The requirements of a great Chinese podcast
1.A good podcast shouldn’t have too much dialect or local slang in it.Slang is difficult to understand while dialect exists almost everywhere in China,Learning Mandarin should avoid dialect.
2.It shouldn’t have heavily accent in it.Accent comes with the dialect.It’s hard to understand for Chinese people sometimes,not to mention foreigners.
3.To a Chinese learner,the podcast has to be at the suitable level for the learners,the content is neither too hard nor too easy.
4.Interesting topics should be a certain part of the content of a great podcast.Current affairs and news should be in the podcast so that the audience can know the trend.
5.A good podcast should be updated constantly and regularly.
6.A transcript or subtitles to go with it should be perfect,considering of the foreigners.
Great Chinese podcasts
1.Slow Chinese
The theme of this podcast is the daily life in China.You can use it to glean into the daily life of a Chinese college student.Slow Chinese is created by Chinese college students,it's a relatively new show but very unique.The main content of it is to talk about a snippet of what it's like to live in China, often in short sessions under 10 minutes.The most unique aspect of Slow Chinese is that it's designed to be spoken out loud slowly, so even if the content is a bit more advanced than you're used to, it's much easier to make out the individual words because of the slower speed.The content isn't so exhaustive, but you can get a glimpse into China through it.People who are at an intermediate level is recommended to it to improve their listening skills here.
2.FluentU
FluentU is a podcast suitable for a wide level from primary to advanced.You can use it to practice listening skills and learning vocabulary specific to different topics.FluentU isn’t a regular Chinese podcast or a TV show styled like a Chinese podcast – it’s actually a learning platform where you can learn new words through real live videos and Chinese audio dialogues, check out annotated definitions, add new words to your own custom vocabulary lists, and much more.FluentU has a library of videos and short audio dialogues that cover a wide variety of situations – so while the dialogues aren’t as long, they can be very topic specific, which is great if you’re learning Chinese topic by topic
The great thing about these audio dialogues is that they cover a range of levels – from complete Newbie, all the way to Native if you’ve been around Chinese for a while, so you don’t have to feel left out whether you’re a novice looking for easy audios, or you’re approaching native level and just looking for audios to brush up your listening skills.