Episode 28 of the PodLeaders show -
My guest on this show is Ken Carroll - Ken is a Director of ChinesePod - ChinesePod is one of the world’s most popular podcasts (it is constantly in the top 5 of Yahoo! Podcasts most popular podcasts) and it is one of the few podcasts with a successful business model!
Consequently, I wanted to talk to Ken about his business model, how his ChinesePod model will affect traditional language schools and how this model could be used to distribute high quality education to the developing world cheaply.
Here are all the questions I asked Ken and the times in the interview I asked them:
Ken - you might kick off with a little background on who Ken Carroll is and how you into this area… - 0:34
How did you get turned to podcasting? - 1:38
ChinesePod is teaching chinese to non-Chinese or beginner Chinese speakers - why are you not teaching English to the Chinese? - 5:56
Can you tell us what your numbers are and how you are turning that into income? - 9:27
How is what you’re doing a threat to the audio-book industry, the language school industry - 13:14
Do you see a decline coming in those industries? - 18:30
An interesting possibility from this is that this model allows for teaching to be distributed to developing countries at very little cost - 19:55
All the big search engines have fallen foul of the Chinese authorities (MSN deleted a bloggers blog, Yahoo! helped jail a chinese journalist and Google is censoring the web in China) - are podcasts a possible way around the great firewall of china? - 22:36
You seem to be big into community building aspect of things - you ask for comments on the podcasts, you have a separate blog on the site and a wiki - is this something you see as strategic to the development of the site? - 25:25
And finally, looking ahead, what are the biggest changes you see coming down the line and how do you see them affecting ChinesePod? - 27:52
Download the entire interview here (14.9mb mp3)
He fails to impress me with Chinese Pod. I do want to study using Chinese Pod, but I can’t bear listening to his voice; not just to his accent (very strange for someone from Ireland?!) but his manner, the way in which he presents the chinese pod podcasts. They sound awful, detatched, and the very thought of listening to another one makes me cringe. And, of course the atonal mandarin he comes out with does absolutely nothing to help students trying to study the language.
I’d rather not be listening to Chinese Pod. Wonderful concept, but an awful sounding key presenter.
ChinesePod is amazing. As a fellow Irishman I think what Carrol has done is a truly radical and original idea. He set it up, invested in it, put it together, wrote the content (I think) presetned it and now is promoting it. That is an amazing achievement that will change how leanguage learning is done. I reckon the guy is a visionary.
I find ‘Simon’s’ comments typical of the Irish begrudger - small-minded, petty, and stupid. Why would anyone need to write something so small and personal? (’I don’t like the sound of his voice’) I just heard a reference to 5 million downloads for ChinesePod, so Simon is definitely in the minority.
I say good luck to Carroll and I begrudge him not a thing.
Well said Gary - I couldn’t agree more.
No Gary, Simon is 100% correct.
“Irish begrudger”? The thing is that Ken Carroll doesn’t sound REMOTELY Irish. If he just had a distracting Irish accent, I could understand. But the fact is that “Ken Carroll” does not even sound like a native English speaker!
Listen to one of his Podcasts sometime, the accent sounds VERY MUCH like a Chinese person with overdeveloped “English banter” — lots of content, little substance. It blew me away to see his picture and realize he’s white! Not only that but he actually makes English mistakes in his podcasts! And I don’t mean mistakes like a native speaker would make, but mistakes in NUMBER and CASE (exactly the kind of thing a Chinese person would do). Quite frankly, I’m dubious that the voice is the same person as the picture.
One thing is for sure though. Although I love the idea behind ChinesePod and think it’s a great way to learn, the banter of BOTH of the announcers constantly serves as an example of unnatural English, and it’s grating on the ear just to listen too. ChinesePod may be popular, but it certainly ISN’T for the announcing.
first post from simon is ridiculous
i listen every day to chinesepod (i live in china) and it’s a great way to learn - cheap and easy
perhaps simon would like to suggest a better way?
I should like to try to learn Korean by this means. Is this possible? Helen McCune Lawless
Chinesepod is a great resource, and I use it extensively (its relatively cheap and has a good approach and gives plenty of exercise). Having said that I have to partially agree with Simon in that Ken’s slight accent in speaking chinese. I am sure he is a great guy and he is a good teacher in general. Also all credit to him of thinking of a great resource like chinesepod, but it would improve the service if someone with a more ethnic chinese accent was presenting (someone like the co-presenter, Zhu Jenny). Perhaps it is difficult to find someone with the mix of having perfect chinese accent with great English oriented teaching abilities, but it would help greatly. This is specially very important for beginners. Lets take this as a constructive criticism.
Crikey, some real fussy comments here. For me, the comparison between the usual dry CD of vocab and grammar compared to these podcasts is gigantic. One is dry, irrepressibly dull and impossibly boring, and the other are these podcasts, full of life with simple, effective lessons.
As for his accent? It’s really easy on the ears, and most of the Chinese speaking is done by Jenny anyhow. Sure it’s a bit of a mash-up of American and Irish, but again… who cares?
This is one of the few internet sites I’ve come across that have really impressed me of late, and I really do wish the creators all the best with it. It’s an awesome resource, and I hope it does as fantastically as it deserves.
That’s funny, my first thought when I heard Ken was “wow, that chinese man speaks very good american!” My second thought was that he is probably on drugs, or strained to the extreme by having to speaking a foreign language (English), and that this was the reason that he sounds so strange. Sort of super laid back but at the same time too intense for comfort. The ChinesePods seem pretty good, but we have of course seen this a million times before.
This is a great site and works very well. Regardless of how annoying Kens’s accent may or may not be. You are not supposed to be mimicking him anyway, it is Jenny and the Chinese spoken dialogue that should really be focussed on. Grow up Simon!!!
I enjoy the podcast when Jenny and others are involved BUT Ken should stay from *any* attempt to even speak Mandarin…he is just plain awaful as an instructor and really contributes nothing to the usefullness …that said the podcast is great without him!!