That feature gets my vote!
Clay and his coffee…
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They really crack me up lol and all from just pure audio !
Yes please, just today I thought the same. Sorting by hosts and year would be awesome.
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Agree. Concur. Same here. Putting stuff into the “Self Study” category is fine for a current study list, still sorting with more choices, e.g., hosts, etc. would make my study sessions more effective.
Hi All:
Thanks for this suggestion! I have forwarded this particular request to the IT team who is working on website revamp and design! Admittedly the current filter function is limited, but if you type the instructor name, you should get the lessons given by the named instructor. Just a reminder that over the years, we have instructors who have the same name.
Another feature I have suggested to our IT team is to increase the categories/series and levels to include more different types/levels of lessons. I saw that when we introduced the character series with traditional characters this month, users are negatively surprised because they expect to see simplified characters and not traditional, while a good number of our users are tradition system learners. So I am seeing that our present level/category system is not sufficient to help users to target and effectively search for what they really need.
This is THE time to make your suggestions while the IT team is in the process of designing the website and app. Your suggestion is much appreciated and please don’t stop writing in!
I’d like to be able to make my own playlists or to tag videos for my own use (any sort of grouping system really), so that I can throw some videos or podcasts together and then work my way through them over several sessions and come back later to revise the content. Eg I recently did a search for illness related material as we were covering that in class and found some suitable ones, but I can only bookmark them and then I have to search through all my bookmarked ones to find them.
This feature would also allow me to keep a list of easier material for when I’m a bit tired and harder stuff for when I feel up for a challenge.
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Hello, thanks for writing in, and your suggestion is passed onto the IT team. Currently, our playlist function is quite limited unfortunately…
If there’s a revamped playlist feature, I’d also like to be able to share it. I’ve sometimes seen complaints in comments, and I’ve thought, “I’d love to make a short playlist for that guy of lessons he might like.”
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I’m guessing this has been mentioned, but just in case it hasn’t…
One of the most valuable thing I do on my iPhone, since I have all the dialogues downloaded and organized into iTunes, is have a playlist of only dialogues at each level, from 2008 through 2014. I can then choose a level, then play it on “shuffle” to both review and discover material I had missed.
On the website and/or app, it could work by creating a smart playlist of (1) dialogues only (2) at a certain level(s) (3) with other criteria, such as year or teacher, or maybe even topic.
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“Read and Listen”
To add to my above comment, ChinesePod has many hours of pure dialogue on file, along with the text. I wonder if there’s a way to create a “Reading Practice” function, where you can either create a playlist, or shuffle the dialogues, and at the same time see the text nicely displayed on the screen.
I used to do that with my iPhone by syncing all the dialogues through iTunes, then using Pleco Lyrics Reader to read along with each dialogue. It would be great to have that functionality built-in, rather than ask poddies to download and organize the whole site into iTunes for themselves!
Thanks so much Elijah for this suggestion, and I am going to raise this to the IT team if they hadn’t seen this in the forum. If I am understanding you correctly, you are seeing a possibility to “break down” lesson barriers that keep the materials (text, dialogues, vocab, recording, etc.) apart, such that the CP materials can be more fluently and personally grouped together for personalised learning purpose. This sounds to me a pretty deep change in the IT architecture, but again, I am not an IT person, so I can only try to use my layman language to discuss with the IT team.
I don’t know how much IT change would be involved. It would simply be an added tool that allows you to have a playlist of only the dialogues, and on the screen it would display the text of the dialogue. I’ll see if I can figure out a better way of explaining it.
I’ve made some YouTube videos to show what I do with an iTunes Dialogue MP3 playlist and Pleco. It would be great if something like this was already built into the app, so you wouldn’t have to download and organize all the dialogues on your own first.
When doing a screen capture of Pleco on the iPhone, the built-in screen capture software wouldn’t allow me to capture audio from the Music app, so I had to do it the “old fashioned” way below:
ChinesePod already has a ton of well-scripted and well-acted audio coupled with the text. If the website or app could do something like this without requiring people to download the whole site onto their hard drive, organize the files and build playlists themselves, sync to another device, and use a third-part app to see the lyrics, it would be a great asset.
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As a new user, what I find slightly frustrating about Cpod is the random pattern of the lessons and the lack of a clear pathway. So, anything improving that would be a huge help. For example, a suggested path of progression through the newbie and elementary levels, mentioning which courses and lessons to follow in order. I am using several other resources to learn Chinese, and undoubtedly you have the greatest array of materials, but sadly the lack of structure makes it difficult to make decisions, at least for a beginner. Otherwise, I am very happy and learning a lot.
The playlist would be a huge improvement, I agree!
I do that manually by downloading lesson materials and ordering them in files in my computer, but I agree it would be great if the site provided it. I feel I spend to much time in that kind of tasks instead of learning 
I use ChinesePod on different computers, a tablet and a phone, so it’d be easier for me if it was available on the website rather than me having to download stuff. Plus even if you download everything, you won’t have all the different material available easily. Maybe it’s just me not finding a way of organising them that works well. But I have been thinking of grouping and putting the dialogues on an MP3 player so that I get the tracks in order of various themes.
For the moment, my rather primitive system is to make a folder for each lesson, named after the title show, and put there the show, vocabulary review, dialogue and pdf. They all go into a bigger folder called Newbie. I then put each folder into my mp3, and make multiple copies of the vocab and dialogue, to listen them on the go. I tried using my phone for a while, but it ordered the tracks by “album” and it was a mess when listening them while exercising etc. But it all takes quite a long time to organize, so any improvement in this regard from the CP side would be a blessing.
MayHaNN,
I know this is probably a difficult question to answer but: What specifically is frustrating about it? Is it the indecision of what to study next? Is it inconsistency in the level of challenge from one lesson to the next? Is it something else?
I am a fan of ChinesePod’s original methodology: “Chinese on YOUR terms.” Study whatever you want. But I do have to confess that, even from the beginning, they haven’t done a good job of explaining the methodology to students.
So, I guess what I’m trying to figure out is: What actually is the problem? Is the unstructured methodology itself the problem? Or perhaps might it be the lack of guidance on how to use the unstructured methodology? My gut feeling is that it’s the latter.
If you can think of ways to explain your experience, I would love to hear it.
Downloading is the easy part! I made a video showing how I keep my ChinesePod files organized. They’re easily accessible, but it does take quite a bit of work to get it like this.
I’ve discovered that some of the stuff I do only seems to work due to the tight integration between iTunes and iOS. I tried to help a friend using Android put something like this together, and I walked away thinking it’s probably impossible.