Learning Chinese with an iPod

John B. recently commented on my how to learn a language article about ChinesePod.com. He suggested I check it out. I was intrigued and signed up for the 15 day trial right away. And I must say, I am impressed. ChinesePod was started in 2005 by several foreigners living in China. They experienced first hand what words and phrases they needed to communicate and turned that knowledge into 595 lessons starting at a beginner level all the way to advanced. I signed up to get a daily RSS feed which sends one lesson a day to my blog reader (Google Reader, if you want to know). Today’s lesson was how to say “what meat is this?”. I have the option of downloading each lesson to my computer and put it on my iPod (if I had one) or listening to it through my computer.

Another thing I like about the ChinesePod is that the website shows the written words your are saying and how to pronounce them. For us visual people, it is immensely helpful to not only hear but see the words we are saying. And of course, you are able to download the lesson in a PDF. Here’s a page from the site that explains how lessons work.

ChinesePod members also have the ability to blog and talk with other members. This is a great way to further your studies. I haven’t experimented with this part of the site yet, but I like that it’s an option as I continue to learn the language.

Question: Has anyone else had any experience with this site? Are there similar sites out there? Let me know your thoughts.