I’ve been thinking about motivation all week and the different ways it affects people. Let me explore one aspect of this.
Our CRM data yields an interesting description of a ‘typical’ ChinesePod subscriber:a 30-something/American/male/professional. This demographic data tells us who he is. (He is, btw, under-represented on the blog/forums, possibly due to work/family commitments.)
Then there’s the psychographic data. This segments subscribers by personality traits, and should reveal something about lifestyle, values, and what people want. One psychographic segment is what we call the ‘Personal Growths’ - people learning Chinese for reasons other than strictly practical ones. I’m interested to know what motivates our ‘PGs’. I want to know something about their values and motivations. I asked about political preferences on the poll this week, and was not surprised to see that our users tilt a bit to the left. I feel I know just a little bit more about you now, but I have to figure out how this type of psychographic information (in this case about values) informs our decisions in developing the product. What do you think about this?
Now notice that I’m talking about subscribers here, rather than casual users. Everyone is welcome here, without a doubt. But I have to try to understand what motivates people to pay for this service. If I know what it was that you actually pay for, then I can give you more of it. We must build the service around what paying customers want. Any other strategy would seem to me to be terribly ungracious, wouldn’t you agree?
So, here’s the question: What is it that prompted you to pay for the service?
Ken Carroll
Hi Ken,What I like about it is that I can listen to someone speaking Mandarin everyday and it is different.Just 15 mins or so at the computer. I really think the Pinyin tones are excellent I use them alot. I like the grammar as well-In fact I like it all!
I also like your talk with Dr Xie and Cythia Ning ( went out and bought her book)so more of those from time to time. What happened when you went to the Chinese convention in USA in Nov? I would love to know what was new , who you thought would be worth while looking into.
Have a great Christmas and New Year.
Yours
Keith
For me it simply because I was amazed by how much I learnt from just the very first lesson and I knew I’d by able to learn the language this way.
Oh yeah and I fell in love with Jenny after the first lesson as well.
I think you should also ask those who don’t subscribe what you could offer to get them to become subscribers … unless, that is, you really don’t want to know. Also ask them what other sites they subscribe to and why. Ok, no more feedback from me. Carry on.
I suscribed because there are so many interesting and different ways to help you learn…not just the pods themselves but the Flash based grammar tutorials, the flashcards & the concentration game and the searchable glossary. Because I am learning with my 8 year old (& really I am doing this for him so he has a really useful 2nd launguage when he’s older rather than just learning French at school…(why French??? What is the point???!)…sorry, side-tracked…..because I am learning with an 8 year old I was impressed by the ease & different ways to use ChinesePod. I don’t pressure him at all into doing it…it is supposed to be fun…and we both find fun & interesting ways of learning using your site. I think we all need a variety in the way we teach and learn and your site offers that. You also seem to be innovative & constantly adding & changing so it’s well worth sticking with. Is worth every penny!
Ken- your blog is right on queue as, just last night, I was telling someone how innovative you all are and how you’re constantly asking us what we want.
Interesting question for me, because I had checked out CPod early ‘06 and didn’t follow up. Not sure why. Later, I realized my speaking was way ahead of listening comprehension, so I tried it again. And found it hugely effective in that regard.
What sealed the deal was the trial without having to put down a credit card. Don’t know about the statistics, but I know with my friends and family, there is a huge hesitation to participate in a free trial with a credit card number.
rb
As a basic subscriber, I pay for the transcripts. I use this Chinese Pod as a supplement for regular university classes, so I have enough to do even before Chinese Pod came around. Mostly I use CP for listening practice and I also make speaking practice remixes of the podcast. (Thanks for letting us do this for free.)
I fit your mentioned demographic–30 something/American/male/professional/with a young family. So what’s keeping me from subscribing to the premium service? Frankly, it’s the fact it’s tied to sitting in front of a computer and that I get my main study materials from my regular class. Absent the latter, I probably would pay more for CP.
Note to the techies. When I am at the Chinese Pod main page and click on Community and then go to the ChinesePod blog list and click on Weekly Update I get the message:
“Error 404 - Not Found
Sorry, but you are looking for something that is not here.
Do you want to go Home?
This happens fairly often and is annoying. Can you please incorporate a procedure for checking and eliminating this error. Thank you.
Before I found ChinesePod, I had been using Pimsleur’s Mandarin I lessons. In the case of both ChinesePod and Pimsleur, the focus on using words in context really appealed and I found myself picking up a lot of vocabulary comparatively quickly.
But, of course, that doesn’t explain why I handed over a big ol’ wad of cash for an entire year of a premium subscription.
Simply put, I’m a premium subscriber because, during my one week free trial, I found this a very effective ‘base’ on which to build my study of the language. I’m not attending classes right now, and my past experience with language classes has been to find them annoying and frustrating rather than fun and interesting. Nonetheless, without that imposed structure in the background, I still wanted to find someplace where I could ‘test’ myself, where I could copy down new words and play games with them to keep them fresh in my memory, where I could get the characters and the Pinyin for all the new vocabulary, and where I could find help from other learners/teachers if I found myself stuck in some grammar pitfall.
So far, ChinesePod hasn’t disappointed. More vocabulary retention games and grammar, though!
Ken,
I attend class regularly with a teacher and texts. I supplement w/CPod by listening to the podcasts and reading thru the comments. If I didn’t attend a class, I would definitely be a premium subscriber.
Thanks for making the podcasts free.
–Lin
I pay to show gratitude to the organisation, and for what I can’t easily get elsewhere, which at the moment is traditional character transcripts.
At this stage of my learning I’m still phrase and sentence bound, because I don’t have access to the rules of the game we’re playing or the confidence to make up my own rules. Therefore I don’t need emphasis on vocabulary, I need plenty of empowering explanations (with or without the disdained G word who cares) and a huge quantity of exercises that have me spontaneously generate whole sentences from my own brain, with answers, until it sticks. I only learn what I do, not what I witness. Books provide this with excruciating boredom, but they’re portable therefore they do get used. The mode of presentation is not so important; the content is. When I’m a bit more advanced I’ll probably get a lot more out of a full subscription, and lobby for more use of traditional character options.
Ken, do you happen to know what percentage of subscribers are over 40 or over 50? I guess it would be higher than one might expect. At around 40 everyone’s eyesight starts to deteriorate, so knowing this statistic could help in designing physical presentation of tools, font selection and size, etc. (Hearing also deteriorates with age, a bit later on, but the audio quality here is already so consistently good that you won’t have to consider that.)
I subscribed because, as a teacher, I like to keep up on what’s happening in Mandarin learning, especially outside the moribund profession itself. I really like the democracy here…the big brain of disparate learners; very refreshing for the field of education where generally it’s a shoving match among those who think they have the biggest cudgels (degrees, positions, the weight of accepted wisdom, or perceived stature).
I started to learn Chinese several months ago and discovered that there are no interesting materials (at least on Russian which is my native). So I am really glad I’ve found ChinesePod - your lessons are great.
Now I feel I can’t leave without Jenny… hmm… and probably without Ken.
Another important thing for me is English in lessons. It is not hard so I can understand everything in spite of the fact that I am not native English speaker.
As a 30-something professional left-wing female German, who normally avoids to appear in the www foreground, I also wonder, how I could get that commited to ChinesePod. Here’s what I found out until now:
- You tell who you are. It’s important for me to have an idea of your background. To know, that you are in Shanghai. Many language teaching sources don’t tell about their background. But especially as a newbie your clear self-positioning gives me orientation. It’s good to know that I’m learning the language of some edgy, open-minded Laowais (who care about the advice of their Chinese friends). Migrant workers, people only interested in money, party officials or even only Beijingers may have a different language - but at least you let me know.
- You’re real. From my Hanzi book I learn how to write “Are there any elephants in this park?” You tought me Ni zen me yang. I learn a lot about actual life in China from you - and the community.
- You’re transparent (I’m convinced). In the lessons, in the comments, in the blog, in the email replies. I like the impression, that you aren’t hiding anything, that could concern your listeners. I’m convinced that being honest is the best business strategy. Maybe that’s why I like you.
- You’re responsive. Many Internet-Companies try to build up some good communication with their customers. And they send a boilerplate answer after 2 weeks…
- You’re getting better and better. You don’t only ask questions for keeping up a conversation, but also realize things. Compare the early lessons to the actual ones. It’s just impressing.
- You’re committed. Not to money, but to find new ways in Chinese and language teaching. Of course you need money to survive, and I’m sure everybody agrees. But - and that’s crucial - I believe that money is not the only thing for you. It’s cool that you publish the podcasts under the Creative Common Licence. Really cool.
- You’re entertaining. I think, passion and motivation is the most important thing in language learning. I don’t know how far I would have get with my boring “My little brother is taller than me” textbook.
- You’re various. If it was only Aric, only Jenny, only John, only Colleen, only you, I would probably get bored or annoyed. But you all are so different :-). I like to see a wide picture, as wide as it can be without faking. I like to hear about expensive dinners *and* people who can’t afford a second child. Please take care and don’t get more and more hip and famous and rich and stylish. I love to hear the down to earth things. And stories from older generations. My attention is higher, when Jenny tells about her parents, than when Aric talks about expensive dinners. But I want to hear it all
Well, these are the main things. I promise, that this year I won’t post such a long text anymore
Keep up your great work!
Recently someone posted a video on your blog that was actually a talk about Howard Moskowitz and the fundamental changes he made to the food industry. I was fascinated by how this guy arrived at the epiphany that changed forever the way food is marketed to consumers. He realized that the way the food industry went about finding out what people wanted was flawed. It was flawed for a number of reasons, but key among them was that they were asking the wrong questions.
I thought this was particularly interesting because you want to find out more about what motivates your Chinesepod community. Obviously you should just ask your listeners, but you don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the food industry. There are just two things that are important when taking a survey: getting a good sample and asking the right questions.
Your side-bar surveys has the same problem that food industry had in the early 80’s – you are only asking one question at a time. You would be better served by a survey that identify important characteristics of your sample population at the same you are asking key questions. Some of the characteristics you are interested in are: what level are they, how long have they listened to Chinesepod, what type of subscriber are they, and what other types of Chinese leaning they have endured. Your key questions might be: do you want to learn to read Chinese charaters, do you prefer more structure in the lessons, do you prefer audio only, or perhaps some video too, etc. Multiple choice on motivations. The idea is that by doing a more structured survey you might find some characterizations of your beginners that don’t hold true for you intermediates.
The other problem with your side-bar surveys is that they don’t reach the people on your RSS feed. So I suggest you mention the survey on a weeks worth of podcasts at each level. Also offer them some reward, like access to a pod cast that is not available on the site. There might be a lot of potential subscribers out there if you can find out what will entice them.
Another option might be to consult with Howard Moskowitz.
At 54, I guess I am 1 or 2 standard deviations from the mean age. I am certainly left-center in my politics and am glad to see so many “young” folks in the poll leaning in that direction.
As Auntie Sue said, my eyes are going so I usually use a magnifying class for character study; also the old brain doesn’t retain the way it did over 35 years ago in college and grad school.
Why did I subscribe? A lifelong interest in the food, culture and language and a long time Zen/Chan practitioner. I started late 2005 after my wife and I booked a 3 week trip to China and Tibet which we did in June/July 2006.
I used (and continue to use) the lessons as a supplement to a private tutor from a local university. In fact, she has turned her students on to CPod based on my recommendation.
I have no practical need to learn the language, but, I find it keeps me young both intellectually and vicariously listening to the kids having a great time in China! My middle son just graduated college and I am encouraging him to “look west young man” for the future. And I don’t mean California. (We live near New York City.)
Its also a wonderful change from my day job as a partner in a CPA firm!
We do not celebrate X-mas but our family tradition is to head to Chinatown (New York)every X-mas day when the tourists are home and the Chinese food is better than usual! This year I’ll be able to really screw up an order in mangled Chinese!
Well,Happy, Healthy, & Safe Holidays to everyone.
Hihi Ken,
even if you ask your Mr. Neverpost to come out, 90% of the replies come from your usual enthusiastic suspects. And this even though you posted this close to a Christmas weekend when even the hardest working US-citizen 30-something male might dig out some free minutes. Maybe the reasons for not posting are not only time constraints after all, but rather priority constraints.
I think this rises an important question: Why are some of us posting more than others - assuming it is not boredom & neglecting work and family?
For me the reasons to post here are:
1. I noticed that the CPod team listens - and I have the impression I can have my own slight influence on shaping this service (factoring out some nonsense ideas I posted here).
2. The Community is a major motivational factor and provides a treasure chest full of ideas, opionions & experiences. Some of which made me calibrate my own approach to learning Chinese.
Unfortunately I also do have some commitments myself, so when I am posting on weekdays, I deduct the time to do so from my overall daily Chinese-time-budget. I am convinced it is worth it.
By the way: A major factor here is diversity. It is not a monoculture of 30-something-American-male-professionals. The blend makes it perfect - spanning all countries and ages and enforcing a wide and colorful varity of subjects in the podcasts.
I would highly object a service 100% geared at business Chinese and targeted at US customers only.
CPOD CUSTOMER ALIAS: Prez Life
CPOD CUSTOMER TYPE: Cash Cow
CPOD PURCHASE BEHAVIOR: $360 to-date through four sequential transactions, each for the Premium Service: $30 + $30 + $150 + $150.
ANCILLARY PURCHASES: $100 to a CPOD-listed independent teacher for 16 hours of tone and pronunciation coaching. This has been extremely valuable. It looks like you no longer post the teacher listings. I have suggestions on how you could and should incorporate something like this back into your service, in a more effective manner. Send me an e-mail if you are interested in hearing these ideas.
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE: Age 43. Male. Self-Employed. Business & Technology Consultant. In the heartland of rural America. Ayn Rand-ian Libertarian. This is my first Community posting of any sort.
PSYCHOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTOR: Perpetual Skeptic.
REASON FOR STUDYING CHINESE: Intrigued with today’s China. Trying to understand what it will become.
PURCHASE DECISION INFLUENCERS: The two key influencers for each of these CPOD purchase decisions have been:
1. How interested and committed am I really to studying Chinese, both now and in X months?
2. What is the most convenient, fun, and effective way to do it?
These two feed off each other, either virtuously or non-virtuously. If not for Chinesepod, I would not be studying Chinese now. I know this because I had previously started and then stopped using other means. They were too much like work. If you keep doing what you are doing - i.e. keep running full speed ahead continuing to try and make things better - you will both build a market and also be able to own a decent chunk of it.
Why do I buy the premium service instead of just the podcasts and transcripts? Because the additional tools are potent re-enforcers for the base material. They are key to improving retention, expanding comprehension, and expanding my ability to effectively utilize a limited vocabulary. You need to improve how you communicate the purpose and value of these tools. Send me an e-mail if you would like some further thoughts on this.
WHAT I WOULD BE DOING WITH MY CPOD TIME IF CPOD DID NOT EXIST: Maybe studying Spanish.
WHAT ARE THE HIGHEST PRIORITY IMPROVEMENTS: Fix up the older lessons. Especially, adding English translations to the Expansion exercise page, and repairing/replacing podcasts from the bad-audio period. The English translations on the Expansion page are key, because they give the user the option of using the exercise for either more input (i.e. listen to the audio and try to guess what was said), or for practicing output generation (i.e. read the English and try to convert it to Chinese - checking both translation accuracy and pronunciation correctness).
After finishing one level of lessons, I think most of us wrap around to the beginning of the next level. This is why the older lessons matter.
FUTURE PURCHASE PLANS: Eventually I will probably scale back to just the basic service. I’m not sure when, yet. I still need the Premium now. I envision needing at least the basic for quite a long time.
WHAT CPOD SHOULD BECOME: A multi-language teaching platform. I want to take a short break from Chinese and go do 7 similar lessons of Arabic. Where is Jenny Mohammed?
OTHER NOTE OF RELEVANCE: If I become semi-fluent somewhere down the road - I.E. if I can demonstrate to myself and others that this toolset really, really works well - I intend to eventually become a CPOD seller to the corporate market. I think your service is ideally suited for that segment, since most large companies have a broad diversity of language needs, interests, and capability levels within their walls. This market need currently is very under-served.
ADDITIONAL NOTE OF RELEVANCE: It greatly appreciate that the premium services are not bandwidth intensive, as I live in the boondocks where cable and DSL are not options. I batch download the podcasts when I’m in the city with broadband access, and do the premium stuff on-line at home. I would not be able to subscribe for the premium material if it was excessively bandwidth intensive.
Keith,
I never made it to the November Convention. Too much to do here in Shanghai!
Delta,
I’ll be asking non-subscribers in a separate post.
Auntie,
I can check the percantages of users over 40. Point taken.
Anne,
I’m so motivated by your comments to do better and better! Thx.
Eric,
I understand that the sidebar poll is very basic and doesn’t yield a whole lot of actionable data. I plan to do some email surveys in the new yer and I’ll be aksing for people who are willing to fill them in.
Henning,
Agreed that it is not a ‘mono-culture’and that diversity in the lessons is essential. It won’t get too focused on any one particular group. You’re input is always smart and always welcome.
Prez,
All good points. So good in fact that you almost sound like Hank! Send me your email address and I’d like to know more about you ideas.
Ken Carroll
As I sit here in a hotel room in Hongcouver and reflect on the many charactes I have seen today in this North American city (mostly traditional, some simplified) and the great deal of Cantonese I have heard today (along with some Mandarin) I have been wondering if a premium subscription would be money well spent.
I enjoy the fact that Cantonese comes out of my mouth without conscious thought on my part and I would like to get to that level with Mandarin, but I suspect that only total immersion will get me to that level …
I find the downloadable lessons more than enough for the moment as a suppliment to the formal lessons I take … so I will think about it some more.
I bought the Premium Subcription because I signed up for the 7-day and found it to be very professionally done. I also was able to learn quite a bit from the lessons. I was amazed by the fact that I could actually understand the dialogue after the lesson.
My motivation is simple. My in-laws speak both Cantonese and Mandarin but no English. I just wanted to be able to say a few words to them and I could do that after the first lesson.
Hi Ken and poddies,
I’m back on your blog as a Christmas present since you made a plug in the Saturday show video. So here I am to post on your blog, and Merry Christmas!
I also came because I have gotten frustrated with the discussion blogs for each podcast. I don’t know if it has to do with subscription (even though I think that should be made free), but what keeps me from being more involved in the community, which is a plus, is that no matter what I write, more often than not my posts are flagged as spam, even if I just type a response or ask a question about Chinese. I would think that if the ChinesePod user accounts were made so you know people are human (you know, type those letters on a swirly background!) and require a login to post there and here, it would be more robust and people’s posts wouldn’t be lost.
Then I recommend working from there on community things that could be paid for, even a live chat with teachers, and so forth.
Well, I am not going to type more since I am afraid this post might be flagged also for spam (and I never know why
)
-Rich
Late to the party here, but I made a mental note to come back and address this.
There are three main reasons why I chose to subscribe, Ken:
1) The method works for me. I wanted to learn Chinese and I was serious about it, so when I stumbled across ChinesePod and saw how it worked, and more importantly that it worked for me, I forked over the cash. Now, not everybody can learn like this. Some people need a much more structured environment. They need a classroom and a schedule and a lecture. I’m not that guy.
2) The price fit within my budget. Don’t overlook this fact. Nobody mentions it, but price point is a vital aspect of your marketing strategy.
3) Personality. It’s what distinguished you from every other course I considered. You were people with names and unique personalities. I liked what I heard and knew it would enhance the experience.
Hope that helped! Shengdan kuaile!
Frank
Frank,
All the points in this thread are important, but I want to draw attention to the issue of personality for a moment.
Consider Digg.com. As a news site, Digg does have some advantages over competitors like Boing Boing (transparency being one). However, it’s not that difficult to do what Digg do, and many of their new competitors are equally transparent. Meanwhile, their tech could easily be improved upon. And yet, Digg remains very strong. Why? I think it’s the way that Kevin Rose has brought his persona into the brand that makes it stand out and makes users loyal. (Marketers would call it differentiation.)
Our philosophy has always been ‘humanistic’ in the teaching sense. Hence the decision to use podcasting as opposed to a pure software approach. For me, it’s all about ‘people, ‘learners’, ‘community’, not in the cliched sense, but simply in the sense that the teachers, bloggers, learners, all have personalities that can bring any learning experience to life. I don’t understand why so many companies/organizations hide the personalities behind them. If a teacher were to hide his personality in class he would soon have a room full of bored students.
I guess this is all looking like a good marketing strategy now, and yet it came about very naturally. I hope it’s becasue we started from the perspective of learning/teaching, rather than from that of technology, or even, for that matter, the business plan!
Ken Carroll
Ken,
You said: I don’t understand why so many companies/organizations hide the personalities behind them [their tech].
The answer here is simple, actually, and I’m sure you realize it. It’s either one of these two things (possibly both).
1) They don’t have any personalities. Not in the sense that they’re boring people, but rather in the sense that what you do at ChinesePod is at least 50% show business. You have to be ready to deliver a public persona, or at least be willing to sit in the spotlight for a few minutes every day. That’s harder than most people realize.
2) On-air personalities become celebrities (ala Jenny Zhu) and can be lost or lured away. If your business becomes synonymous with certain person and that person leaves, your business takes a hit. That’s a risk that many companies are not willing to take.
Out of curiosity, do you have a plan in place for when Jenny or Aric leave the nest? I hear Hollywood calling already.
Frank
I posted on Christmas Day and it got sucked out of the responses somehow. I will try again. I was wondering if you are going to change the format of the pod casts so that the student is more than just a passive listener. I have asked this over and over and have never received a reply. I like the basic service fine but would pay up to the premium service if this were provided. I would like to listen and practice from my ipod but I would like to get some practice in because that is one thing that helps me to remember. I am OK if this is not in plan as I still think it is worth the money for the basic service. I’d just like to hear an answer as to whether you guys are considering this. This has been an awful lot of discussion from subscribers about how this might be accomplished but no response from ChinesePod as to whether it is being considered. Thanks for your interest in this important aspect that I feel is still missing.
I became a subscriber after my free week trial when I was able to verify that this was a site with quite a surpringly simple, direct and above all unassuming approach to spoken language teaching. Sort of a call a spade a spade.
ChinsePod has set a standard for excellence which it will be hard to equal.
I hope that some day there will be a website which can address Chinese characters in a suitable way, but this is going to proof a much more difficult task.
From what I gather the Chinese level of ChinesePod users ranges from false beginners (I do not thik there are real absolute beginners) to advanced students and a number of Chinese native teachers.
It might be interesting to point out that the motivation to subscribe to ChinesePod to improve your Chinese does not necessarily coincide with the motivation behind learning Chinese.
I have the feeling that many students of the Chinese language are highly motivated to study Chinese for cultural reasons, not for practical ones, and very specially to decipher those mysterious riddles: the characters. And once you fall in love with a part of your sweetheart you cannot help but falling in love with the whole: spoken language, grammar and all.
Well, it seems this may be an acceptable place to voice a few ChinesePod things I’ve been thinking about so…
I began listening to the podcasts in September as a supplement to the Chinese 101 class I had just started taking at my university, and didn’t really consider using “the site” as such until I began seeing words in class (and therefore seeing their pinyin spellings) that I had heard in the podcasts. At which time I realized… sometimes I wasn’t hearing you and Jenny correctly (as a note, the “spelled with a g” comments you’ve made recently are, I think, both helpful for listeners and probably good for business - nothing demonstrates the need for a transcript as much as being made aware of your own ignorance ;-).
The 7 day free trial was great, the transcripts cleared up a lot of phonetic confusion, and I found they were also nice to use when I was practicing with my “Chinese speaking partner” (certainly an advantage of being in college in the US is that there are a lot of Chinese grad students who want to improve their English).
I ended up paying for premium because - it is easy to want to pay people that you’ve been listening to for a few months… and I found the expansion portion of the site to be really helpful. By the time I started using it, I was acutely aware that Chinese words often occupy a different space of meaning than their English translations, and it seemed that the best way to get a handle on the differences was to have many examples of the context in which words can be used (for example, I was unclear at first when I should use “again” - “zai” as in zai jian, and “you” - the again used for repetition). So, I really use the wordbank (and I do use grease monkey) and expansion more than the flashcards or “flash lessons” (with the animated teacher & whiteboard).
There are a few things I would love to see, that would encourage me to continue paying for premium service in future years. It would be really helpful if I was able to access the expansion vocab sentences through the wordbank, as opposed to kind of chancing on them behind the lessons. For example, the Christmas Presents lesson has expansion vocab for 特别, and if you search the wordbank for te bie, you get the definition (which is nice) but have no way of knowing expansion sentences exist for that word, much less knowing how to find them. I’d also love it if the wordbank would spellcheck my English, although this is a problem I can remedy pretty easily on my own.
Anyway, all things considered, I really enjoy listening to the podcasts and using the site, it’s helpful and, for a beginner, worth the money.
“If a teacher were to hide his personality in class he would soon have a room full of bored students.“
To me the personalities of Chinesepod are very appealling. It’s a good show. Keep it up!
Hi Erica,
I like your suggestion. Are you thinking that in addition to dialogs, chinesepod could provide podcasts with practice material as a premium benifit? Maybe a format that contains grammar and vocab practice, where questions are asked in chinese and the student provides a response. This could provide listening comprehension practice, vobulary building and grammar review. For example: the speaker asks “Nimen yiqi qu shenma difang?” and we answer “woman yiqi qu can ting, chi fan”. Then the speaker models and an answer for us to repeat. This may be a lame example, but I think there is a lots of opportunity to create effective learning scenarios out of this type of format especially when it leverages the material from a specific lesson.
It makes a lot of sense that people who like to get their lessons from the MP3 player would be enthusistic about getting the practice, “drill-down”, expansion exercises that way too. I imagine it would make the premium subscription more attractive to people who don’t have time to do exercises in front of a computer.
I paid for the service because I had been downloading the audio lessons for about 3 months, then went to China and when I got back I decided I would continue learning, and I thought I would try to use more of the learning tools here. I also picked up a little discount voucher in Shanghai so I used that too. And of course, I couldn’t go past the free mug.
I still regularly download the lessons and the pdfs, but don’t use the rest so much (I haven’t had access to a computer for the last 10 weeks though so I will probably start again). Being a full time office worker doesn’t inspire me to get online in my free time much. Probably also why I don’t blog on here.
I use a lot of different learning tools as then I don’t get bored, this includes flash cards, a ‘language exchange partner’, a lot of books (including snoopy cartoons aimed at learners of english - but helpful to me too), and chinese pod.
I think the best thing about cpod is the entertainment value - because a lot of learning tools are very dry even if they are well structured. Ken I like the podcasts with you in them the best - I think this is probably because you will more often start talking about something that is related to what is being learnt rather than sticking rigidly to the script - this helps me because I then learn 2 things instead of one without even trying.
Dear Ken,
In the month or so since I found Chinesepod, I have come to really appreciate you all. Your devotion to our learning the language, to the teaching of language is inspiring, and the fun you have doing it is contagious.
I am not a typical ChinesePod user.
I studied Mandarin 30 years ago in college in the states. Visited for three weeks in 1975.
I have been through all of Pimsleur’s Mandarin. I think Pimsleur is great for working on the pronunciation. People who are asking for pronunciation and repetition practice might want to try it. I can download it or borrow it from the public library. I personally like the pace of the lessons and repeat the phrase with Jenny when you are giving the translation. I am an intermediate student though and I have been reviewing the elementary and beginner lessons randomly.
I have had language exchange partners (Chinese students at MIT).
I got back from a trip to Asia in October,first time in 31 years. After a week in Beijing I am more motivated than before I left. This is a language of such cultural complexity, I can hope only for some small competence in my lifetime.
So about motivation. Challenge itself is enough motivation. Being able to communicate in China is pure delight. It is harder though to keep up the motivation on the return side of travel. Chinesepod is really helping with that.
I haven’t had time to try the 7 day trial. When I do I will decide at what level I will to continue.
For now I really love getting to know you and being in touch with China on a daily basis. It is really fun. I download lessons and listen to them while I work, while I drive, while I walk.
Thanks for all. You will surely turn me into a subscriber soon.
新年快乐！
siyi
思怡
Dear Ken:
Why?.. because it has dynamic…it has young spirit.. it works..
The best way to learn is to have fun… and hear any speaker talks like to have with them in our homes.. is a very interesting way to learn.
My advice keep innovation.. update in the future the lessons.. try to find new multimedia interaction..
There are no way you do not succeed.. you are doing great.
Ken,
I am a low-to-mid-level intermediate learner and I use ChinesePod as an alternate source of material to supplement what I get at university. I am a paying subscriber for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I believe it is important to support things that I find useful.
Currently, the parts of the site that I find most useful are
* the audio lessons themselves,
* the example sentences given in the vocabulary
expansion section of each lesson, and
* the PDF transcripts.
I’d like to see these features:
* Comprehension — Downloadable audio files containing only the dialogs and perhaps some other review material that could be used to develop comprehension without listening to an entire lesson.
* Recall — The example sentences in the lesson expansion are really critical to me, as recall is something I constantly struggle with. I’d like to see even more of these and perhaps an audio version that we could use on the go.
* English translation of example sentences in the older lessons.
Thanks for a great service!
白梅克
ChinesePod is the best!
I’d like to second Michael’s request for a “dialogs only” archive for quick revision.