In the Press Our Media Coverage
Expensive Language Lessons? Doesn’t Translate
"Another podcast, the nearly five-year-old ChinesePod, has another, more innovative selling point. While many of its 1,300 podcasts are free, access to all of them costs $14 a month, and $249 gets you three months of access to all of them, plus a virtual classroom where you and three other students have — via Skype — weekly hourlong lessons with a Chinese teacher." (April 2010)
Jenny Zhu Made it Happen
"I would like to really help ChinesePod bridge to the mainstream. If you look at Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone they still do huge revenues. I would like to see ChinesePod really dominate the Chinese learning sphere." (April 2010)
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Smartphones drive language learning innovation
"Learning content has to be designed for the medium. It also has to be designed for the environment in which it will be consumed." (August 2009)
Chinese Teacher to the World
"HER feminine dulcet tones has been creating waves on ChinesePod.com. She’s Jenny Zhu whose Chinese lessons reach out to more than 350,000 listeners worldwide." (April 2009)
Asia’s Best E-Learning Content Provider - World Summit Awards (April 2009)
"[ChinesePod] belongs to the most outstanding examples of creative and innovative e-Content..."
Brush-up on the Mandarin for ‘Table Tennis’ and ‘Triathlon’
"We put cultural tidbits into it, and I think that’s a huge part of learning Chinese. Learning the language without the culture is very one-dimensional and not that satisfying," Mr. Carroll said. (August 2008)
Queen of the Podwaves
“ChinesePod’s Jenny Zhu is undoubtedly the most listened to gal in lao wai land. As co-host of the mega-popular Chinese-teaching podcast she blasts out to more than 350,000 daily listeners worldwide.” (July 2008)
Leap a language barrier on your way to work
“Speaking and listening skills were what I needed,” he said. “The podcasts have been very useful for this. Part of the reason I’ve made so much progress is that they are so enjoyable.” (February 2008)
China Rising
(October 17, 2007)
Mandarin 2.0
"The customers are everywhere from Berkeley to Alaska and the Vatican. In the past, when language instruction—along with haircuts and massages—was a “non-tradable” sector of the economy, many people would not have found a native Mandarin speaker as a teacher in their town at all. Now they need only a broadband connection." (June 7, 2007)
Listen and Learn with Podcasts
"This isn't your parents' language instruction; the various hosts liven things up with a hefty dose of occasionally risque humor. You'll be up-and-bantering in no time with lessons updated throughout the week such as asking for the time, phone call etiquette and World Cup terms. A quirky Saturday show fills you in on Asian cultural mores. Learn, for example, why Shanghai keeps getting compared to the Wild West." (February 26, 2007)
Top 10 Podcasts of 2006
(December 2006)
ChinesePod - a great example of a small niche web business
"I think ChinesePod beautifully illustrates how you can run a small, niche - but successful and moneymaking - business on the Web. ChinesePod offers enough free material to make it worthwhile for the casual visitor, but offers real value too if you're willing to pay a subscription fee for tools and resources that help you learn Mandarin." (November 21, 2006)
Leap a language barrier on your way to work
"When Coogee artist Nicholas Burton began travelling to China a couple of times a year to promote his work, he decided learning Mandarin would be good for business and a stimulating hobby. He enrolled in university night classes, but abandoned them after a few months for a method he says better fits his schedule: learning through podcasts." (November 19, 2006)
Net Know-how Gives Language Teachers a Business Edge
(October 5, 2006)
A new chapter for those learning Chinese
"With language schools, it means making a change to your lifestyle. When you finish work, instead of relaxing, you have to go halfway across town to get to class; it's just not very efficient." (September 28, 2006)
Learn Chinese on your iPod
(September 12, 2006)
Fresh fish: ChinesePod
"People started piling in and giving us feedback. It’s still a very user-driven experience. Users have a huge say in the topics that we cover." (August 28, 2006)
In search of a Pod of Gold
"For Chris Hall, a 39-year-old computer programmer from Bristol, part of the appeal of Chinesepod is that the podcasts resemble a lively radio segment more than a language cassette." (August 19, 2006)
Podcasting Secrets - ChinesePod
"I think we just approached it differently. We first started by looking for ways that technology could solve problems of the average language student here in Shanghai. From our research we found that students often spent more time traveling to/from class and waiting for class than they actually spent in class. This seemed like a big inefficiency to us and we speculated how things would change if students were able to listen to their instructional materials on the way to class and then use their actual class time more efficiently to practice." (August 18, 2006)
ChinesePod Takes on Language Learning
"Every day the Shanghai-based ChinesePod team dishes out a fresh lesson of Chinese, on subjects as diverse as ordering food, Mao Zedong's impact on China and the World Cup." (July 11, 2006)
Why I love ChinesePod
"This is my shameless endorsement of ChinesePod, the newest and most convenient way to learn to speak Putonghua. It's a free podcast that is updated daily with one of the friendliest and most effective teaching duos around." (June 24, 2006)
Now you're speaking my language
"Although this will provide a big prestige boost for Chinesepod, the real money will come from teaching English to Chinese speakers. "The prize is probably 1,000 times bigger," Carroll says. "[The Chinese authorities] estimate they need about 1 million English teachers. They'll never be able to meet demand." Podcasts seem the perfect solution. "Instead of trying to rope in hundreds of thousands of teachers ... you just select one or two or three, but you make sure they are the best." (May 4, 2006)
Learning to flirt in Chinese
"Compared to sitting in a classroom or language lab, learning a foreign tongue from a podcast doesn't feel much like work. In the case of Chinesepod, a free daily podcast from Shanghai with lessons in Mandarin Chinese, language study is actually fun. When I tell people I listen to Chinesepod, they say, "Oh, I'd really love to do that in Spanish/French/Japanese, but I see all these language podcasts on the Web and I don't know how to choose." Here's a piece of advice: Find ones that sound like Chinesepod." (April 14, 2006)
Podcasters push the limit in China
"The lessons can take in the most up-to-date vocabulary. It's a far cry from the old days, when it took years for a textbook to gain official approval." (March 8, 2006)
Chinese Start-ups Seek Riches in Podcasting
"Chinesepod.com was launched in September as a language-learning portal that lets users download audio lessons as podcasts, read accompanying texts in pdf format, leave feedback via e-mail and discuss language-learning issues with other users of blogs." (February 7, 2006)