Website Review: ChinesePod.com (Rating: 9/10)

What is it?

Broadcasting direct from Shanghai, ChinesePod.com (www.chinesepod.com) is a great site to learn conversational Mandarin if your native tongue is English. Each lesson is an audio MP3 that you can listen directly from the web page itself and is very much like a radio show. New lessons are added daily and one of their new features is "The Saturday Show" which gives listeners a taste of Chinese culture and some insight as to what's hot and what's not. There are currently over 200 lessons on the site and counting.

Site Review

While most of the features on this site will require a subscription fee, the actual MP3 lessons themselves are free to listen to. Each lesson is a podcast lesson, which means if you have an iPod or other media player, you can sync content that will automatically get the latest lesson and download it.

There is a variety of ways you can access the free MP3 lessons. You can download each individual MP3 lesson itself, or you can follow the links on their website for BitTorrent downloads, or you can simply listen to the lessons directly from the webpage itself, which has embedded players.

Each lesson is about 15 minutes long (on average) and each lesson focuses on a particular topic. What's great about these lessons is that it builds upon what was learned from previous lessons. The hosts are great in that they help the listener by quickly reviewing words that were learned before (in case you've forgotten).

Each lesson usually begins with a dialogue between two people in Mandarin. This dialogue is repeated three times slowly. It is then broken down sentence by sentence, then word by word and it is all explained in English. The hosts are very good at relating it's use and sometimes go further by explaining how certain terms or sayings came about.

I would highly recommend that you start by listening to all the "Newbie" lessons, then work your way up to "Elementary", then "Intermediate", then "Upper Intermediate", then finally to the "Advanced" lessons.

To begin listening to the "Newbie" lessons, go to the ChinesePod.com website and click on "Podcast Archive" near the top of the page. Along the left side of the screen, you should see the different levels with numbered brackets (which indicates how many lessons there are in that particular level). Click on "Newbie" and you'll see the list of Newbie lessons, with the number representing what lesson number it is.

You'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Previous Entries" several times before you get to lesson #1.

I found that the lessons were slow enough to pick it up, but not too slow to discourage the listeners. I also found that the hosts views and their personal anecdotes quite refreshing and kept things interesting. I was quite surprised at how much I was able to retain and remember, which reflects the quality of the lessons and the fantastic job done by the hosts.

The only thing that I didn't like about the site involved site design. I started with only the "Newbie" lessons, however there were over 90 lessons under "Newbie" and the list sorted them with the most current lesson first. I ended up having to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on "Previous Entries" several times before I found the lesson I was on last.

While listening to all the lessons are free, there are extra materials that can be found for each lesson, but it will cost you a monthly fee. These extras include things like transcripts of the lesson, review materials, and lesson plans.

Also for a fee, users can have access to other parts of the site, including a "Learning Center", "Vocab Builder", "Flashcards", and "Glossary" sections.

I would have given this site a perfect 10 out of 10 if it were not for the extra paid features and the slight annoyance of finding the lesson I was last listening to. But overall, an excellent site and I would very highly recommend it to anyone wishing to learn Mandarin. Check it out at www.chinesepod.com or simply click on ChinesePod.com in the "Links" section on the right.

Overall Rating: 9/10