Add Lessons to your Account

Almost done! Now just tell us your difficulty level, and we'll add hundreds of Chinese lessons to your account. This only takes a few seconds, and you can always change your choice later:

Want more control? Our menu on the right lets you pick individual shows to add to your account. Once lessons are in your account you can download them manually from our website or automatically by using your personal RSS feed. And if you want to chance your choices in the future, just visit our lesson archive and reselect levels.

marco64

said on

September 1, 2008

This is a nice site. Suggest you put up a video showing how to create lessons too.

trevelyan

said on

September 1, 2008

Good suggestion Marco. I downloaded Camtasia a few days ago and should have something up in a day or two. Will post on Youtube and link to it down below when it's up.

Lesson creation is pretty easy though, so I'd be surprised if you can't figure it out. Just click on whatever you want to edit and then follow the instructions. :)

leanne

said on

September 1, 2008

LIKE THE CONTENT. ESPECIALLY YOUR TRANSLATION, REALLY FUNNY!

bverble

said on

September 9, 2008

Congratulations trevelyan et al. I wasn't able to see what the HSK was all about because I was just taking a look at your site as recommended by henning. I keep hearing about this, curious to know more. Right now site content is either too easy or too difficult for me. But I will keep checking back. I think the listening exercises are excellent because I like to hear the Chinese spoken in actual speed. The level is just too high for me at the moment. I need something really simple like some children's books with limited vocabulary. Just a suggestion. Good luck to you!

Echo

said on

September 9, 2008

@bverble,

Hey, welcome to the site. Try HSK Beginners if you think the Intermediate is a bit difficult. I believe you would find it is helpful. We'd try to put some simple and interesting stories in Short Stories. Hopefully you'll like them.

Thank you very much for your suggestion! Any questions are welcome at echo@popupchinese.com.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

trevelyan

said on

September 10, 2008

@bverble - thanks a lot and welcome to Popup Chinese! We have some more intermediate lessons and content coming down the pipeline and will be coming out with our first elementary lesson on Thursday. We're experimenting with different lesson formats and styles to figure out what works for us, and it will probably take a while before we get a stable roster of shows that reflect what sorts of materials are most popular at different levels.

In the meantime, did you check out Wang Fei's song in last week's KTV Wednesday? It's more difficult than a children's book, but with the mouseover text you can follow exactly what Wang Fei is singing. We'll be releasing our second episode of the show later today. The music this time around is slower and with the popups you should be able to sense of it.

Otherwise, if you have suggestions on any specific types of dialogues you'd like, you can also send them to us either directly through email (david or echo @popupchinese.com), or through our submission page. A lot of our voice actors are graduates of the Central Drama Academy - they really enjoy the corny and dramatic, so ham it up....

Also - be sure you sign up with voucher 2008AOYUN on http://popupchinese.com/voucher to get free access to the site before we leave beta and disable the voucher. We are technically still in our beta testing period, and trying to polish the corners on the site.

Frank

said on

September 11, 2008

Daaaaaaaave! So this is what you're doing with yourself. :-)

Frank

trevelyan

said on

September 11, 2008

Hi Franklicious! It's great to hear from you. As you can see, life is busy, busy rolling out content and trying to fix usability problems. I think we're making decent progress though. :)

Nice template on your blog by the way. I actually use the same one: it reminds me of 紫竹院, one of the parks out by the National Library where I used to go running.

henning

said on

September 11, 2008

Look who surfaces here!

Frank, how are you! You have been missed...

Frank

said on

September 11, 2008

Hiya, fellas! It's funny... I only found my way here because Dave has the link as part of his status message on his Gmail Chat. It's great to see you both. I'll poke my head back over on that other site soon. Promise. :-)

vineyard

said on

September 12, 2008

Amazing work guys, this is an incredible platform. The custom popups are genius, and the site is easier to use than anything else I've tried. The music videos are nice - it would be good to have more intermediate lessons with structured guidance, but I'd guess that's coming. Will be back.

liaosuping

said on

September 14, 2008

我是来学英文的，哈哈！因为一直忙于自己的事情，我甚至在离开上海的很长一段时间里没有上网，没有回复David的e-mail。今天才听说David也离开了上海，创办了popupchinese.com。在上海和David一起工作的那段时间非常难忘，最近还好吗？有没有去看奥运比赛？

-Xiao Liao

jim.veseley

said on

September 18, 2008

great site with excellent audio. some of the most true-to-life mandarin I've heard in the podcast format. looking forward to hearing more.

Echo

said on

September 18, 2008

@jim.veseley,

Thank you:) You can creat your own lessons too and share them with your friends or other users on the site.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

saunders

said on

October 7, 2008

great site and great podcasts. appreciate all of the work that is going into this resource. --kevin

jeremy524

said on

November 2, 2008

fantastic stuff here. keep up the good work!

cassattila

said on

November 21, 2008

I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. I'm not sure if this is the right place. Well, I'm off to listen to your podcasts all day, week, and month. see ya later.

trevelyan

said on

November 21, 2008

hi cassattila. Welcome to Popup Chinese and we hope you enjoy the podcasts and tests and everything else. If you have any questions or suggestions about lessons/texts/features youd like to see, please do get in touch with Echo at echo@popupchinese.com. :)

Echo

said on

November 21, 2008

@cassattila,

Hi, welcome! It seems that david has already said everything i'd say.

So...欢迎来到泡泡中文，希望你喜欢我们的内容，有什么问题和要求都可以写信给我 :)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Lunetta

said on

December 12, 2008

Dave, 好久不见！！！ You've always been a man of impeccable taste and it shows here as well.

I especially like Film Friday but that probably doesn't surprise you. :-D

trevelyan

said on

December 12, 2008

Hi Lunetta. Am just editing tomorrow's show right now actually. I think you'll like it a lot (the movie, not making presumptions about the show yet). :)

huangwei_tcl

said on

January 17, 2009

这里好像是学汉语的呀，，，

Echo

said on

January 17, 2009

@huangwei_tcl,

是呀，欢迎你呀！

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

mustafakilic

said on

January 23, 2009

ni hao

wo changshi xue pin yin

hai shi zuo tian zai zhe ge fang fa ni you zi dian de , dan shi jin tian wo mei you kan kan wei shen me ne ?

qing ni bang zhu wo fa xiang zi dian

ni zhen cheng de

mustafa

istanbul/tuerqi

dictionary

said on

January 23, 2009

@mustafa: Tools -> Dictionary:

http://popupchinese.com/dictionary.

Echo

said on

January 24, 2009

@mustafa,

你好！

上面的词典是你要找的吗？

另外，给你一个小建议，你写拼音的时候可以把一个词的拼音放在一起，而且加上声调（tones) ，比如“zuo2tian1”,这样更清楚 :)

If you don't understand these Chinese characters above, you can either go to http://popupchinese.com/dictionary and switch them into pinyin, or write to me at echo@popupchinese.com.

Chun1jie2 kuai4le4 !

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

m.e

said on

January 28, 2009

1) How much is a subscription? I could not find this on the site.

2) How are you different from ChinesePod?

trevelyan

said on

January 28, 2009

@m.e. -- subscription details are on the upgrade page of the Accounts section. Pricing starts at $4 a week.

Anyone who isn't us like to take a stab at question two? I like to think we're doing something quite different and better. What are your perceptions?

toneandcolor

said on

January 28, 2009

I'll chime in, having been a paying customer for both services.

I think CPod is a good introduction to the language, but as your Chinese improves you need more directed and intelligent lesson design. Cpod's podcasts - at the Elementary and Newbie level especially - can be a little heavy on banter and light on content in my opinion, and their systems for testing and organizing your study are less sophisticated than what you get here. Many of the study tools at Cpod were sluggish or buggy when I used them, and in the end were not much more than glorified flash cards. Popup, on the other hand, seems to provide tests and lessons that address difficult grammatical issues directly and prepare you for more advanced study of the language, especially if you plan to take the HSK, and things like Film Friday and Chinese literature in the original round out your studies quite well.

I also just like the tone of the podcasts here better - there's less self-promotion and blabbering, no obnoxious top-40-radio-like outros(sorry Aric), and more thoughtful insight into grammar and pronunciation. I often felt that Cpod overlooks more sophisticated analysis for the sake of being accessible and casual. Just my opinion.

markwfeld

said on

January 29, 2009

I'm a long-time listener but rarely comment. I'll chip in here though.

I think CPod has good materials for newbies but problems with the rest. The difficulty level at Popup Chinese is more challenging and I can see that being intimidating for a total beginner. The recordings here are more authentic and the educational value is much higher, but I don't think there are enough materials here for a total beginner to get to the intermediate level on their own.

I don't think the extra features of either site are tremendously compelling at present, unless you are working towards HSK accreditation in which case Popup Chinese clearly wins. The technology here is better and I would find it frustrating to go back and lose some of the customization here, but they are both good products. Ken and Jenny are wonderful in a way that's completely different from Echo and Brendan.

m.e

said on

January 30, 2009

As a suggestion for lessons, could we have some well-known phrases such as 'The Chinese people have stood up' or 'It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white...' or 'The Empire once united must divide...'? I have come across these in English, but it would be nioce to be able to parrot them in Mandarin. I am sure others would have their own different lists, but you should be able to come up with several lists of top 10 Chinese sayings. maybe you could do one for Mao, one for Confucius etc.

m.e

said on

January 30, 2009

And another suggestion - have you talked to the PlecoDict people? They wrote once that they tried to set up a partnership with ChinesePod, but ChinesePod were not interested. Their idea was (roughly, as I remember) a bridge to import a lesson into PlecoDict (lesson text to the reader, vocabulary to the flashcard system, maybe importing the audio as well). Is that something that would fit your business model? You might want to contact them; they might be prepared to fund their side of the software development for example. (I have no relationship with PlecoDict except as a customer).

trevelyan

said on

January 30, 2009

@m.e. - it's a good suggestion, will see what we can do.

On the Pleco front, we know both Tom Bishop and Mike Love and want to do our best to support them. There's an export button for both Wenlin and Plecodict on the right-hand column of all vocab pages so it's pretty easy to export vocabulary lists and lesson vocabulary to both platforms right now.

I believe the new version of Wenlin is adding support for sentence-level data as well. We're waiting for Tom Bishop to provide details on export format before implementing anything specific for this though.

gustibus

said on

April 15, 2009

Fantastic site! Hands down the most genuine and fun Chinese I've heard in any learning podcasts too. Reminds me of the good times I spent on my year abroad -- keep up the good work.

trevelyan

said on

April 15, 2009

Thanks gustibus. Be sure to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback on the materials. --david

bobbydurand

said on

June 12, 2009

Great website. Great learning tools.

Very professional!

谢谢你们

董崇仁

trevelyan

said on

June 12, 2009

@bobbydurand - thanks a lot and welcome to the site (great Chinese name by the way). We're lucky to have a pretty fluent community around, so feel free to ask any questions you might have. Suggestions on ways we can improve the site are also very welcome.

You're also welcome to contact us directly by email anytime at david@popupchinese.com or echo@popupchinese.com.

Cheers,

--dave

nachbar

said on

October 12, 2009

Hallo everybody

I'm preparing for HSK 基础

Is the vocab list 甲 sufficient for the 基础? On this site is written - YES, but I've seen other opinion

Here http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=16242

"he 初中级 exam uses the 甲,乙 and 丙 - ie the first three - levels of vocab. It doesn't make any reference to what you need for a 初级 pass as opposed to a 中级 one.

基础 uses 甲，乙。

高, I'm going to assume, uses them all.

This is typical of the HSK exams. The 'lowest' exam covers two lists. The next covers two levels, but only introduces one extra list of vocab."

Who is right? Again: does 甲 cover the HSK 基础 or not, only 甲+乙 do ?

Thank you in advance

Eugene

Echo

said on

October 13, 2009

＠nachbar,

The authoritative information from www.hsk.org.cn (HSK Center) is that more than 600 frequent words are needed for HSK 基础. It doesn't mention if those words are from vocab list 甲 or others. There are 1033 words in the list 甲, but we can't say it's gonna cover all the words in 基础 test. I'd suggest you to use both 甲 and 乙 since these two lists have 3051 the most frequently used words in Chinese.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

orbital

said on

October 13, 2009

@nachbar - the lists are rough guidelines. The Chinese groups that create the tests (Hanban and BLCU respectively) aren't organized enough to build their tests totally from a central wordlist (and it defeats the point of fluency to only test for 8,000 or so words at the advanced level). For the foundation test that Hanban is pitching level 1 should be sufficient. You might be better off skipping it and putting the study time towards the Beginner Level.

Good luck!

Gail天堂的声音

said on

October 13, 2009

@nachbar,

hi, i suggest you just foget the word list and try to study more. because in HSK基础，not all the words are from level 甲, although they should be.

so you should know all the words of 甲，better know some 乙 level words.

actually the wordlist itself has some problem, dont believe too much in it. Hanban and BLCU also reallized the problem and now they are developing a new one, but it may come out very late... maybe, in years...

nachbar

said on

October 14, 2009

Many Thanks everybody

I will try to recognise at reading both 甲 and 乙.

but, the listening is more difficult for me, therefore I'm going to concentrate on 甲

Regards

bajmark

said on

November 15, 2009

Brilliant website! Love the podcasts I've heard already. Looking forward to hearing many more.

Xiao Hu

said on

November 15, 2009

@bajmark,

I also think it's a great website. I'm liking it more and more. Great hosts and hostess, terrific extremely professional voice actors. Great stuff! Keep up the great work guys!

Echo

said on

November 15, 2009

@bajmark&Xiao Hu,

Guys, thank you for your kind words about the site :) 谢谢大家! We'll keep 加油!

@bajmark,

Welcome to join us! 欢迎你! If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to post on the site or write to me directly.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

LanZi

said on

November 16, 2009

Hey everyone, I'm LanZi(蓝子). Just wanna drop in and say hi. I'm working in the Beijing office right now. Can't believe what an awesome office it is! Btw, David did NOT make me say that:)

I'm from BLCU. 对外汉语专业刚毕业，刚加入这个团队。说真的，在这里工作太爽啦。希望以后可以帮到你们。Please free free to post or email me if you have any problems or suggestions. I'm more than happy to help.