LanZi on February 24, 2010 | reply

Hi Matt,

Glad you liked us.

With premium account you get writing and speaking exercises where you can write us essays or send us audios of yourself speaking mandarin. We will have teachers look at them and give you feedback, either in written form or audios. You get to practice your reading or listening as well. I think that's very helpful.

Having a Chinese girlfriend/boyfriend is one of the fastest way to learn to speak Mandarin. Lots of motivations and you learn to say romantic and angry sentences real quick. A language partner for free.

ysaliera on February 24, 2010 | reply

Matt,

I'm a basic subscriber and consider it a bargain, but I also wouldn't lose sleep over the decision - they'll prompt you to upgrade if you try to access the paid content after your trial expires.

I rarely comment, but am quite happy. I've never had a textbook with anything like the amount of materials here and their variety and quality. I don't use the HSK tests, but the podcasts and dialogues are worth a subscription alone in my opinion. The price I paid works out to around four dollars a month, much less expensive than most of the other options out there.

Good luck!

--jim

Echo on February 24, 2010 | reply

@Matt,

Welcome to the site! 欢迎你！Glad to hear that you like the site :) Please feel free to leave us a comment or write to me if you run into any questions or problems.

@Jim,

谢谢！你也加油啦！

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

chihayakenji1893 on February 25, 2010 | reply

Hi,

I am new to the site too. My name is Guilherme Kenji and I am from Brazil, although I am now in Japan. Like lostmatt, I also found you through the podcasts, in my case through iTunes, and am considering the paid subscription. I signed up mostly for the podcasts and PDFs for the podcasts, and really don't think I will use the other stuff. What kind of subscription suits better my needs?

Also, how should I proceed to download my pdfs to iTunes? I currently only have a few lessons' PDFs that are not exactly the ones corresponding to the lessons I downloaded from iTunes.

Cheers,

Kenji

trevelyan on February 25, 2010 | reply

@chihayakenji1893,

Hi Kenji.

Just to answer your subscription question first, our basic subscription lets you download all lesson materials (pdfs, mp3s). You can view the transcripts and tests through your browser, or print them out and study them anywhere else. The premium package includes full access to our entire online system, including our online HSK tests, vocabulary study tools and everything else.

On the PDF front, have you subscribed to your personal RSS feed through iTunes or are you still subscribed to the public feed you found in iTunes? The public feed lists all of our latest lessons. Your personal feed will have only the lessons you've bookmarked (these are the lessons that will show up on your front page once you're logged in). The link to subscribe to your private iTunes feed is here. You'll need to be logged in for this work:

http://popupchinese.com/account/iTunesFeed

I've just checked and the materials in your feed seem to be the same lessons as on your front page. If you're not getting this, are having any other technical problems or if things aren't working as expected, please write us at service@popupchinese.com so we can get things sorted out.

Best,

--david

chihayakenji1893 on February 25, 2010 | reply

Hi David,

Thank you for your reply. I will subscribe to the feed and bookmark the lessons I want to download. I still want to try the other features before deciding which subscription.

Cheers

Kenji

Neville on March 1, 2010 | reply

Echo darling, and Brendan. First congratulations on having the only engaging Chinese language course around! The mere fact it's often so funny really keeps me going. (You one dry bean B!).

However I write u because I have one point of concern. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not too sure the levels are very well calibrated. For instance elementary is mostly too easy for me, yet intermediate is really too hard. I obviously have serious problems with listening, still I'm wondering if there are not many more people like me.

Aiit. Keep it coming!

Neville

Brendan on March 1, 2010 | reply

Hey Neville!

Glad you're liking the lessons -- we try to keep mixing things up; just because we had to deal with dry textbooks and language lab cassettes doesn't mean other people should.

Your concerns about level calibration are well taken -- it's an issue of concern here, too, and we'll often get into arguments about whether a given dialogue counts as a hard elementary or an easy intermediate. Obviously, this is something we need to do a better job on, and my hope is that as we continue to upload more lessons in all categories, we'll get a more graceful gradient from E. to I. Thanks for writing in -- this'll give the more reform-minded factions of Popup Chinese some ammo the next time we have a Serious Discussion about it.

Cheers,

--B