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.