yes – with the non structured approach – talking Chinese only at lower levels is impossible. A textbook approach can do – because they build up on a straight path. With learn what you like this is not possible.

I felt at the beginning the first 3 months or so every day 2-3 hours of watching Chinese soaps was the best thing to get my Chinese going. I very quickly went from maybe A1 to B1.
But at the intermediate level already I think Chinesepod is very good. Elementary and Newbie are not – I agree. The pre intermediate lessons are good – because they introduce a lot of classroom expressions.

That is why those foreign youtubers speaking Chinese are great for an upper intermediate and up learner. They usually talk very clearly, and with easier vocabulary. The problem is that for me most of their content gets boring quickly – it’s soo much about food and travel because it’s easy to produce…

It’s always easier speaking Chinese with other foreigners compared to Chinese people.. Exceptions are those that are used to speak with foreigners.

I know my approach was very effective in getting fluent in day 2 day stuff. I am sure it’s not good for speaking perfect chinese because I will have gotten used to speaking with incorrect tones. But then most Chinese/Taiwanese call my chinese fluent now – and actually I think for business/personal life not speaking perfect Chinese is better than speaking near to perfect. People will here quickly that I’m a foreigner and be happy about that foreigner that learned so well Chinese. If you speak too perfect but with little mistakes they may believe you lived in China for ages but still make mistakes (how uneducated!). I am not the person to learn with textbook appraoch – too lazy for that. I would have given up once again. Speaking fluently in day2day stuff increases the need to read even more – so I hope at some point I find the motivation to sit down half a year every day 2-4 hours to get through the hard first stage of learning all HSK5 characters/most common ones.

Still even for the elementary level – Chinesepod too me was more interesting/less boring than chineseclass 101 or rosetta stone. Tried and dropped them quickly. But yeah I guess without viki – I would not have made it to intermediate stage (from there it’s easier/more motivating. Different if living in China – but living abroad I could not have motivated myself to continue. Chinesepod may waste some time by talking a lot of English before upper intermediate – BUT if it can keep you interested that is better than another course you drop because it’s too tiring as you understand too little. Chinesepod – especially those lessons from 2008-2016 are pretty entertaining – even at lower levels. It’s perfect for passive learning. It’s not the quickest way for people super focused and dedicated. It’s for driving in your car, bicycle, hiking whatever – and listening passively – like music. But I could never motivate myself to do more than 1-2 hours of serious Chinese learning for a long time besides a normal 40 hour job. Chinesepod in combination with soaps is a good approach. The main thing missing to me actually is good tv series in Chinese – get the american/netflix stuff translated into Chinese – that would be far more rewarding to watch than those chinese/taiwanese soaps that mostly suck. But yeah not see this will happen anytime soon. In Taiwan people are fine just watching them with chinese subs, and in China they are kinda censored anyhow so very few people get to watch them. Maybe because of that Korean/Japanese stuff is still king for foreign content. )

Very good suggestions! As soon as they talk mostly in Chinese, it gets fairly simple, I think, as in that it’s easy to know what to do since just listening more will help and no time is wasted on chatting in English. The problem in general, so not just for ChinesePod, is what to do before then. I have yet to look at newer, lower level content, but last time I checked, most content on the lower levels contained so little actual Chinese that it felt a bit pointless, to be honest. It even prompted me to write an article about it (here). The problem is that designing target-language only content at lower levels is both difficult and time-consuming, as well as being aware of or assuming prior knowledge. To an intermediate learner, I can speak in Chinese only and make them understand what I want in most cases, almost regardless of the path they took there, but that doesn’t work for beginners, because then I need to know/figure out what they know before I even start. This is doable in a one-on-one situation, but not whet creating content for an imagined audience! Very tricky. 🙂

I just noticed today – that with the premium account – I can download the review – which is exactly what I was missing. The key vocab in English. So my recommendation is – buy premium for a short period – download dialogue and show for lower levels, show and review for upper intermediate or above. (no need for dialogue only, as you learn as much in the Chinese explanations).
Download the notes for when you start to learn to read.

I never had the review – so I had a pretty immersive way on the upper intermediate. Up to Intermediate there is no need for the notes – as everything in the dialogue is translated.

Actually advanced seems to me they only talk faster, the vocab is not harder – actually upper intermediate I got pretty tired of them talking so slow (well it seemed damn fast when I switched from intermediate – especially as I had no english translations). So I guess actually I should have moved to advanced long time ago – Make a playlist first listen the review then the show, then maybe when you hear a second time some months later – the other way around.

I listened into some media mp3 as well, and they are a notch too much I feel. Advanced is it now for me. 2.5 years with 2-3 hours per day on average just passive consumption plus 4.5 months living in Taiwan. I think not bad progress. Just that I cannot read and that will likely mean leaving my comfort zone of consumption only and needing to actively sit down…

As I think you cannot download the review mp3 with basic account – you will need at least the premium account for 14 days trial and sit down 1-2 days download everything… I guess if you do my passive approach – never open the pdf, not sit down to learn vocabs and so on – you need way more lessons than the amount they tell you.
200 newby, 200 elementary, all pre-intermediate, 300 upper intermediate, 300-400 advanced…, plus get the media..

In general I feel like many others – only download stuff from mid 2007 onwards – and focus on mid 2007 to 2015. The newer stuff isn’t as good. Then watch a lot of drama, or youtubers (whatever gets you less bored). Chinese drama is mostly horrible. But there is no way to get good American/European shows with Chinese voice. I would love so much to watch Big Ben Theory, How I met your mother, or whatever in Chinese – but it doesn’t exist. I hope maybe in 1 year I can move on to Chinese movies without english subs. The better you get the faster your progress with any language. Just once you really are fluent progress will slow down. Chinese is just way slower than European languages to acquire for westerners.

yeah for me viki (caveat inside China and Taiwan it is hardly accessible – because most videos are not available) and chinesepod are the most important tools to learn Chinese the passive, immersive way. Viki from Europe is just 10USD for a year of premium access (no adverts – and ~720P resolution – still sucks no high quality is available. They do not tell the resolution but it is about 1.5-2GB/hour so looks like 720P).

Oh yeah – why Viki – the English subtitles are somewhat decent – which cannot be said for most other sources of Mandarin soaps with English subs. That’s a good point for foreign youtubers in chinese – the subs are usually very good (as long as you need them). In general subs on youtube are horrible however. Same for Bilibili and Co. if there are English subs.

Thanks for sharing! I started using ChinesePod in 2008 or something like that, so reading about your more recent experience is very valuable. I’m actually working on an update review, so your comment is very timely!

When I started using chinesepod (I had started watchin soaps on viki 2 months before or so) I was at the pre-intermediate level (Elementary was a bit too easy – not that I understood all of it, I still likely miss quite some vocab from even basic level – as I did not learn by textbook – and some topics just do not interest me – e.g. I still have problems with animals or some objects in a room/kitchen) but pre-intermediate was challening me while just being able to get most of the context. I feel you should try to get as quickly as possible to the pre-intermediate level. Its the first ones with not too much english. They now put the HSK5 into the upper-intermediate level – but in a post on their forum someone looked at the lessons to cover HSK5 and most was intermediate! Do download all the HSK4 and HSK5 lessons from the course list (or forum post) and listen to them two to three times once you get to intermediate level.

The HS2/HSK3 courses would be good for the start. Then progress to the Daily Life 3&4 list. The pre-intermediate level was introduced a bit later – and actually is not extensive enough I felt back then – download all of them and listen to them to advance further bringing you to intermediate. It was a tough step to move up to Intermediate and I would have liked more Pre-Intermediate lessons.

The step up from Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate is also quite big. As said the problem is if you only listen to the lessons and not read the notes – you will feel like they should translate much more single words.
Ideally there would be a step in between with Upper Intermediate level but before or after the lesson a vocab list in English – spoken for all those that are to lazy to read through notes – And if you’re like me mainly listening to chinesepod while driving in a car, hiking or cycling, I cannot read notes at those times. Just listen.

By now after 2.5 years I somehow reached the step that it is fine for most new vocab to be explained in Chinese instead of hearing an english translation. But I was not when I started with upper intermediate. And I actually would like that key new vocab list in spoken English even at advanced level. I know many people who are completely fluent in a new language they learned – but still prefer watchin English movies with English subtitles (e.g a Chinese friend of my, got 8.5 points on IELTS advanced – but still wants english subs in english movies because she hates if she cannot understand 100% of words and only 99 out of 100 or so) – I am not – but for those kind of learners chinesepod must be a bit of a nightmare. If each lesson on upper intermediate and advanced would translate the key 10-20 new vocabs before or after the lesson – that would be a huge improvement. Yes this maybe goes against the concept of total immersion – but I feel total immersion only works with languages that are close to a language you fully master. So if you speak Japanese or Korean learning Chinese from low levels with total immersion is surely fine – if you only know European languages then your progress would be faster with a vocab list in English (and no I do not want to open the notes pdf or the website).

HSK4 and 5 overall are 228 lessons. Of which only 44 are upper intermediate, 135 intermediate, and 40 elementary. The rest are Newbie…

A good selection to start learning would be Daily Life 3&4 – it’s essential vocab mainly from elementary level.

I would not bother with lessons pre 2008 – except if there is a topic that really interests you not covered again later.

I had once Chinese as second foreign language at uni, but hated it and forgot most of it – anyhow I never got anywhere with that course – maybe knew 400-500 words and some grammar. Then about 10 years later I discovered viki.com and chinesepod and restarted learning chinese.

With chinesepod you just listen whenever you have time. I never took chinese classes or opened a textbook since uni – just listened to chinesepod and watched teenie love soap operas on viki. Spending maybe 2-3 hours per day for 1 year brought me to a conversational level for easy chinese.

After 2.5 years including spending 4.5 months in Taiwan (however that helped less than it seems – because I need to work remotely, hence only for leisure time I would use Chinese) I now can understand about 80% of soaps if watching without subs. I cannot understand movies yet well enough to not bore out – because movies in general use much harder to understand language than soaps. News I’m completely lost. And yeah I only get, standard, taiwanese or shanghai accent. On other accents I am lost – hence also the problem with movies where you will have much more non standard accents compared to soaps.

Meeting with Chinese people in real life however I can converse pretty well for hours not falling back to English except for single words if I know they can speak English very well. My chinese was good enough to play role games with 10-20 people and get most things – better than the English level of 90% young people living in Taiwan. The main problem is that I love talking about science, politics, economy – and I am not able to do so in Chinese at all. Hence if I only spend time with people whose English is worse than my Chinese I get bored after some days – this is opposite to learning European languages where advanced vocabs are very similar between most European languages.

I once bought all the HSK standard textbooks – and if I open up the HSK 6 and look at a random page with the vocab section, I know about 40% of them, and know about 80% of the HSK5 ones. I feel I do know quite a lot of vocabs outside HSK6 however. I did not open them for more than 3-4 hours yet however. They lie on my desk and I tell myself every week to soon start using them – but cannot motivate myself to do so.

On the other hand I still cannot read anything – and I freak out if I open a text book for more than 30 minutes. Chinesepod and viki.com – and once you are more advanced laowei youtubers speaking Chinese is the best way to passively get good listening and talking skills without doing a real effort. I do not feel like using my brain for repetitive stuff (I consider learning language with a textbook repetitive work) after programming for 8 hours a day… But chinesepod, viki and youtube/bilibili is just fine. For foreigners talking chinese – I usually understand everything except single words (e.g. Afu Thomas is great to watch for easy chinese – and his pronounciation is very good – unlike some others. I watch his videos without subs)

I still hope I can soon get to the level to understand chinese so well that I can learn reading by watching movies/soaps looking at the subtitles in Chinese. But I think this will never happen. At one point or another I will have to spend 6-12 months, 2-3 hours per day learning characters. No way around. Not sure I will use textbook or anki, or both. From what most people told me – need to be able to sit down and learn all HSK5 characters – from then onwards you can learn by reading actual texts or subtitles….

After about 1.5 years I had progressed to upper intermediate level on chinesepod. I still haven’t finished all of them twice. I do not like to listen to intermediate ones anymore since then – as they have too much English. I still however would like more vocabs explained in upper intermediate.

As for advanced – I do not feel it is much harder than upper intermediate at all. I can follow it along too – but I think for me it is less suitable – as I learn more new words with upper intermediate. As soon I am through all upper intermediate twice, I will switch to advanced (this does not mean that I know all the vocabs in upper intermediate – actually many I do not know – because I never opened the PDF files for full translation – passive learning only to not lose motivation). Listening a third time would be boring – so I will move on to advanced.

I am not afraid to talk wrongly – if you are shy I think this approach is very bad. After half a year learning already I tried to speak Chinese only if meeting Chinese people. Because I kinda learned exclusively by chinesepod and viki – my accent was always great (tones not correct however) – so since then when people hear me talk they believe I am fluent and then did not get that I would not understand them…

I am sure – other ways are faster to learn vs the time spent. But this way is less tiring and more fun – and that is what counts for me. I once met a Russian guy who had progressed from 0 to HSK6 and being fluent in 1 year – doing nothing but learning Chinese all day. I am sure with that dedication the passive learning method of viki/chinesepod/youtube is inefficient. The passive way is good if otherwise you cannot motivate yourself – and you study/work something completely different. Chinesepod is essential for me for the passive approach. All other podcasts to learn Chinese are not even close in their level I feel.

Last I heard, there isn’t much being produced at all, but I’m not really up-to-date. The accent might vary depending on who’s host, but that’s true historically speaking as well. A vast majority of lessons were produced with some Mainland standard in mind, though.

Thanks!

Comments by first-time posters are always held for moderation, that’s why your comment didn’t show up immediately! It’s difficulty to discuss if something is “worth it” because it depends on both your budget and how much you need the resource. Personally, I think $30/month is a bit pricey, there are other podcasts out there too. However, if you think $30 is not a big deal and you want the convenience of having access to all those episodes, then it could definitely be worth it!