I’ve been using this quite a lot recently. Chinese Pod started as a podcast for learning Chinese and has expanded quite a bit with all sort of learning tools via a paid web site subscription.
The podcasts are still completely free and they have lessons at a variety of levels: Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and Advanced. Podcasts are typically around 15 minutes long, though some are as short as 10 minutes or as long as 20 from what I’ve seen so far. They have over 300 lessons currently available and publish new ones every weekday.
Typically they start with a short conversation, then repeat the conversation sentence by sentence accompanied with a translation. Following that they break down the translations to words/phrases that are new to the lesson, interspersed with discussions about the language, and how to use the new words you used in different contexts, or some similiar words you could use.
The conversations podcasts are pretty fun and interesting to listen to, a lot better than the typical dry learning materials everyone else uses. Although the show is produced in mainland China, it is produced in Shanghai, so the Mandarin usage is very close to the way it is used in Taiwan (specifically you don’t get the heavy Beijing accent and they don’t throw ‘er’ on the end of random words, use ‘nali’ instead of ‘nar’ etc.).
The learning tools on the site are a bit of a disappointment for Chinese learners interested in learning the traditional characters. The show transcripts are the only place where both simplified and traditional characters are used. Even so, some of the earlier shows have the transcript in both forms, but the vocabulary is listed only in Simplified characters, and the transcripts for a few shows are simplified only for some reason. The transcripts are part of the ‘basic’ subscription.
There are also a lot of other tools on the site as part of the premium subscription, but these features are available only in simplified characters, so I wouldn’t recommend it to learners in Taiwan. These features include character flashcards, review tests, etc.
I would recommend checking out the podcasts to anyone learning Chinese. They are fun to listen to which makes it easier to pick up the vocabulary. A basic subscription would be useful for someone interested in getting the transcripts, but make sure you page down to the traditional characters section. A premium subscription is not useful as long as those features only have simplified character content. They also offer a free 7 day premium trial subscription for those who want to see what it’s like before laying out the dough.
For iTunes users you can subscribe to their podcast via the iTunes Music Store in the podcast section (it is a free subscription).
