We are really pleased to announce that ChinesePod Progress Tracking is now live in its Beta form. See your personal progress chart here (you’ll need to be logged in).
Charting Progress, from Newbie to Advanced
The tracking system charts your progress through your ChinesePod studies and is based on our six study levels, Newbie to Advanced Media.
With nearly 1,400 self-contained ChinesePod lessons to choose from, hundreds of each level, it can be difficult to know how and when to progress. The new tracking system makes it easier to gauge when it is time to move on and try lessons of a higher level.
We have worked closely with our Teacher Services team to establish within the tracking system a recommended number of lessons required for the average learner to complete each level (see below):
Newbie – 50 lessons
Elementary – 80 lessons
Intermediate – 120 lessons
Upper Intermediate – 160 lessons
Advanced – 120 lessons
Media – 80 lessons
Assuming you work through the lessons by tackling progressively higher levels, over time you’ll see a nicely motivating upward trend on your chart!
Begin Tracking Your Progress
It is easy to begin tracking your progress. Every time you mark an individual ChinesePod lesson as “studied”, this will automatically feed into your personal progress chart.
You can mark a lesson as “studied” through your dashboard. Simply click the icon next to the relevant lesson in your Lesson List until it becomes a green tick.
The progress chart also automatically maps the results of any Level and Placement tests you take on our website.
NOTE: The good news is that if you are already in the habit of marking-off your lessons as “studied”, you’ll already be able to see how far you have progressed.
Help Us Test!
We are calling on all ChinesePod users to get involved in testing this new functionality, to help us fix bugs and improve the system and its usability. If you haven’t yet started, it’s a great time to begin marking-off your completed lessons as “studied”, get your lessons organized – and your progress charted!
Please leave your questions, comments or suggestions here or contact us directly at support@praxislanguage.com.
pretzellogic on 
Andrew Cockerham on 
Dave on
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
I wanted to try the Level Test. After clicking on “Start Test”, I was taken to the section – I could even see page 1/3, but it was blank below !!
I have just discovered that the figures “56″ didn’t appear in my previous message.
Hi ChenYucai
I have reported this problem to our tech team, so it should be sorted out ASAP.
Thank you for letting us know – and apologies for this inconvenience.
Thanks for your quick response.
Oh, no! According to the progress chart, I studied 228% of the recommended number of elementary lessons. Now I feel a little slow.
Thanks, it’s interesting a recommended number of lessons.
Is someone who has completed only 80 elementary lessons expected to score highly on the elementary level test? That would seem very difficult since the level test uses vocabulary from all 300+ elementary lessons (right?). Even with some of the material overlapping between lessons.
This is a great idea. Good job Cpod!
Now, my problem is that the cpod website says I have, or am studying about 853 lessons. The site seemed to automatically assume that opening or downloading a lesson means that I was studying it, and that wasn’t the case. I think that I only have studied about 200 lessons or so at this point. Since i’m on guided subscription, the lessons that Grace says I have studied have been studied, but the other lessons haven’t been. I need some way to help cull through those 853 lessons to review the ones that actually were studied.
I would also suggest creating a button, or some kind of lesson progress activation button, so from that point on, the system knows you are studying for real, instead of assuming you’re studying, and can start measuring progress from that point.
Another thought is that Sarah’s post implies that Level and Placement tests will automatically be tracked IF YOU TAKE THEM. I think it would be helpful if the Progress Tracking feature encouraged you to take level and placement tests after completing a certain number of lessons. I also think that there should be 4 buttons that ask
1)what kind of learner are you? (slow, fast, focused, casual, meandering)
2) and also why are you learning Chinese? (just curious, planning for a pleasure trip, planning for a business trip, moving to China, dating Chinese man/woman, marrying Chinese woman/man)
3)what are you hoping to gain from learning on our site? (just curious, learning a few words and that’s it, learning conversational mandarin, fluency in mandarin by next week)
4)how much time do you think you can put into your mandarin studies on a weekly basis? (10 hours)
This way, a helpful assessment can be made prior to the learner starting with the progress tracking tool, and it can give them better feedback about their progress given their goals outlined in the buttons.
there also needs to be a way for users to turn off progress tracking if they decide they don’t want it, as well a way to adjust the levels once users pick motivation/desired outcome.
I have taken 3 of the level and placements tests , but they dont show on my personnel progress chart.
My main problem with the level tests is they require you to have reading, listening, and vocab knowledge. For me, my listening and vocab is hugely better than my reading skill, so I always place as a newbie in these tests, which is kind of annoying…
ChenYucai -
I believe the level test is working now. Please let me know if you still have problems with it. Thanks!
@tonyjh:
You asked:
Is someone who has completed only 80 elementary lessons expected to score highly on the elementary level test? That would seem very difficult since the level test uses vocabulary from all 300+ elementary lessons (right?). Even with some of the material overlapping between lessons.
Yes, 80 lessons should give you a fairly high score on the Elementary Level Test, precisely because of all the overlap. It’s not just “some of the material” overlapping, it’s a lot of the material overlapping. The more Elementary lessons you do (especially beyond 100), the more obvious the overlap becomes. That’s when you start to feel you’re really ready for Intermediate.
@pretzellogic:
Now, my problem is that the cpod website says I have, or am studying about 853 lessons. The site seemed to automatically assume that opening or downloading a lesson means that I was studying it, and that wasn’t the case. I think that I only have studied about 200 lessons or so at this point. Since i’m on guided subscription, the lessons that Grace says I have studied have been studied, but the other lessons haven’t been. I need some way to help cull through those 853 lessons to review the ones that actually were studied.
Yes, we do make certain assumptions, such as (1) users bookmark lessons to study them, and (2) users want to get to the lessons they’re studying through the dashboard (hence the “Lessons I’m currently studying” at the top of the lesson list). These aren’t just blind guesses, though. It’s based on lots of interaction with users about how they use the site.
The way to “cull through those 853 lessons” is to click on “manage lessons” at the bottom of your lesson list (on the dashboard). Then, at the bottom, choose 100 lessons per page from the dropdown. Using the batch lessons marking functionality, it won’t take long at all to get your studying/studied statuses up to date.
@pretzellogic:
Thanks for the other suggestions. They’re definitely good ones, and we agree that prompting users to be regularly tested on the language they’re learning is the way forward. We’ll be working on that in the days to come; the initial release is just basic functionality which will be iterated and built upon.
You also said:
there also needs to be a way for users to turn off progress tracking if they decide they don’t want it, as well a way to adjust the levels once users pick motivation/desired outcome.
Well, the progress tracking can certainly be ignored, and we won’t nag users to take tests if they’re not interested in that. Further customization is part of the plan, though.
Does this work in all browsers? I ask because I am obviously not seeing something at the top of the page. I have the broken image marker instead. I’m assuming this is because I’m a chrome user…….
I also find the tests less that satisfying as I am very poor at writing Pinyin (deliberate decision) compared to speaking and listnening.
I think I have the same problem as Trevor describes. Also I canot see the link on my home page . In the podcast it says the tab is near the Lesson lists, but it does not show for me.So I can only see the tracker if I first come to this blog and click on the link.
On the My Archive window (from dashboard, click Manage Lessons) it says I have 10 active Newbie lessons and have studied 89, which seems correct to me. (I know, I really waited a long time to go up to Ele
) However, on the Progress page it says I have completed 148 Newbie lessons? I have always marked off lessons as studied when I have finished with them. Any idea what is causing this?
By the way, my usual method of downloading the lesson MP3s and transcript PDFs is from the main page for a particular lesson, not through RSS or iTunes. I always download the lesson MP3, dialogue-only MP3, reviewMP3, and PDF for each lesson.
John, thanks for the reply. In that case there is more overlap than I realized. Maybe it makes a difference too if for every lesson studied, the learner goes over the supplementary vocab and expansion exercises and so on (not just the main dialog and main vocab). Then I guess the quoted recommended number of lessons would sound more realistic to me.
Tonyjh brings up a good point — is the assumption that someone has studied a lesson has done the expansion section, learned the supplemental vocabulary, exercises, etc.? I study mostly on the go, listening to lessons, dialogues, etc. and about the only thing extra I do is review flashcards of the main vocabulary. Should I assume that I’ll need to study more than the recommended number of lessons before advancing to the next level and if so, how many more?