Chinesepod

Chinesepod is a very intriguing, podcast-based language learning site.

I subscribed to and utilized Chinesepod religiously for 14 months. A few months ago I started to become disillusioned with it and stopped using it. I probably will return at some point in the future after I’ve been able to fill in some of the gaps left by its method.

Chinesepod provides fresh podcast lessons on a daily basis – for free. Companion transcripts and on-line practice tools can be accessed with a paid subscription. The service is very seductive because the podcasts are highly entertaining and engaging. They are short in duration (10-15 minutes) and are segmented according to four different user levels (Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced).

Chinesepod provides an excellent toolset for students first starting to study the language. It offers a large mass of entertaining content to help users gain familiarity with the sounds and structure of the language. This is extremely valuable. I believe that Chinesepod also probably is excellent for advanced learners who have developed a well-grounded foundation in the language, and just need additional content and vocabulary to build their fluency level. I say this based primarily on the comments of other users, since I have not yet reached that skill level.

Where Chinesepod is deficient is in its lack of layering and reinforcement. Each podcast is designed as a standalone lesson. The idea is for users to select a topic they are interested in (e.g. travel), and then search for sets of lessons that address this topic. This approach is very flexible and modular. On the surface it seems powerful, because the student can focus on subjects they are most interested in, skipping the rest. The issue, in my view, is that it inhibits lessons from building upon each other. There can never be an explicit referral back to or expansion of content learned in previous lessons, because there is no standardized lesson sequence. This has negative ramifications for long-term retention as well as for gaining a comprehensive understanding of common language constructs.

I did not develop an awareness of these deficiencies until after I had been working the content for over year. I subscribed to the “Premium” service which includes on-line tools for drilling vocabulary and constructs learned in the podcasts. I took it on faith that this would effectively build my retention. I eventually figured out a way to quantitatively test this belief, and found my retention to be much lower than I had expected.

I listened to the stripped-down dialogue scripts from all 197 lessons that I had previously studied, and found my comprehension level to be as follows:

1. Dialogues that I fully understood: 16%
2. Dialogues that I understood the general subject of, but not all the words: 28%
3. Dialogues that I understood some words from, but not the overall subject: 56%
4. Dialogues for which I understood absolutely nothing: 0%

The results were disappointing. But, I also must say that I would not still be studying the language today if not for Chinesepod. And, I am hopeful that the operators of the service will continue to improve it.