learn mandarin chinese podcasts

ChineseClass101.com ChineseClass101 Learn Chinese Podcast with Audio+Video Lessons, Flashcards, Quizzes, Cultural Insights

Summary

From beginner to advanced levels, ChinesePod101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning Chinese. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the Chinese language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require.

Since ChinesePod101.com is web-based, you can access your personal Chinese Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go.

One of the most important things when learning a language is good content - and ChinesePod101.com has this, and a steady flow of it. This constant flow of fresh content regards cultural aspects of Chinese you will want to know, interesting tidbits about navigating in Chinese society (whether on vacation or living abroad), practical information about getting by and much more.

Your Chinese Learning Center brings together audio podcast lessons, lesson notes and checklists, transcripts, PDFs, video lessons, vocabulary training with flashcards and quizzes plus a Chinese dictionary, grammar bank, a verb reference and plenty more.

And if you enjoy asking questions and learning from and helping other learners, a forum is available for all users.

It's simple to try it for free and upgrade if it works for you.

From Website

At ChinesePod101.com, our goal is to make learning the Chinese language easy and fun, while also incorporating culture and current issues into our lessons. We believe that the more you speak, the quicker you learn, so we have designed our program to get you speaking right away. Situational Chinese is heavily stressed, and our team role plays various situations to demonstrate the proper form of Chinese to use when speaking with friends, customers, executives, and so-on. Knowing the proper form to use separates good speakers from great speakers.

ChinesePod101.com was developed with the hope of showing the world how fun and easy learning Chinese can be. Here at ChinesePod101.com, we truly believe that learning can be fun, while at the same time convenient. We know how busy you are and that each day brings unexpected surprises. That is exactly why we bring the lessons to you and let you decide when they start.

Our innovative, fun, and easy to use language learning system is designed to get you speaking and interacting from the very first lesson. Learn Chinese at your own convenience and pace with short, effective, fun daily lessons and a comprehensive, state-of-the-art Learning Center that provides you with the tools to take your Chinese to the next level! Our interactive learning system consists of free daily audio podcast lessons, accompanying PDF materials, a Premium Learning Center, and a vibrant user community.

Our Method

ChinesePod101.com offers a unique learning experience that cannot be found in conventional classrooms. In addition to offering lessons that can be completed on your own time, we approve all of the content we release through a government certified Chinese teacher. Here are just a few of the revolutionary advantages of our method:

Exposure to native speakers and many different kinds of voices and speaking styles…

ChinesePod101.com aims to have you speaking Chinese after just one lesson! Our lessons focus on pronunciation and listening comprehension, so that you can start practicing what you learn from our professional teachers. Inside the PDF you will find the necessary tools for reading comprehension, and thorough explanations of phrases and key grammar points, in addition to segments on cultural insight. To address speaking practice, we have state-of-the-art software to allow you to record your own voice so you can compare your pronunciation to our teachers and continue to refine your speaking skills.

When all the aspects of ChinesePod101.com are put together, this program provides students of Chinese with ultimate self-study learning course. In addition, we often provide conversations between three people to more closely simulate real-life situations.

Fresh, up-to-date content...

Many Chinese teachers who live overseas have been out of the country for a long period of time and can be “out of the loop” on current words, culture, etc. This is another major gap that we fill. Lessons are carefully crafted to include current events, words, celebrities, and so-on. This is very dynamic content.

Borderless education on-demand...

We also fill a definite demand in remote locations. Our lessons provide you with a mobile classroom, as we bring you Chinese on Demand. Chinese lessons wherever you may be.

ChinesePod101.com offers our listeners a unique learning experience that delivers cutting-edge, dynamic content to be accessed at your convenience. With the inclusion of our lesson notes and Learning Center, we offer a full solution that provides the material, guidance, exercises, and testing to really make the knowledge your own. And it doesn’t even stop there - our vibrant and extremely helpful community provide each other not only quick answers to questions, but also give each other a sense of encouragement and motivation that is often lacking.

We focus on Chinese, and Chinese only...

Just Chinese! All we do is Chinese. ChinesePod101.com is not a generic package language learning course, such as some of the other big name language learning programs out there. Many other programs “scale” their solutions across several languages, simply recycling the same material over and over - the same pictures, the same conversations, just in a different language. But each language is unique, and at ChinesePod101.com we pride ourselves on developing a system that’s only about the Chinese language and Chinese culture!

One stop studying...

Have you ever found yourself lost on the information highway? Sometimes it’s like trying to drink from a fire hose! Hundreds of bookmarks, all with varying levels of quality and credibility. You finally find a great site, but it only updates once a year! ChinesePod101.com offers users one stop studying. The learning center has been carefully designed to provide you with the resources you will need to take your Chinese to the next level.

Visit ChinesePod101.com.

Submitted by polyglot on Fri, 2009-11-06 10:54.

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PopupChinese.com: Popup Chinese Language Show w/Free Mandarin Lessons (Audio MP3), Free Online Tools and a Hip Team in Beijing!

Summary

Hailing from Beijing, Popup Chinese offers refreshing, high-quality audio podcast lessons for Mandarin Chinese learners: free! Carefully planned and well-recorded, these lessons are professional, useful and fun. The Popup Chinese team is young, vibrant and eager to guide Chinese learners to true fluency in the language.

Popup Chinese is truly one of the most exciting language podcast resources to hit the scene for any language! In addition to offering free audio lessons for listening and download, they also provide a host of amazinly powerful free software tools including a user-editable English-Chinese-Pinyin dictionary, an excellent Chinese text annotator, a steady flow of annotated news in Mandarin Chinese and a Firefox English-Chinese-Pinyin dictionary plugin. And for those serious about speaking Chinese, a reasonable paid upgrade that includes lesson transcripts, supplemental exercises, a personalized vocabulary training software tool and access to a vibrant user community.

All in all, the Popup Chinese team and user community are incredibly dedicated and helpful! Get started (or keep learning!) now by immersing yourself with this talented, friendly and active Mandarin Chinese learning website: Popup Chinese

From Website

An Institution in Chinese Learning...

Popup Chinese dates back to 2001, when work on our Chinese learning technology began at the University of California, Berkeley. Our service developed rapidly during the SARS crisis in 2003 with the first web-based edition of our distinctive popup annotator going online later that year, hosted from a budget server based in Beijing.

Over the next few years, our learning systems attracted a following among bilingual translators. We began to release data for use by the open source community, and eventually run ancilliary reference services including NewsinChinese, and the Adso Textbook project. By late 2006 our textbook portal was garnering rave reviews as the premiere site for students with a serious interest in advanced mandarin acquisition.

Popup Chinese is our latest step forward, and an effort to bring the same excellence in language acquisition to students at earlier stages in the learning process. From our hutong in downtown Beijing, we produce materials that give foreign speakers the confidence to engage with China in mandarin: the language of the 21st century.

We encourage you to subscribe to the site and accelerate your learning. In addition to our basic subscriptions, we're delighted to offer custom learning packages to individuals and companies with unique training needs.

Visit Popup Chinese.

Submitted by polyglot on Tue, 2009-03-24 16:43.

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ChinesePod.com Olympics Site with Free Mandarin Lessons, Interactive Map of Beijing, Written and Spoken Country Names

Summary

ChinesePod has created a sweet resource for anyone learning Chinese and interested in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

On the site you'll find an interactive map of Beijing with all the venues, loads of free lessons regarding sports and the Olympics, a world map with participating countries that has audio of how to say those countries in Chinese, etc.

If you are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese, ChinesePod will get you up and running quickly. It's loads of fun, too, if you're into learning on the fly and connecting with other learners.

From Website

The 2008 Summer Games are almost upon us, and to commemorate this monumental sporting event we've launched ChinesePod Olympics, a mini-site filled with information you'll need to follow the Games and navigate Beijing. Whether you're going to see the Olympics yourself, or just really want to bone up on your field hockey vocabulary, this is the site for you.

On our fully interactive map, you can locate each of the Olympic venues and their respective events. English, Chinese, pinyin, and audio recordings are all there to assist in you getting around the Olympic Village.

Visit ChinesePod.com

Submitted by travelinguist on Tue, 2008-06-17 14:24.

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ChineseLingQ.com Mandarin Chinese LingQ Podcast with iTunes MP3 Audio using Linguist Method by Steve Kaufmann

Summary

The LingQ language-learning platform is among the most intentionally-created foreign language education products available. Developed by reknowned polyglot linguist Steve Kaufmann and company, LingQ is an excellent way to learn Mandarin Chinese using materials you choose yourself!

In fact, this is where LingQ excels as an educational platform because students can import any license-free content they want to base their lessons around. This means that the students decide what subjects and topics they wish to learn about based on professional needs and/or personal interests.

The particular podcast highlighted in this article is ChineseLingQ, a roughly weekly podcast with mp3 audio content for Chinese language learners. Transcripts of the podcasts are available through LingQ, and can also serve as learning content themselves.

One additional advantage of the LingQ system is that for a single subscription, you can use their web-based platform to learn ten languages (and growing) including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

From Website

What is ChineseLingQ?

First of all, the name itself (which is pronounced Chinese Link) needs a little explaining. The first part, “Chinese”, is fairly obvious since we teach Chinese. LingQ is the name of our online learning system which you can find at LingQ.com. At LingQ you’ll study many different languages in a fun, community atmosphere. The “Ling” in LingQ comes from TheLinguist.com the people behind LingQ. Lastly, the “Q” is important because it forms the speech bubble in our logo and throughout our site and because it makes “lingq” sound like “link” (we think!) which is what our system does for you.

At ChineseLingQ...

. we LingQ you to a world of real Chinese content
. we LingQ you to our revolutionary learning tools
. we LingQ you to a community of fellow Chinese learners

Our podcasts may contain interviews, articles, or audiobook excerpts but are most often just general conversations in Chinese. We will usually talk about topics of general interest. Please do send us feedback and topic requests. We’re always happy to hear from you.

After you listen to the podcast, sign up for a free account at LingQ (l-i-n-g-q.com) and study the full transcript using LingQ's revolutionary learning tools.

At LingQ, you may also want to submit writing for correction or join live 1 on 1 and group discussions with our tutors. Plus you will find thousands more podcasts with transcript. Come and find out what LingQ is all about!

Of course, even if you don’t decide to become a member, you can continue listening to the podcasts as long as you like.

Visit LingQ.com

Submitted by travelinguist on Fri, 2008-04-18 00:17.

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ECPod.com ECPod Upload and Share English and Chinese Video Podcasts with a Community and Find Language Exchange Friends

Summary

ECPod is a booming site that has lots of different things all in one place. Mainly, the site offers a place for members of the community to upload and share videos that help others to learn Mandarin Chinese and English. Topics for the videos on the site range from Grammar to Humor to Kids to Whatever. There is a large variety of videos available on the site, and growing daily.

The site also offers a way to facilitate finding language partners for exchange and practice.

All in all, the site seems to be growing quickly into a vast repository of video materials for both English and Mandarin Chinese learners and teachers. Bravo!

From Website

Welcome to the ECpod community, where members from all walks of life in China and abroad teach each other Chinese or English and so much more. ECpod prides ourselves on the intrinsic value of not just book-learning but all the other qualitative factors that come from cultural exchange. You might learn the language, but we bet you will also learn cultural innuendo and colloquialisms. And guess what? It's free!

ECpod stands for "English Chinese Podcast" where our website's video clips are "Video Podcasted" by our members. While ECpod began as an English-and-Mandarin-only website, by popular demand we now accept clips in other Chinese dialects as well (for eg: Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and etc). We realized cultural exchange wouldn't be complete without the inclusion of a rich variety of Chinese dialects which tend to be characteristic of different parts of Chinese populated-areas. Furthermore, some dialects will be extinct within one or two generations. Preservation of Chinese culture and history is nothing if it does not also preserve the dialects spoken by some of the ancient families of yore.

Website Objectives

ECpod's main objective is to offer excellent interactive teaching tools for members to learn Chinese and English language. Other objectives of ECpod include:

* build a community of individuals with similar interest of learning a foreign language,
* bring the world closer together and allow members to meet and interact with people from different cultural background,
* to promote chinese cultures to the world,
* to promote English cultures to the world,
* most importantly, we strive to make education FUN and FREE !

Why learn Chinese?

(the reasons can be endless but here are some......)

Napolean Bonaparte said, "China is a sleeping giant. Let her lie and sleep, for when she awakens she will astonish the world." Little did he know......

* China with its 1.5 billion people has the world's fastest growing economy and effectively Chinese/putonghua is used by almost one third of the world's population.
* Now most foreign companies cannot resist not entering China to set up factories that tap a seemingly endless supply of cheap labor or to partner local Chinese companies for distributing their products in China. Whether you are looking to set up factories in China, pitching cross-border IPO mandates or lobbying with the Chinese government for business licenses, it always helps to speaka-the-language!
* Even if you are living on the other end of the planet, you can't escape China. China's affluent ranks are among the fastest growing in the world and these individuals are quickly upgrading their lifestyles and vacationing all over the world. Wherever in the world you are, you will probably be swamped by at least reasonably wealthy Chinese tourists willing to spend. It can only be to your advantage to sell your products or services to them in Chinese.
* Your company is expanding into China and will consider sending you there to run the show......No harm picking up the language now.
* And also the first step to understanding the beauty of the chinese ancient culture is to learn the language.

Why learn English?

(not difficult to understand why English is so important in today's information age......)

* Nearly a quarter of the world's population speaks some English. That includes around 400m who speak it as their mother tongue and about the same number who speak it fluently as their second language. (Source: The Economist, Dec 2006)
* Even though it does not have the greatest number of speakers in the world (as compared to Chinese), it is the most widely used language in the world, and it will be used by more people in the future.
* English is the major language of news and information in the world. It is the language of business and government even in some countries where it is a minority language.
* Three quarters of all telex messages and telegrams are sent in English. 80% of computer data are processed and stored in English.
* English is very important for international travel. Travel more easily and communicate with people wherever you go — English is spoken in more than 100 countries.

Visit ECPod.com

Submitted by travelinguist on Mon, 2008-03-03 14:09.

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learningmandarinpod Learning Mandarin Chinese Podcast and Video Podcasts

Summary

This is a well-done podcast and video podcast for advanced beginner to intermediate level Mandarin Chinese learners.

Currently, this podcast is being updated about every week.

From Website

Learning Mandarin resources for you to use when you feel like something new and random. It's very simple and there is no translation, all in Chinese except a bit of English at the begining and at the end. The transcripts are in pinyin and simplified characters.

Visit learningmandarinpod.blogspot.com