Peter,

By any chance, where you in Beijing two days ago ?? I think i saw you but didn’t dare speaking to you (or your twin! ) as i wasnt sure.
If it was you, is it because you are preparing a chinesepod101.com ??

Jeremy

I see that this comment stream has become a place for feedback regarding the new language streams and I hope it is ok if I use it for this purpose as well.

I would like to urge JPOD101, or whatever they will be called in the future, to exercise patience and restraint with these new ventures or they will become just another language teaching machine. Each language needs to find it’s own balance and this will take a while. And I agree - do we need French and German when there are so many resources out there which already work suceesfully?

Those who discovered JPOD101 in its early days will probably agree with me that what kept us coming back was essentially the formula Dickens used to propose: ‘make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait!’

We laughed at Peter and co.’s (apparent) clumsiness or unusual predicaments, we cried with Chigusa being disappointed in iLove, we waited for the next instalment of each riveting story. In addition, the community side and the free delivery was the core of the site - Japanese is a tough language and having to pay would discourage many. I think this was well understood by those who started the project.

JPOD101 worked because of the chemistry of the presenters and the quality of the contrasting American and Japanese sense of humor - this will be different for each language as each reflects different cultural backgrounds. I do hope that this remains understood at the core of all this development.

Plunging into a different language market is difficult - the competition is different, for a start. Japanese did not have many good interactive sites available and has the reputation to be a difficult language for all foreigners. Italian may be much easier to tackle for a Spanish or French listener and there are so many more opportunities to learn, not least conventional schools and relatively affordable courses. Also for these European languages there already are sites with similar approaches so their appeal must be not so much for being a unique proposition as for being a BETTER proposition.

My wish for all of these initiatives is that all the sites may be able to retain the community feel that makes me thing of JPOD101 people of my friends even if I am only one a hundred thousand listeners. I always get thanked for my suggestions and Peter never misses a chance to let us know how much they value our contributions.

Let’s hope this atmosphere will always remain at JPOD101!

Gambatte kudasai!

mikuji

PS: as a native Italian speaker I must say that I really enjoy the advanced features in the new site - they are informative and they address that section of Italian speakers who wish to brush up their language - that is they get the meaning but need to refine their expression. There is more such listeners for Italian than for Japanese or Korean, so I can see the logic in including this at the start.

Using this language as an example one would find Italian (or French of German) more difficult if one is Japanese than if one is Spanish (a Spaniard will guess most of it without studying! a Korean will be totally baffled by the simplest of sentences untill some study is done) so it is difficult to pitch things at the right level.

A personさん、
yeah, i know there a many issues with that initial page. internally there are some lively discussion about it, actually. and it will be addressed in due time. i don’t know about the other sites, but i’ve collecting customer testimonials for jpod for the last week and hopefully will be able to put some of those to use soon. as always, the criticism is welcome! it keeps us on our toes and helps us improve!

If you want to get out of that launch page without signing in everytime, there’s a work around. click like you’re going to sign up, then click lessons and it will bring you right here.

marky

While I’m writing this - how on earth do you get from www.japanesepod101.com to www.japanesepod101.com/index.php I see no visible link anywhere and I am afraid new users might think they have to sign up to get access to the sites. You may want to make it a little clearer.

Anyhoo, just some constructive criticism - thanks for the website it really has enhanced my learning of Japanese. I love it!

and also maybe try emailing - contactus@frenchpod101.com

Is it possible to apply for the French teaching position?

I’m a French native-speaker from Belgium and a longtime listener to JP101 (3 years I think). I would love to work for them on a podcast like that…

Markystar, should I send my resume?

Just give your listener progressive beginner lessons 3-4 days per week is better than having so many different level. Pod101 series should do it in the interest of the learner, especially new learner.

That was for Jpod101, I really think that jpod101 should have more advanced material, Jpod101 has too much beginner level material, so intermediate and advanced level should be the focus for Jpod101 at this time.

On the other hand, other podcast like Spod101 or Kclass101, I think they should focus on more beginner lessons. The situation in Jpod101 and Spod101 is just not comparable, Jpod101 is very established, Spod101 is not. Spod101 and the other new pod101 lack the basic lessons to bring any new learner to a reasonable level. Jpod101 on the other hand, has more than enough of lessons to bring any beginner to a reasonable intermediate level.

I don’t mean to pour cold water. But really hope that pod101 series do well. Jpod101 is so successful not because it started off with tons of audio blogs like Spod101. Look here, Jpod101 has been out for 2 years and 4 months, and only has 74 audio blogs, which I think is considered a lot, I haven’t even got the time to finish all of them. Spod101 has only been out for less than 4 months, but already has 28 audio blogs, and I am not going to be able to understand any of them at all. If those 28 audio blogs were converted into progressive beginner lessons, it will be much better.