1st new video with new hosts Elsha and Tam

Just received the email giving me the link to this new lesson: https://youtu.be/o-hlS195FZU

As much as I do appreciate seeing the first new lessons after more than 5 (five) months offline, I would like to know whether you will have some kind of introduction of the new hosts? And I would eagerly like to know how you will continue at all.

You see, after this long time of interruption and frustration, going back to regular business should be worth some words more than only sending the first video as nothing has happened.

Hi, @GeorgL,

I hope you enjoyed the new lesson. As you will see soon, there will be multiple new instructors, in a variety of lesson formats. We have not introduced our “new hosts” as we have not yet determined who are hosts are. We are striving to bring you the best language learning experinece, and are evaluating several teaching formats and lesson styles. We look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback!

Thanks for continuing to be a ChinesePod subscriber!

I enjoyed the video and was a bit surprised at all the criticism it drew. It’s been such a long drought since Fiona and Gwiliym (now producing original content at skritter.com) Constance and YuQin Cai, left last year, I was glad to see some new and very current topical material. (It’s unfortunate that ChinesePod disabled the Skritter Lite writing practice for their lessons now before having a promised replacement ready, but maybe they now see Skritter as a competitor. That’s unfortunate because the services are really complementary.) Anyway, I get the impression from the company comment above that this was sort of an audition tape for Elsha and Tam and that the CPod owners decided to “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” but I would encourage further exploration and development of this type of lesson.

Yes, I know, the video had lots of errors. (when Elsha said “Cherrible” in reference to Chernobyl was that a mistake that the editors missed or a really bad attempt at a joke? Tam pronounces names two different ways when the video is trying to “reinforce” our learning, and from the captions we learn that Trump’s full name is “Trump Trump”. （“特朗普特朗普”)）As to all the comments complaining about too much English, some of that can be resolved by re-classifying the lesson as “pre-Intermediate” (grin) and I do agree the political analysis not being what CPod is known for perhaps this bonus “lesson” within the lesson could have been left out, especially if not delivered in Mandarin. However, the format of a slowly read “news” story about the Iran nuclear deal with video images and captions is actually something I quite liked, and is a format that I hope CPod will repeat.

Overall I do like the video but the background music is just too distracting and annoying - which made me stop the video after 2 minutes.

Thank you JanTea for the info!

Weird energy and too much accent.

I have not reached Advanced level, but it’s astounding to me that anyone at advanced level would want/need that much English

We’ve gotten other feedback on the amount of English, thank you for your thoughts!

Super happy to see such a great lesson and new hosts! Legal and politics are definitely very interesting topics to discuss,
I was wondering if in the advanced level it would be possible to have topics such as investments (infraestructure - PPP framework, agribusiness, renewable energy, power generation, electric transmission, automobile industry) and international trade (countries imports&exports, free trade agreements, China free trade zones, negotiations among countries about tariffs and insertion of new products, important trade fairs such as SIAL in Shanghai (May) or the new China International Import Expo which will take place in Shanghai (November).
I can picture two business people discussing investment opportunities in China or in overseas…as well as importers or exporters talking about products to trade,
These topics are quite technical and required plenty of time to develop decent material, but investments and trade are super hot topics and many of your advanced users might be interested. I would be the first on the list to subscribe again if these topics are covered.
Thanks in advance and kudos on the relaunch of Chinesepod!

Love the ideas and thank you for your input Mariano100!