I'm sure you're a busy guy so I don't want to take up too much of your time... but I did want to say how impressed I am as I explore your website. I am a recent arrivee in Nanjing, where I hope to spend the rest of my life!! I've been here six weeks, will be in Nanjing teaching for at least this coming school year, and I love the Chinese people... but I don't know more than two or three words of Chinese! So I've been looking for a self-teaching program and have explored Pimsleur, Interactive Chinese from Sinolingua, New Approaches to Learning Chinese, etc.

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.