Popup Chinese
paulinurus
December 29, 2010, 03:14 AM posted in General DiscussionI came across Popup Chinese recently and signed up for a one week free trial. Popup Chinese have similarly structured lessons as Cpod, including beginners, ele, inter, and advanced. Further to these lessons, they also have other topics ... HSK Exam lessons, KTV, Films, Short Stories, and commentaries about China (Sinica). The Basic and Premium subscription fee is 1/2 of Cpod's.
I like the wide range of topics, however I find the story lines of the lessons have a in-your-face approach, quite eccentric, coarser language ("you little bitch troll from hell"), high-browish, and in certain lessons one needs to have a back-ground of USA culture (e.g. A Serious Shortage of Trousers lesson) before you can even understand the English translation. I think some change from the norm could be helpful to accelerate the learning curve, however I would like to canvass your opinions, especially from those who have looked at Popup Chinese.
light487
December 29, 2010, 04:13 AMThe reason Popup Chinese and that other one.. ChineseClass101 (I think) are so similar to ChinesePod is that they, the people who created them, were once upon a time involved in ChinesePod for one reason or another. They wanted ChinesePod to take a different direction but of course ChinesePod is ChinesePod because it is ChinesePod... :)
So they started their own online learning websites as a result of this... so a lot of the structure remains, as it is a good and robust structure.. but the content and those ideas for change they had are evident in the overall feel and design of the site and the lessons.