Now that these have both been out awhile and updated, has anyone used both of these recently that can give a comparison?
In the past six months, I’ve studied, not skimmed, every single one of Chinese Pod’s lessons, from Newbie through Intermediate, and every single one of Popup Chinese’s Intermediate lessons. I’ve been through Chinese Pod’s 352 Intermediate lessons once, plus about another 600 sequential and random listenings. My estimate is quite accurate due to the way I maintain my playlists on my various devices. Coming to Popup Chinese later, I’ve just completed studying their 111 Intermediate lessons in order. I glanced at the structure of their Absolute Beginners and Elementary. I get the impression they’re quite similar to Chinese Pod’s, but not being at that level anymore, I don’t feel like actually examining them. As for each company’s Advanced, I’ve spot-checked them, and they’re too difficult for me. If you’re able to handle their advanced, then you’re able to listen to enough radio and TV talk shows to obviate the need for these companies’ services. I’m not going to address the entertainment factor here, or reading and writing skills. My review concerns how well these companies can help intermediate speakers of everyday Chinese attain advanced functionality in a real world Chinese-speaking environment.
Given their trajectories, the two companies’ products will eventually have virtually identical utility in terms of their pedagogical techniques’ effectiveness. But the quick evaluation accords the advantage to Chinese Pod, which proffers significantly more material. Intermediates can consume such lessons much faster than producers can make them. So a larger store matters, at least until Popup Chinese has built up a hundred or so more so that lessons can be usefully revisited. Along with some learning, I primarily use these lessons to produce an environment of comprehensible linguistic demand that keeps me prepared to spontaneously call up what I’ve already acquired in a natural delay-free way out in the real world. Unless I’m getting regular and frequent reenforcement, I get rusty—tongue-tied—in ways that won’t do in real life, and radio’s and TV’s difficulty still can’t reenforce my listening and speaking abilities. The pattern Chinese Pod settled into after its first thirty or so lessons works well: a fifteen-minute lesson that starts with a one-minute dialog, thirteen minutes of discussion, the dialog repeated, and a closing. The discussion is 50/50 between the native Chinese speaker speaking Chinese and the native English speaker speaking English. The seamless exchange about the dialog just heard is mostly comprehensible, especially because having just hearing the dialog aligns your expectations with the discussion. The input is highly comprehensible in the speakers’ natural exchange, and the Chinese speaker is good at seamlessly injecting an English word when necessary to maintain the rhythm of the discussion without dropping into English.
Popup Chinese at first provided a much less rich Chinese linguistic environment. The ten-minute lessons (33% shorter than Chinese Pod) up to July 9, 2010 consist of the one-minute dialog, an eight-minute discussion in English, then the dialog repeated. The native English speakers overbear the Chinese speaker, who is frequently reduced to saying “mmm hmm,” and even drops into English for long stretches. As with Chinese Pod, the dialogs comprehensibility is low, and Popup Chinese’s low-intermediate approach to intermediate material quite fails to provide an intermediate Chinese linguistic environment. Starting with the lesson of July 9, 2010 and continuing to the present for the most part without exception, you get the dialog, followed by a nearly 50/50 discussion, then the dialog again to round out the ten minutes. The discussion, however, is mostly taken up by a line by line translation of the dialog: the line of dialog is replayed, then the Chinese host repeats it more slowly and distinctly, then the English speaker translates it. That leaves about half of the total discussion time for a real 50/50 discussion between the hosts, leaving the meat of these lessons—the discussion—more spare than Chinese Pod’s. On some occasions, the English speaker still takes up the lion’s share of the speaking time. It would be a big mistake for either of these companies to believe that, in terms of fostering language acquisition, their lessons’ value resides in their dialogs rather than their discussions. But Popup Chinese manifests that mistake much more than Chinese Pod.
Both companies’ collections of MP3’s consist of standalone lessons rather than series, and thus they don’t assist in acquiring vocabulary. Despite many useful new words, there’s no systematic reenforcement in subsequent lessons. This avoidable design error provides an accumulating list of isolated items that you can then study and try to learn via flashcards rather than the frequent restaging that could have made acquisition possible. Once these companies stabilized their approach and could see that they’d be producing tens and even hundreds of lessons, they could easily have systematized an method to acquire vocabulary via a repetition scheme. Both companies can still start doing this, and thus set themselves apart from every other producer of language materials I’ve ever seen in any language. As it stands, however, I frequently encounter new stuff at both Chinese Pod and Popup Chinese that I excitedly see would be very useful in extending my capacity for expressive nuance, even as I know full well it won’t be available to me when the appropriate situation of linguistic demand arises in my real life due to lack of exercise. If either of these companies came up with a target vocabulary of five hundred or a thousand words beyond what intermediate speakers have already acquired, and then promise a systematic approach to acquiring that list over the next one or two or three hundred lessons, I’d give them the advantage on that count alone.
Perhaps Popup Chinese is more promising in terms of adapting its pedagogy toward acquisition over learning with the aim of leading intermediate speakers into the circle of the advanced. Chinese Pod has already erred with its Upper Intermediate series. Those two hundred-fifty lessons again lack a systematic approach to acquiring vocabulary. The discussions would be wonderful: the native English speaker, whose Mandarin is excellent I’ve been told by a local teacher, now speaks Chinese with the native Chinese speaker, and so that would double the amount of comprehensible input per lesson. The problem, however, is not that the dialogs are longer, but they are filled with so many new vocabulary items that must be learned and can’t be acquired that it renders the discussion non-comprehensible. For the time being, I can use the Upper Intermediate series for studying. But for everyday comprehensible stimulation, I’m stuck with using my intermediate Chinese Pod MP3’s as a long, randomized playlist that simulates a kind of comprehensible Chinese radio, but that’s still about 50% English. I really wish I had a comparable resource that was 100% Chinese. Popup Chinese currently has no level between their Intermediate and Advanced. Since they take a low-intermediate approach to their intermediate dialogs, the real promise here—unless Chinese Pod changes their established course—would be for Popup Chinese to begin an Upper Intermediate series. Preferably they’d try to pioneer a systematic approach to acquiring, not simply studying, vocabulary. They would still produce a valuable product, however, if they merely reused their existing Intermediate dialogs in a 100% Chinese discussion between two Chinese speakers that took a more advanced approach to that same dialog. Upper Intermediate users, having already gone through their Intermediate series, would find the reused Intermediate dialogs readily comprehensible, freeing up the Popup Chinese’s speakers for a wider ranging discussion. I heartily request Popup Chinese start producing such an Upper Intermediate series.
I just want to be able to listen to all the podcasts with a pinyin transcription and a translation. What’s it cost? How do I sign up? How do I pay?
Give me an answer in baby steps (geriatric actually) or I’ll blow a valve and conclude you don’t know how to make things easy and not sign up.
as far as I can tell you are the best language learning site on the planet.
Jimmy the saint there seems to have it wrapped up. Make sure that what you teach is useful and make sure you recycle it in novel, interesting environments that give tons of clues to meaning through context.
If you have translated material in earlier lessons don’t translate it again. At an upper intermediate level the last thing we need/want is to be listening to English when we could probably understand the chinese.
Thanks.
For those interested, there is also my Chinese Learn Online course, produced and developed right here in Taiwan. While the lesson count is much lower (420 in all), I tried to differentiate from competing podcasts by making each lesson continue right where the previous one left off. As vocabulary is taught, it is integrated into the lesson, so you’re getting constant review. The early levels are taught mainly in English while the later levels are all in Chinese - they key being they can only use Chinese that has been taught previously, so you’re never inundated with Chinese you don’t understand.
Word for word transcripts of each lesson are provided to premium subscribers in a variety of formats (pinyin, traditional, simplified, English) with popup translations online, so you can follow along in the way that suits you best.
I think this format works well to bridge the gap between different levels, as there is a clear line of progression from one to another.
the dude of the second post above, might be hot rockin’ Chinese for all us white folk - i would certainly favour ChinesePod, too - but forgive me if I may suggest that the lessons (at least up to the low intermediate that I got up to), are progressive in terms of vocabulary and grammar; they refer to earlier lesssons and use stuff previously taught. They also work as stand alone lessons, in as much as each podcast is sufficient unto itself to provide a decent chunk of each (new vocab and grammar). So, it wins there too!
Excellent write up! I’ve listened to a few of the Chinese Pod lessons on iTunes, and maybe a hundred of the Popup Chinese lessons from their website. I like that so much of the Popup Chinese listening material is provided free. How much free listening material can you get from Chinese Pod? 
I have. Unfortunately, the result was less than successful. They had me sign in, and assured me that I should be able to see confirmation in an email which never came. So, I can’t seem to sign in for anything free. Maybe that’s my fault.
I was able to listen to some free pods from both sites via iTunes, but I am now asking a very helpful/informative poster (JimmyTS) if he would be willing to add just a little more info.
ChinesePod released a torrent of its first few years into the public domain. They don’t seed that torrent anymore, but you can find it in the usual places. Downloading the whole shebang requires several days, even on a fast connection. You can download the remainder for free from their web site during your one-week trial, so it’s worth contacting them if your sign-up isn’t working properly. But you have to sit there for several hours clicking through everything to download it, so it’s work. ChinesePod must anticipate this behavior, so I’m curious as to their business model and how well it works.
I couldn’t find free access to Popup Chinese, but for USD $50, it’s all-you-can-eat for a year. They have enough content now that I wouldn’t begrudge the small expense, even if, after hours of manually searching and downloading, I was presently only able to get 48 usable intermediate dialogs out of the deal. I figure by the end of my subscription, there’ll be twenty or so more. Popup Chinese orients less to selling people on live tutoring services than ChinesePod’s expensive but competitively priced packages. So again, I’m curious as to the business model. I wonder if the government subsidizes either of these organizations to promote spreading Mandarin acquisition, which will benefit Chinese interests.
As for ChineseLearnOnline, I’ve looked over their system and evaluated a dozen or so lessons. If the immersion plays out as progressively over the whole range as they lead one to believe–and it appears that it will–that might make it the best of the three, though not as numerous as ChinesePod. ChineseLearnOnline’s web interface supports their lessons better than the other two companies’, but that’s wasted if you study via smartphone, especially if it’s not iOS. I always have to download everything, then optimize the materials in a way customized for my phone’s apps. ChineseLearnOnline will make a fine archive that I can put on random play for a kind of comprehensible Chinese radio stream. Their pedagogical technique sucessfully keeps the English to a minimum, even at level 3. There’s not much free content, but apparently if you purchase web access (not just bulk download), you can also manually download the whole shebang. Their business model is clear: they add so much value to web access that peope will want to stay subscribed rather than download and leave, which I will do.
ChineseLearnOnline’s first drawback is the non-standard Mandarin pronunciation. They use all Taiwanese speakers, so you’re only going to have that sound in your ears, perhaps desirable for people on this forum. But if I were a beginner, that would have been unacceptable to me. The sound is pretty comparable to Shanghai’s ChinesePod, though the latter’s native Chinese speaker has been speaking a lot of standard erhua lately. ChinesePod also frequently points out regional differences in usage and pronunciation during their spontaneous discussion.
ChineseLearnOnline’s second drawback: absolutely no spontaneous discussion. 100% scripting may enable their superior systematic progressive immersion and exhaustive reference material for every single lesson, but the feeling of people reading to you rather than talking to you pervades every moment. The delivery never has that ineffable affect and rhythm of natural speech no matter how smoothly they deliver, rather than perform, the script. But their clarity and comprehensibility never waver, and I’m leaning toward the opinion that intermediate customers still benefit greatly, perhaps no less. ChineseLearnOnline stopped extending their series after 420 lessons due to a dearth of advanced customers. Instead, they went back and fixed glitches in the material already produced–depth over breadth, which was smart. They might consider hiring actors with standard accents to perform their already written scripts at fully native speed and with native lazy articulation. This would extend the MP3’s utility much longer as intermediates became advanced.
…via tapatalk
Thanks Jimmy for your thorough review of my ChineseLearnOnline site. Your comments are spot on. I designed it on purpose to differentiate from other solutions that were already on the market. I wanted to add a Pimsleur type feel to them, continuing on where Pimsleur leaves off. I did try to add some variety to later lessons in the form of some scripted banter between the hosts, along with articles and other materials. Everything has to be scripted because the hosts are only allowed to use vocabulary that was taught in previous lessons, apart from the 4-5 new words taught in each lesson. Extensive review tools have been added to the website to let you practice your pronunciation, speaking, reading, writing, typing, grammar etc. The following benefits emerged from this process:
- Commons words and phrases are automatically reused in future lessons, so you automatically remember them as you hear them enough times.
- If you hear a word in a lesson that you don’t remember, you can search for it on the site’s word bank. In addition to the definition, it will highlight all the lessons that it has ever been reused.
- The more lessons you go through, the more progress you make, as the lessons build off each other.
Since the lessons are progressive, I’m not sure how effective a random playlist would be, unless you’re using it for review. Then again, I did have one user who started with the last lesson in each level and worked his way backward to the first and easiest lesson, so to each their own!
I’m suggesting that, if you’re looking to enhance your current stock and not extend it, you can hire people trained in performing scripts. I imagine amateur theater actors would suffice and be cost effective. Untrained non-actors will never sound natural with scripted material regardless of their other abilities, even if they memorize it. Jenny and John at ChinesePod, for example, “perform” some of the early intermediate lessons and, despite their other talents, it sucks the life out of the material. ChinesePod quickly moved to trained performers. Jenny and John sound wonderful (i.e. normal) as they discuss prearranged themes and points. You could call this duplicated, more challenging to understand material “CLO After Dark,” or something to make it sound dangerously appealing. And even if actors don’t hit every word, rendering the reference material a bit inaccurate, it wouldn’t matter because the After Dark users will be assumed to have already been through the lesson and only in pursuit of more challenging listening comprehension. Actors screened for this particular ability might be able to give a “good enough” in just one or two takes, economizing resources.
Yes, one of the pleasures of CP is the natural sound of the actors voices and the real emotions you can hear when they speak. You can actually learn to distinguish when certain phrases are more appropriate than others because of context and emotion.
One of the best series they ever did was the Lost-inspired “Jizhou” about a disappearance in a fictional Himalayan area. Could listen to it over and over because it was a fun adventure.
One thing that drives me batty about most podcasts is unlike Pimsleur where you dive right in to the material, the Podcasts spend 30 seconds to a minute with a radio style introduction (often loud and unbalanced to the later dialogue). Perhaps it provides entertainment value or keeps it light for some but when I’m trying get as much input as possible over a short period of time it feels like a waste.
Amen to that. I didn’t want to say anything about style or entertainment value because ultimately the effectiveness at helping to acquire Mandarin is all that matters. I only wanted to consider the meat of each series. But Chinese Learn Online does indeed get straight to the task and never indulges in deviating, which is most welcome even if plain Jane.
Thanks for the feedback. I like the “CLO After Dark” idea for the Chinese Learn Online site. I could do a video series of actors doing some of the earlier dialogues. I tried to do that on the site, but you’re right, it looks quite amateur if you don’t have trained actors, or the right equipment.
Regarding delving right into the material, as Jimmy noted, later levels (from level 3 on) do indeed do that. The first couple of levels are used to teach enough vocabulary where we can engage in discussions or explain dialogues entirely using previously taught vocabulary. Users have noted that there is a big jump in difficulty at that level where the lesson is conducted almost entirely in Chinese. I’ve to reassure them that all the vocabulary has been taught before, and it is a jump that has to be taken to advance their Chinese to the next level. There are transcripts available with popup translations to guide them, if they do get lost.
When I attended an intermediate class at a local language center, I found myself only understanding 30% of what the teacher said on day one. However after a couple of weeks, I found myself understanding 70% of what she said, since a lot of words and phrases were being reused. I’ve tried to recreate the same experience in the course - reusing common lines and phrases over and over so they become a natural part of the user’s vocabulary, without too much effort on the user’s part.
No need for videos: I mean voice actors for MP3’s that I can load into my phone and immerse.
We acquire a lot of language from the teacher’s spontaneous language, mannerisms, and rambling on. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what ChineseLearnOnline sacrifices for systematicity. In addition to naturalized (i.e. acted) dialogs, ChinesePod is very good at providing a native speaker’s real-time language by letting the teacher ramble on naturally. PopupChinese failed to recognize that we get more from the discussion about the acted dialog than from their short dialog itself until the English speakers stopped overwhelming the Chinese speaker with the lesson of July 9, 2010. But even after that, they sometimes short her on speaking time. I don’t know what they’re thinking here. Intermediate listeners are already dedicated enough that they don’t need to worry about entertaining an audience at the expense of pedagogical quality. I wish PopupChinese would permanently realize that no matter how dry or witty the wit, if they’re not speaking Chinese when riffing on those cretins from Shanghai, or gay radioactive zombies from outer space–or whatever–then they’re not serving intermediate customers.
I was going to write a long post about our pedagogical approach and how we throw out a lot of the stuff that traditional programs do because they don’t work or are just designed to increase sales instead of actually educate people. And then I went back and saw which lesson JimmyTheSaint kept mentioning. And I realized it was Trapped in a Sea Cave. And what else do we need to say?
http://popupchinese.com/lessons/intermediate/trapped-in-a-sea-cave
Picture yourself trapped in a sea cave with storm waters swirling around you. Feel yourself cold and wet and minutes from death, and ask yourself which podcast you would use if you absolutely HAD to speak in flawless mandarin. Would you put on a show about visiting the Great Wall and drinking tea, or would you play the lesson that would give you exactly the Chinese you need to tame the very elements themselves. Add on the fact that Popup Chinese is free, uncensored and no-one constantly mixes up words like 金/惊 and 玩/玩儿 and what other choice is there?
I’m sure the other products here are excellent. But there is a method to our madness and it works for a large number of smart people who are frustrated at other products and textbooks that have them on a treadmill to nowhere. We’ve had people go from our absolute beginner to our advanced podcasts in under two years. This is not a function of having limited upper-level materials. Anyone who gets through our fairly massive stock of intermediate lessons and dialogues can move on to Film Friday, KTV Wednesday, our annotated short stories, or our massive archive of HSK test questions. And congratulations on making it to the advanced level. If you want more challenging materials, why not start here? A fair number of advanced shows have transcripts if you look for them:
I’m not clear what point you’re making at the beginning of your post. I raised no issue with the pedagogical value of your content; I just remarked the dearth of it in the greater part of the intermediate lessons up to July 9, 2010. Up to then, the general pattern was one-minute bookends of new and challenging content, plus the meat of the lesson: the teachers’ six-minute discussion, five of which was in English, and a portion of the rest the Chinese speaker’s “mmm hmm.” After that, the pattern you’ve settled into is fine–almost 50/50–though there’s still frequently more English than necessary. The three minutes of unscripted Chinese puts your lessons at a lower level than ChinesePod’s 6 1/2 minutes per on comparably challenging content. That’s why I requested you consider adding another level that exploits the dialogs you already have in the can by supplementing them with a more advanced discussion consisting of a very high proportion of Chinese, perhaps including a fluent non-native speaker. You don’t need to worry about “reruns”–I’d be happy to re-visit brain-eating vampire pirates in a more Mandarin-immersive environment.
When I spot-checked your advanced lessons, they were a quantum conversational leap beyond the intermediate, so I disagree with you there. Along with ChinesePod’s 350, I’ve studied through your 170 or so intermediates–the last 48 of which are now in my heavy rotation–and I’m nowhere near the level of aural comprehension required for your or anyone’s advanced. Literary short stories don’t bear on my need for fluency in a Chinese-speaking living environment if the stories aren’t in spoken style; HSK stuff likewise. Maybe your progression works for people who need to read and write, but for people valorizing getting along in a Chinese-speaking society, you’ve got a lacuna between your intermediate and advanced. If you ever see it that way, then I’m hoping you won’t take ChinesePod’s approach of producing much longer Upper Intermediate dialogs filled with a plethora of new vocabulary, but rather progress via a more comprehensible, Chinese-immersive path like the one I’ve requested–or some other–that perhaps also systematically restages the most useful possible vocabulary.
I’ve subscribed to both Chinesepod and Popup Chinese and I prefer Popup. It’s been awhile since CP- I think I subscribed back in 2006, so I don’t know how it’s evolved over the years, but I really enjoy PopUp. I just feel more in touch with the culture when I’m listening to it than i did with CP. I’ve been studying on and off since 1998 and got an 8 on the old HSK, so I don’t know how Popup feels for beginners, but I love it - the variety and presentation really rekindled my interest in the language when it was seriously lagging. I’m also a big fan of the Sinica podcast on PopUp. Really a great way for a foreigner to keep up with current events in China.
can you share a login/subscription for ChinesePod? We want to divide the membership between some friends.
I’ve finished studying Chinese Learn Online levels 3-7 (300 lessons). As to the way Chinese Learn Online, Popup Chinese, and Chinese Pod compare (for intermediate people), I’m still going to go with my earlier assessment. CLO provides a much higher proportion of comphrehensibility, so is much more useful to enhance fluency and acquire vocabulary. The content isn’t fun or sexy, but utilitarian and repetitive enough that there’s no English except when a new vocabulary word is first defined. The experience is immersive, whereas Popup Chinese’s degree of immersion is about 10%, and Chinese Pod’s is 50%, though its lessons are longer.
I still say that CLO could easily benefit from adding some naturally delivered content. It’s biggest disadvantage is that everything is scripted, and that’s always clear from the speakers’ rhythm, cadence, tone–whatever you want to call it. They could hire some professional voice actors and slowly (as their resources allow) build up a stock of naturally delivered dialogs from the already-existing scripts. These wouldn’t have to be produced in any particular order. If they have the resources to produce 10-50 of these per year, then slowly but surely they’d fill in the whole lot, while at any given moment provide a useful supply. Then users, on subsequent listenings, could always try listening to material they’ve already heard (but not memorized) that’s more like what they hear spontaneously spoken. I mean, I can see myself immersing myself for some time to come in a CLO-filled MP3 player while doing various tasks. I don’t need the material to be entertaining, I just need to keep my skills as sharp as possible. Having a natural delivery in my ears would make it even better. My new suggested name for these added lessons is “CLO au naturel.”
I’d also like to revise my view of Chinese Pod’s upper intermediate level. I jumped ahead to about lesson 300, and they seem much more comprehensible, not so hell bent on piling on tons of new vocabulary. Maybe it’s because my past four months with CLO have boosted my comprehension, but I do think it’s also because Chinese Pod eventually found a way to make their upper intermediate series more suitable for people just following on from intermediate. The English speaker throws in just enough English at just the right times, so it’s quite immersive. I’d estimate my comprehension at 70%, which is about the same for me as CLO’s highest level (on first listening). Since Chinese Pod is natural delivery, there’s a lot more coming at you in any 10-12-minute lesson; with CLO, on the other hand, at the highest level I’d say my second and subsequent listenings are easily 90-100% because the slower speaking speed, shorter time, and use of repeated things make it easier to exhaust everything that’s in each lesson.
I no longer find Chinese Pod’s intermediate acceptable because of the amount of English, so I’m now going to move on by listening to Chinese Pod’s upper intermediate very closely, and using CLO levels 3-7 for passive listening. As it stands, as an intermediate trying to become advanced, Popup Chinese is virtually useless. Yes, I can pick up some things that will be very cool to say if I wait long enough for the appropriate situation to arise (and manage to remember the cool thing), but I continue to see their intermediate lessons as consisting of too much English (and digressive discussion) that engages with smart and witty natural dialogs that are short and difficult. Popup Chinese takes a beginner’s approach to advanced material, which serves and benefits far fewer people than it impresses.