Must say I am a little disappointed in myself right now. . . Not only have I not updated this blog in nearly 2 months now. . .but also I took a serious hit in my studies over the past ~2 months.
Of course, I continue to study daily, but the amount I have been doing recently compared to what I was doing say in February or April is disheartening. Particularly in regards to my goal of getting the 3,000汉字 (Hanzi) the 2,000 or so 漢字 (kanji) in my head.
I started out strong after I made my last posting saying that I would go "all out" on the CJK, but somewhere along the line I lost too many opportunities to sit down and really work on those characters. Maybe since it is the ending of the academic year here; I went out a few too many times, lost my study weekends to travel a few too many times, was sidetracked or mentally not there a few too many times, and was just downright busy with life. . .a few too many times~
I guess with that in mind, I should be happy I finished organizing my CJK podcasts (stored as part of a gi-normous 500GB ‘language learning material’ external hard drive I bought) and made a huge dent in the number of the pods I want to go through, from KoreanClass101.com, JapanesePod101.com, and ChinesePod.com. I did pretty well with my SRS’ing as well (just keeping up with the Korean stuff), but regardless, I need to be constantly moving forward if I ever want to get these languages functionally useful for me anytime soon and right now that means sitting my ass down and getting the characters down.
Now, I want to talk about a clash of language learning giants, Praxis Language and Innovative Language, whose podcast websites are doing very well and are extremely useful language learning materials.
It seems like a new website, under Innovative Languages, with chinese language podcasts just launched today with the name “ChineseClass101.com”. As you can see with the '101' suffix attached, it’s a part of the koreanclass101 and japanesepod101 podcast family (Innovative Languages), both of which I use extensively.
Now the reason I bring this up is because if you have read my previous posts and look at my links on the right you know I am also a huge fan of ChinesePod.com (run by Praxis Languages). ChinesePod creates great quality material, have wonderful hosts, and a plethora of lessons that have almost single handedly taken my Chinese from nothing to a hearty elementary. In addition to the strong infrastructure (blogs, services, etc.) they have, you can really tell that they are a good company and can feel assured that your subscription money has been well spent [as long as you listen to the lessons and study]. I won’t lie, I am most definitely a fan boy of ChinesePod, so you can guess how torn I felt when I found out Innovative languages (the people behind the '101' sites) was coming out with their own Chinese podcasts.
On one hand, I like the structure and length of the ChinesePod lessons more than I do that of the '101' sites. I also feel that they have a tad bit better focus and quality than that of the '101' sites, so the extra charge [$9 at Praxis for basic 1mnth subscription and $8 at Innovative but they usually have some type of discount] is no bother to me in the least. On the other hand, Innovative languages has supplied me with two very good sites focusing on 2/3rds of the CJK, Japanese and Korean [which is my favorite language], so of course I spend more time on their sites. Plus they too have great hosts and community, and have lead me to tons of good information about the respective languages. Finding Hyunwoo Sun’s (host from kclass101) Naver blog and seeing all that he does language wise, has really been one of the greatest motivators for me [they must be doing something very right hiring people like him~ (you should definetly take a look at his site if your learning korean and are interested in langauges)].
All of this has left me with a question of where my loyalty should stand in regards to the new ChineseClass101 site. Should I side with those who I feel I am established with (in terms of the specific language, Chinese) and give me better content? or those who have slightly less preferable content but I feel more established with overall (the entire CJK through one company)?
One more thing to add is that in terms of being the established model, ChinesePod hands down runs the market on Chinese language podcasts, actually, more correctly amongst ALL language learning pod casts . In a slangish business term i love to use, they were. . .
“the firstest with the mostest”
As far as I know they pretty much started the professional pod casting movement as a means to learn language, as I didn’t know of any others before them. And to be honest, had it not been for knowing that there were Chinese language podcasts, I would most likely have never thought to look for Korean or Japanese ones (I think this is true for many others as well). ChinesePod was 1st and rose up very strong (200,000+ registered users) with more lessons uploaded than anywhere else, and they’re experience clearly shows.
Using the business side of my brain for a second, it seems rather strange that Innovative langauges would launch a competing Chinese language podcast site in spite of such a behemoth (and a valid one at that).
For a very longtime actually, it seemed like they understood that they were looking at a huge catchup game and were risking their new site (plus crew) floundering rather quickly, so would just stick to the major non-Chinese Asian languages (krn and jpn) plus some others, but I guess I was mistaken.
Conversely, it seems like Praxis is being smart sticking to their guns, and will not attempt to launch a Japanese or Korean podcast site anytime soon (unless they got some amazing thing that would convert and draw more future users than the '101' sites, which sad to say, ChineseClass101 does not have [from what I see it right now]).
Including the fact that the '101' sites garnered a lot of inspiration and interest due to the original ChinesePod website, it would seem a bit underhanded that they would launch a directly competing site like this. . .but business is business I guess.
If they can do well, it would actually be really great [especially for us consumers], innovation and good prices come from competition they say, but I get the feeling that the most members at the site will be:
1) - curious current users from KClass101 and JClass101 who already had a general interest in Asian languages and want to learn just a bit of Chinese (probably won’t be paying or stick to it for the long term) and. . .
2) - previous users, again from KClass101 and JClass101, who are crazy Asian/language fanatics and would dole out their money for anything halfway decent related to these languages [I fall into this group haha]
The market of people who want to learn Chinese is very big, but I highly doubt that over the long haul the site will be getting near the number of users as KClass101, even though Chinese is the much more popular 2nd language.
I will admit though, taking competition with Chinese pod aside, that this is a great strategy by Innovative Language to get more from your top 2 largest bodies of users who are interested in Japanese (~100,000 registered) and Korean (~30,000 registered).
With the Asian language "foot-in-the-door" already, it can only help them if they got enough paying users interested in Chinese also, to meet their base costs then grow from there [see how the CJK relationship has come into play once again??]. This may be what the whole point of the new site is. . .or maybe they are just being very kind and putting more good, mostly free material out there for the masses.
Anyway, since I AM a CJK’er and actually really like all of these sites I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking of getting a subscription everywhere despite my sentiments above~ More reinforcement, different styles and approaches, and a base crew right here in nY = more good chinese info using CClass101. . . . so i shouldn’t be complaining should I??
Next Time:
- Progress Update
- New/Favorite/Useful Phrases in Chn, Jpn, Krn??
- Upload speaking one of CJK?
-Study tools?
- random things. . . .
이 블로그 영어밖에 아무 언어 거의 없죠? 다음에, 진짜 진짜 다른 언어로 쓰겠어요 조금만 이라도~
[More]
Of course, I continue to study daily, but the amount I have been doing recently compared to what I was doing say in February or April is disheartening. Particularly in regards to my goal of getting the 3,000汉字 (Hanzi) the 2,000 or so 漢字 (kanji) in my head.
I started out strong after I made my last posting saying that I would go "all out" on the CJK, but somewhere along the line I lost too many opportunities to sit down and really work on those characters. Maybe since it is the ending of the academic year here; I went out a few too many times, lost my study weekends to travel a few too many times, was sidetracked or mentally not there a few too many times, and was just downright busy with life. . .a few too many times~
I guess with that in mind, I should be happy I finished organizing my CJK podcasts (stored as part of a gi-normous 500GB ‘language learning material’ external hard drive I bought) and made a huge dent in the number of the pods I want to go through, from KoreanClass101.com, JapanesePod101.com, and ChinesePod.com. I did pretty well with my SRS’ing as well (just keeping up with the Korean stuff), but regardless, I need to be constantly moving forward if I ever want to get these languages functionally useful for me anytime soon and right now that means sitting my ass down and getting the characters down.Now, I want to talk about a clash of language learning giants, Praxis Language and Innovative Language, whose podcast websites are doing very well and are extremely useful language learning materials.
It seems like a new website, under Innovative Languages, with chinese language podcasts just launched today with the name “ChineseClass101.com”. As you can see with the '101' suffix attached, it’s a part of the koreanclass101 and japanesepod101 podcast family (Innovative Languages), both of which I use extensively.Now the reason I bring this up is because if you have read my previous posts and look at my links on the right you know I am also a huge fan of ChinesePod.com (run by Praxis Languages). ChinesePod creates great quality material, have wonderful hosts, and a plethora of lessons that have almost single handedly taken my Chinese from nothing to a hearty elementary. In addition to the strong infrastructure (blogs, services, etc.) they have, you can really tell that they are a good company and can feel assured that your subscription money has been well spent [as long as you listen to the lessons and study]. I won’t lie, I am most definitely a fan boy of ChinesePod, so you can guess how torn I felt when I found out Innovative languages (the people behind the '101' sites) was coming out with their own Chinese podcasts.
On one hand, I like the structure and length of the ChinesePod lessons more than I do that of the '101' sites. I also feel that they have a tad bit better focus and quality than that of the '101' sites, so the extra charge [$9 at Praxis for basic 1mnth subscription and $8 at Innovative but they usually have some type of discount] is no bother to me in the least. On the other hand, Innovative languages has supplied me with two very good sites focusing on 2/3rds of the CJK, Japanese and Korean [which is my favorite language], so of course I spend more time on their sites. Plus they too have great hosts and community, and have lead me to tons of good information about the respective languages. Finding Hyunwoo Sun’s (host from kclass101) Naver blog and seeing all that he does language wise, has really been one of the greatest motivators for me [they must be doing something very right hiring people like him~ (you should definetly take a look at his site if your learning korean and are interested in langauges)].
All of this has left me with a question of where my loyalty should stand in regards to the new ChineseClass101 site. Should I side with those who I feel I am established with (in terms of the specific language, Chinese) and give me better content? or those who have slightly less preferable content but I feel more established with overall (the entire CJK through one company)?
One more thing to add is that in terms of being the established model, ChinesePod hands down runs the market on Chinese language podcasts, actually, more correctly amongst ALL language learning pod casts . In a slangish business term i love to use, they were. . .
“the firstest with the mostest”
As far as I know they pretty much started the professional pod casting movement as a means to learn language, as I didn’t know of any others before them. And to be honest, had it not been for knowing that there were Chinese language podcasts, I would most likely have never thought to look for Korean or Japanese ones (I think this is true for many others as well). ChinesePod was 1st and rose up very strong (200,000+ registered users) with more lessons uploaded than anywhere else, and they’re experience clearly shows.
Using the business side of my brain for a second, it seems rather strange that Innovative langauges would launch a competing Chinese language podcast site in spite of such a behemoth (and a valid one at that).
For a very longtime actually, it seemed like they understood that they were looking at a huge catchup game and were risking their new site (plus crew) floundering rather quickly, so would just stick to the major non-Chinese Asian languages (krn and jpn) plus some others, but I guess I was mistaken.
Conversely, it seems like Praxis is being smart sticking to their guns, and will not attempt to launch a Japanese or Korean podcast site anytime soon (unless they got some amazing thing that would convert and draw more future users than the '101' sites, which sad to say, ChineseClass101 does not have [from what I see it right now]).
Including the fact that the '101' sites garnered a lot of inspiration and interest due to the original ChinesePod website, it would seem a bit underhanded that they would launch a directly competing site like this. . .but business is business I guess.
If they can do well, it would actually be really great [especially for us consumers], innovation and good prices come from competition they say, but I get the feeling that the most members at the site will be:
1) - curious current users from KClass101 and JClass101 who already had a general interest in Asian languages and want to learn just a bit of Chinese (probably won’t be paying or stick to it for the long term) and. . .
2) - previous users, again from KClass101 and JClass101, who are crazy Asian/language fanatics and would dole out their money for anything halfway decent related to these languages [I fall into this group haha]
The market of people who want to learn Chinese is very big, but I highly doubt that over the long haul the site will be getting near the number of users as KClass101, even though Chinese is the much more popular 2nd language.
I will admit though, taking competition with Chinese pod aside, that this is a great strategy by Innovative Language to get more from your top 2 largest bodies of users who are interested in Japanese (~100,000 registered) and Korean (~30,000 registered).
With the Asian language "foot-in-the-door" already, it can only help them if they got enough paying users interested in Chinese also, to meet their base costs then grow from there [see how the CJK relationship has come into play once again??]. This may be what the whole point of the new site is. . .or maybe they are just being very kind and putting more good, mostly free material out there for the masses.
Anyway, since I AM a CJK’er and actually really like all of these sites I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking of getting a subscription everywhere despite my sentiments above~ More reinforcement, different styles and approaches, and a base crew right here in nY = more good chinese info using CClass101. . . . so i shouldn’t be complaining should I??
Next Time:
- Progress Update
- New/Favorite/Useful Phrases in Chn, Jpn, Krn??
- Upload speaking one of CJK?
-Study tools?
- random things. . . .
이 블로그 영어밖에 아무 언어 거의 없죠? 다음에, 진짜 진짜 다른 언어로 쓰겠어요 조금만 이라도~
