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.
What you are doing right and the others aren't is two fold.
First of all, you have a progressive series. A person can actually start from the beginning and work their way up to a conversational level. All the words are accounted for. You remind people of what is new and what has been covered already. You remind them in Chinese and use English sparingly.
This is the way that it should be done. After the initial stages, a language should be taught in the target language as much as possible.
The second thing – Lessons are introduced in Chinese.
I think your service is actually quite good. I wish that I had this service when I was younger. I'm serious about improving my spoken Mandarin, so I subscribed to you site. I actually like yours because the lessons are short and concise (6-8 minutes) and Kirin and Rafael speak in Mandarin only. I also like your videos.
As an American Born Chinese (ABC) and native English speaker, I feel that Chinese Learn Online is really the BEST Mandarin Chinese learning websites! I studied Mandarin at UCLA for one summer and the National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taipei, Taiwan for 3 semesters.
I discovered your website in January 2008, started from lesson 1 and tried to catch up as fast as possible (sometimes 4-5 hours a day) - and exactly today I'm there, lesson 198!!! You did a great job referring the method (from explaining in english turning to more and more chinese or how you choose new vocabulary and repeat it) and you found a nice balance of explaining grammar or just take an expression as it is.
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.
Hello Kirin and Adam and all the CLO team-members! I have been learning Chinese with you for approx. one month and it has been a great fun! I´ve always wanted to learn this language and your site has been most helpful! I am a beginner, with no previous Chinese-learning experience, have gone through the first 11 CLO lessons so far. Chinese seemed an impossibly difficult language to me, but thanks to your course, the use of the latin characters and the listening, I can see now that it is reachable. Thanks!
All the best for you