Can You Learn Chinese WIth ChinesePod?

After learning Mandarin for a couple of years now, I've come to the conclusion that one my favorite ways to study Chinese is by downloading a lesson from ChinesePod and listening to it on my way to work. For those who have not heard of it before, ChinesePod is a daily chinese language podcast and site that aims to teach you Chinese. Each lesson is quite short, usually under twenty minutes, which makes them easy to listen to at your own convenience.

ChinesePod was started in 2005 and they are based out of Shanghai, China. ChinesePod offers five different levels of levels which include the Newbie lessons for beginners all the way up to Advanced for students who are almost fluent. In four years, they have already created over one thousand lessons. The hosts of ChinesePod are Jenny Zhu, Ken Carroll, and John Pasden. Jenny Zhu is the native Chinese speaker, and she is the "teacher" for all the lessons. Ken Carroll, works with Jenny on the Newbie and Elementary lessons, while famous Chinese blogger and linguist John Pasden helps to host the Intermediate and Upper Immediate lessons.

Each lesson follows a same basic format and the topic is usually based on something practical like "I Want Coffee" or "Do You Have A Cold". The lessons revolves around a short dialog in Chinese which is repeated three times. Then the hosts of the lessons will provide a literal English translation of the dialog. Then the hosts will get into a discussion of any important language points, cultural references and more. The lesson ends with the dialog being repeated three more times. All the lessons are professionally done, and each of the hosts are very good. Jenny Zhu is a great teacher and you will come to appreciate her after listening to a few lessons.

You can get access to all Newbie lessons for free on ChinesePod. This is a great way for beginning learners of Chinese to start. Just subscribe to ChinesePod on iTunes and you can get the lessons onto your music player whenever they come out. Accessing the rest of the ChinesePod lessons will require you to subscribe to one of their subscription plans. Don't worry, they are quite affordable. The basic plan is only $5 a month and gives you access to all the audio and video lessons. The premium plan runs $17 a month and you will get everything in the basic plan plus access to all the content on the ChinesePod site. This includes transcripts of the lessons, discussions, extra vocabulary, practice exercises and more. If you aren't sure about subscribing, at least try their 7 day free trial. No credit card is required and you will get full access to everything on the site for a week. If you are still on the fence, make sure to check out my full review of ChinesePod.