Which websites/podcasts/videos etc. do people use? I recently discovered Popup Chinese www.popupchinese.com just through googling, and it's been nice to listen to pretty high quality free podcasts.

However, both this and Chinesepod seem to want me to pay for additional features like flashcards, but of course Skritter does those better! So what I'm really asking is, is it worth it to get other subscriptions?


P.S. (Skritter's Professor has just told me that they may introduce listening mode at some point, but it feels far and distant)

My subscription to ChinesePod is worth it. I have the most basic one. All I use are PDFs of the dialogues, and mp3s. I don't neeed any of the extra features.

I've subscribed to Chinesepod on a few occasions, each time just for one month. During that month I had full access to all lessons and downloaded a bucketload of podcasts that I continued to use well after the subscription ran out. I'm not sure if this is still how it works, but it used to. I do listen to the audio review in addition to the basic stuff, but that in itself is certainly not worth the extra for a premium subscription if you're going to keep renewing every month. Between skritter and my Chinese class I don't have that much time for Chinesepod, so since I only listen to one lesson per week at most I don't feel it's worth it to have an ongoing subscription. I do think it's a good product though.

I also have a basic sub to Chinesepod (I like their media podcasts for listening practice).

There are also a lot of podcasts out there, eg BBC Chinese, Voice of America, 伦敦话语 (this one is easier to understand).

Some of these can be quite hard though!

I paid for one year at Popup Chinese, which lets you download all their podcasts. I've since made my way through all the elementary ones by listening when commuting, cleaning, doing laundry etc. They have good voice actors and the content is quite funny. I haven't worked with them actively, though, only done background listening.

I am currently using CCTV, Da Shan : http://english.cntv.cn/learnchinese/ which is free of charge. I found it quite interesting and it has useful sentence structure and vocabulary. However, for me, the intermediate has a bit too low level, whereas the advanced is a bit too difficult (my weakest point is listening skill). As you are going to Shanghai soon, the Travel in Chinese may contain some useful phrases and words.

I use skritter and the basic ChinesePod subscription. That has been plenty for me:) I have gotten premium and done phone calls with ChinesePod in the past but in premium I didn't use all the content because of lack of time and the phone calls while somewhat useful I really had a hard time fitting in with my schedule. I now have found a really good tutor I meet with twice a month and that has been good for me:)

I need to listen to more podcasts... CSLPod is another podcast service that seems pretty good from the samples I've listened to. What I like about it is that it's all in Chinese. I find all the English talk on Chinesepod's (otherwise excellent) lessons distracting. CSLPod's lessons do have text translations and vocabulary in English (and Japanese, French, ...). These texts are available for free. Access to audio is about 10$ per month.

http://www.cslpod.com/LearnChinese/Tour/Logreg/signup.aspx?rmd=MTAwMDE4ODkzNw==

(disclosure: I think if you sign up via the above link I get extra "points" whatever that means)

Also, just discovered, 70 free beginner Chinese-learning podcasts in German:

http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/extra/china/chinesischkurs/-/id=2557086/ibk4vl/index.html

it also has a lot of distracting talk, but it's in German, so that's a little different :-)

PS: CSLPod's new lesson notification emails are also pretty nice to practice reading.

here's an online audio visual course created by the Taiwanese government, which is pretty good and free, 100 lessons all with dialogues, patterns, videos, listening pratice...

http://media.huayuworld.org/interact/ebook/1000_w2/index_classList_0.html

and here's the free pdf text book.

http://media.huayuworld.org/interact/ebook/1000_words/into.htm

I also recommend http://www.chineselearnonline.com/ I know the guy who made it (Adam) personally and tutor with his coworker (Luise), they're based in Taichung, Taiwan, which is where I live as well.

Thanks for all the responses guys!

I think I'll sign up for www.popupchinese.com because it offers what seem to be fairly similar services to Chinesepod, but cheaper - and an added plus is that they have awesome customer service (just like Skritter) they reply in depth to every question :)

I strongly recommend ChinesePod, even if they are a bit more expensive. I think that they are much better than popupchinese.

I am a long time ChinesePod customer and it has helped me a lot. It is also partly integrated with Skritter. I can practice writing on its site in a "Skritter Lite" version, and as a Skritter subscriber I can also pull in vocabulary for any ChinesePod lesson to add to my lists in Skritter, because the two sites work together.

I'm trying out the Chinesepod premium right now, but given the steep price, I probably will not keep it going long term. The best feature is by far the app. It keeps the lessons organized and allows for just listening to the dialogue without commentary and/or looking at the hanzi trascript without going through the full lesson. There are ways to get this done with the basic subscription, but with significantly more effort. And the Skritter integration with Chinesepod is really good to have. The one time I used IM with a question, I got an immediate response so no complaints with service so far.

I like Popup Chinese, and I think the lessons are entertaining. But sometimes I felt like the dialogues went out of their way to be entertaining at the expense of a presenting a conversation that I could figure out on my own (i.e., finding a caveman drinking fanta in your kitchen).

I've also used http://www.slow-chinese.com/. One nice feature: when downloading to a device, it often displays the transcript in hanzi.