iMandarinPod—my new favorite free way to study Chinese

I became interested in podcasts out of China after watching Danwei TV’s interview with Antiwave. There’s a lot of interesting podcasts out there, but even more worthless ones, so it’s difficult to find the diamonds in the rough. Luckily, I managed to stumble across some great Chinese language podcasts from iMandarinPod.com.

The podcasts, uploaded by a team of Chinese-language teachers in Tianjin, are intended to help intermediate to advanced speakers of Chinese practice their Mandarin. New podcasts are broadcast twice a week. The Mandarin is genuine putonghua, clear, and easy for a non-native listener to understand.

The lessons aren’t over controversial topics like Professor Chou’s textbooks, but they do introduce listeners to various aspects of Chinese culture/holidays. For the very serious listener, the team at Tianjin posts each podcast’s lesson text, vocab, and grammar points on their website in .pdf format.