Learn Mandarin Chinese
Progressive self study course for absolute beginners to intermediate learners
Progressive self study course for absolute beginners to intermediate learners
There are over 400 lessons to choose from. Absolute beginners should start at lesson 1. Each lesson continues where the last one left off.
Later lessons use the Chinese that was taught in earlier lessons. This way you are constantly reusing and remembering what was taught.
Premium subscribers get access to exercises, games and flashcard activities to reinforce what was taught.
Sign up with your Facebook account to try out the first 4 lessons of the course for free.
I think Chinese Learn Online is definitely one of the better programs out there. It is a gradual course which takes the learner from total beginner with no previous knowledge, and builds up from there. I used several of the podcasts for a Conversational Chinese course that I taught at our local junior college, and the response from the students was very positive. The methodology is very sound, and the real advantage is that students are not overwhelmed in the beginning, nor are they permanently stuck in a lower level.
Just thought I'd drop another line to say that I think CLO is the best ! When I first started on Level 4 it was a bit of a shock having many more lessons without "set pieces" and english guidance....you see, I listen to the podcasts going to and from work, and trying to make sense of the explanations given in chinese was a bit dangerous, to say the least ( particularly when I had to keep refering to the english transcripts, Haha ). But now I'm getting used to it...there is so much repetition that my understanding is becoming more "instinctive", and I'm preparing for each
I have been listening to lessons 61-68 on CD during my commute. Last night I went through all of the online material for lesson 63. I am impressed. I like the pace and the level of repetition. It seems like a good learning approach.
I think this is perhaps a good starting point for me. I picked lesson 63 because of the dialog (61 and 62 seemed to be review). I liked the online review questions about the dialog. I need to also work in some flash card exercises so that I can get some focus on character recognition.
Kirin is great. Her voice is clear and she is easy to understand.
I've been learning Chinese characters for a couple of years (after I learned Japanese for a while). Reading simplified characters is therefore relatively easy for me, but there is a big gap to my listening and speaking skills, incl. usage of grammar.
What I like most about Chinese Learn Online is really the English-to-Chinese practice, something others (incl. ChinesePod) don't have enough of even though it is THE key skill I believe. The more is really the better here. I just feel the CLO approach is more organized, at least it helped me more.
I think your course is well organised and is great for beginners as well as more advanced. I've only listened to about 30 lessons so far. I like that at any time I can review lessons. It's also great to be listening to native speakers. Unfortunately there is no short cut to learning a new language especially when it comes to tonal Asian languages. Conversation context is great.
Seeing the pinyin makes a big difference. I like to picture it in my head when composing sentences and having the tones works helps a lot. Your product is great! Especially now I can visualise the tones.