My wife and I have used several online Mandarin teaching sites. For us, Chinese Learn Online is the most comprehensive, user friendly and effective. The content, pacing, review, and reinforcement are superior, and we feel like we're in a class with an instructor who really cares about our success. We have enjoyed the podcasts and lessons so much that we'll continue when we return from China. That's about the best feedback you can get.

...I think the podcasts are really good. The grammar explanations are well done, they give good attention to teaching proper tones, and the subject matter of the lessons is on par with what Chinese Pod covers. They certainly don’t cut any corners. And since the teachers aren’t all from just the mainland or just from Taiwan, listeners are exposed to the slight accent, vocabulary, and tonal differences they’re likely to encounter in their daily encounters with Chinese people from different areas of the world.