Hi! It was me who wrote the email- thanks for your personal reply. I'll leave my comment on here.

What you have said clarifies things, and makes me feel better about falling under the 'elementary' tag! I totally agree with the decision to make the materials challenging, because that is exactly what you will encounter in China. Also, from what I have listened to so far, I think the things covered by Popup Chinese do seem to fill in gaps that haven't been covered elsewhere (although my Chinese study has been really random, so there are gaps everywhere!).

Personally I find that the elementary dialogues are clear once I have listened to the whole podcast, although at the moment the accent makes it harder for me to pick out every word. The grammar points and most basic vocabulary is all pretty familiar (but stuff that I need to keep going over). I have also listened to a couple of intermediate podcasts, and think those could be really useful as long as I have the support of the transcript.

I guess I'll pick some lessons that sound interesting or useful and start with those, and Ill probably work a bit at both levels.

As I said before, my study has been really random for various reasons, mainly because when you are in the country you can't control what level your interactions will be at. I think you progress at different levels in different things.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback! I'd be interested to know what other people who've used Popup Chinese for longer think about the levels...