Over the next few days you will notice some changes in some of the buttons and the navigational aids being presented within the Premium section.  This upgrade may cause some buttons to seem a little off (cosmetically) while the upgrade is being completed.  Rest assured that when I have finished, the Premium section should be a LOT easier to navigate based on feedback I've received from users like yourself.  There will also be some cosmetic changes to improve your Chinese learning.  I'll specify the details when it's complete - hopefully sooner rather than later.

You may notice the addition of a new feature on the site - the set of 14 flags on the top of the right sidebar.  As this site seems to be getting an international following with many reviews in non English languages, I thought it may be appropriate to involve some translation aspects into the site.  By clicking on one of the flags you can get a translation into one of these languages.  Since it's a machine translation, don't expect it to be perfect, but I thought there may still be some benefit.  Once you click on a flag, the site will continue to be displayed in the translated language until you click back to the English (American) flag.
For the rest of you, you may notice there is also a Chinese flag there which displays the site content in Simplified Chinese characters.   You can try that out for an extra challenge.

There has been some minor movement and tweaking in the Premium section.

1. The Music section now has its own page, since I hope to grow the amount of content there over the next little while.
2. The links to the Premium content for individual lessons have been graphically enhanced since the feedback I received previously showed that the separation between the individual links for each lesson wasn't clear enough.  Hopefully this will improve that aspect.

Over the next little while, I will be looking at ways to improve the navigation between the Premium content for individual lessons.  Any other suggestions you provide will also be considered, so please keep them coming.

Another song for you by request:

Love Sky Love Earth by Leon Lai, from the CD Beijing Station. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a link to purchase the CD. In any case, here it is. Enjoy!

Simplified Traditional

Ok, I'm now ready to unveil our latest tool here. It's a flashcard program that is integrated with our lessons. Choose a lesson, and test your understanding of it. There are four (updated - now five!) modes to choose from:

• Pinyin to English
• Simplified Chinese characters to Pinyin
• Traditional Chinese characters to Pinyin
• Audio only to English
• Updated: English to Pinyin

If you get stuck on a question, you can get an audio prompt by using the "Play" button but be forewarned that that makes some of the questions very easy! The Audio only mode should be a good challenge to make sure you understand everything. Also, some lessons (especially the newer ones where less new vocabulary was taught) may test you with questions from earlier lessons, just to make sure you don't forget what was already taught. If you get one wrong, you can take a look at which lesson that question is from (noted at the top of the screen) to review it if necessary.

Premium subscribers (who are logged in) will receive personalized log reports of their progress and have access to all lessons. Please be patient with me as I update it with newer lessons. Curently, the first 72 lessons are available (I'll keep editing this post with the latest number). Non subscribers can try it out for the first four lessons.

Let me know if you have any feedback.

www.chineselearnonline.com/flashcard

For those of you interested in hearing male singing, I've added a song called Enticing Trick by a Taiwanese boy band called 183 Club. The name 183 comes from the average height size (in cm) of the five members. This particular song comes from the soundtrack of a Taiwanese drama that they acted in called "The Prince who turned into a Frog." Enjoy!
Simplified Traditional

I added some background music to the latest lesson (50). I was using music in various forms in the earlier lessons but got away from it since it was taking away from the lesson by either being too long or too distracting. I'm hoping I have the right formula this time. Here's some background on my new approach:

1. I've stuck the number and title of the lesson at the very beginning to make it easy to navigate through lessons on your MP3 player without having to look at the screen.
2. The music intro is supposed to whisk you from your Western world into the Chinese world.
3. Little transition backgrounds have been added to separate the various parts of the lesson.
4. The outtro music whisks you out of the Chinese world back into your Western world.

As always, your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

You may have noticed that I've started offering playback of individual lines of dialogue in the Premium Vocabulary section.  Thanks to those who requested this feature - I think it's a great idea and I'll slowly extend it to older lessons.

Welcome back everyone.  Hope you all had a good holiday season.  I'm very excited about what the New Year will bring to this website and to this program here.  Heck, I'm extremely excited about the changes you'll see in the next month so stay tuned...

Podcast Update for December 2006

- Lesson 49 (next lesson) will be released on January 3, 2007
- Blog of updates available at www.chineselearnonline.com/blog
- Free music videos in Premium section
- Video recap of dialogues available for Premium subscribers
- Tone and Pinyin practices let you record yourself and compare with native speakers
- $9.95 US monthly price available until end of Dec, 2006
- Happy Holidays from ChineseLearnOnline.com