No, not porn spam. I've just registered for the $1 trial membership at Russianpod101.com and wondered what the easiest and most convenient way to download all the premium material during the trial period is. Any hints?
I've just been doing it manually, and I've got most of the stuff already -- probably more than I'll ever listen to. I do find podcast courses grate a bit -- too much banter, too many asides and irrelevant jokes, too many jingles . I blogged about this a few years ago, and it's as true today as it ever was. I also wrote a post specifically about the XXXpod101.com sales model, and this is also still true -- the number of lessons in the Russian course are still fairly low in comparison with the Japanese that I downloaded back then (17 days continuous playing time, as I calculated back then -- I think I actually got it all using iTunes that time), but nothing like the disappointment of the Polish one (which put me off looking at their stuff for years).
"Your current account does not have access to view this page." Can you post the text or PM it ? Gooogle has strange ideas regarding access to this material.
Oops. I linked to the post in the blogger editor rather than the blog itself. I've corrected the links and they should be working now.
Those are excellent post - thanks for linking to them. I like the pod101 series while I'm a complete beginner; the beginner and intermediate material has lots of high-frequency grammar and vocabulary. The transcripts are helpful. They are really good for listening too, but I have to listen to several of them to get my daily minimum of listening, due to the high english content. The advanced material is also pretty good, but it's a very plain-jane essay with recording. Not bad, but I prefer LingQ these days. Actually, LingQ has about 20 of the Japanesepod101 advanced lessons, which is sort of humorous. Yes, the banter and the ads can be really annoying. Sometimes I'm actually in the mood for banter, and sometimes it's actually language related, but not often. Another thing I don't like about their market scheme is the systematic bombardment with spam. They are relentless. Even though they want to be my only language program, I feel they are really designed to fill a niche. For me, it's the beginning listening niche. They fill it nicely, but I wouldn't consider them any other function, due to reasons you mentioned in your posts. Regarding radio, I actually enjoy listening to it in my car. I listen to a French Canadian station when I'm driving around. The nice thing about radio is that it seems to be somewhat of a requirement to speak clearly. But this is just listening practice, and I don't know if it's a good idea to design a language program on a radio platform. I tend to agree with you. The thing I didn't like about the podcast structure, and the reason I pissed off so many people at Chinesepod (not 101) is that it's so random. They want you to go to your skill level, pick out a topic that interests you, and do the lesson. Does that ensure that you'll get the grammar and vocabulary that you need? Of course not. So of course I did all the lessons at my level. People brag about being able to learn the material by merely listening to the podcasts, but that didn't work for me. Basically, it was very useful at the beginner level, but after that other resources were much more helpful. Speaking of randomness again, I like to see the big picture, regarding grammar. Podcasts don't like to provide one, and that's very frustrating to me. This is something that I often found frustrating about classes too. One of the best things about MT is it's quick overview of grammar. I heard Germanpod101 was better in that regard, but I can't confirm.
For downloading files from RussianPod101 or JapanesePod101, I always found the "Your Personal Feed" feature quite helpful. You can select all the files you want, create a personal feed, and send it to your iTunes or other podcast receivers like Juice. So you don't have to download each file seperately.
THANK YOU!!! I knew there was a way to do it (I downloaded all of JapanesePod a few years back via iTunes) but I couldn't for the life of me see how to do it.
