Why all language podcasts should sound like Chinesepod.
By Michael Erard
Posted Friday, April 14, 2006, at 12:44 PM ET
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.
As in most podcasts, the hosts
are the biggest attraction. Chinesepod is hosted by Ken Carroll, an
Irishman who founded a high-profile English school in Shanghai as well as Chinesepod's parent company, and Jenny Zhu, who gained some visibility as Maria Shriver's translator
at the recent Special Olympics. They get right to business (they don't
chatter self-referentially about the Web site or the podcast) and
they're certainly likable. Because the lessons are predetermined but
the accompanying banter isn't, you get to hear Ken and Jenny genuinely
interact in both English and Chinese, which is not only interesting but
also takes on a frisson of actual social danger—Jenny, the native
speaker, is Ken's employee, which makes each lesson an episode of a
subtly plotted soap opera. Will Jenny insult Ken's Chinese? Will Ken
stop moping that listeners have complained about his Mandarin tones?
Read the complete article or download the MP3 audio version of this story at slate.com