one word with Java-style inner caps, i.e., ChinesePod. The title bar of their main page splits it into two words, though, and as I prefer to avoid using inner caps, I do the same.

I 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.