I started listening to your podcast when you first started, maybe a week or two behind. I just returned from China. Your lessons helped a lot. I gave listened to a lot of Chinese lessons and I really like yours. I like the way you describe each individual words with literal translations. I did not realize you just started learning 3 years ago until today when I heard the lesson. What I like about your lessons is your precise, deliberate pronunciation of each word.

I stumbled upon this excellently programmed podcast back in Spring and I am ever so glad that I did, because I think it is one of the major reasons for my improved listening ability. One of the things I believe Stanford’s program doesn’t get right is the listening speed. We learnt grammar properly, vocabulary was good and we spoke about as fast as beginners at our level ought to, but we sucked at listening. This is because the teacher always spoke at a slower-than-normal speed which we could easily understand.