I am a System Engineer for a US firm that sells in Asia. On my last trip to China, I was frustrated by the business dinners which are spoken exclusively in Mandarin while I sit silent. Chineselearnonline.com was exactly what I needed to decide to seriously try to learn the language. I had to recently go back to the beginning when I decided I wanted to also learn characters but I am back to level 5 now.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn on your site. It has really had a major influence on my engineering skills and my work ethic.

I have a close Chinese friend who listened to some of the recordings on my IPod - she said go with CLO. She constantly remarks on my great accent which she says is always the biggest problem.
I travel a great deal and knowing Chinese, even a little, can only be helpful when 1/4 to 1/3 of the worlds' population speaks Mandarin Chinese. You are doing a great job - I seem to be going very slowly; however, my friend says I am not but rather she is impressed with where I am and again is most concerned about the correct accent.

I bought a 3x download course from you a few weeks ago. I have finished with all the lessons in level 3, and am halfway through level 4. I just wanted to give you a bit of feedback to the program.

I must admit, I am very impressed with the level and professionality of the course. Some of the things I particularly like (in no apparent order):

- Building on previous lessons, both in vocab and in continuing going over the same topic for 2-3 lessons to let it sink in. Eg. the election and moving apartments stuff.
- The great variety of topics covered
- The great presenters!
- Using Chinese to explain Chinese (with you giving the occational english translation of difficult words or subjects near the end)
- Being able to have the PDFs of Characters, Pinyin and English as seperate files. Really makes it hard for you to sneak peak when there is stuff you dont understand.
- The lists of new words and characters
- The interactive premium content, mainly the podcasts with answering
questions in chinese and translating from english

Keep up the good work, you guys are doing a fantastic job. Looking forward to the finished level 6 for download!

Just thought I'd drop another line to say that I think CLO is the best !  When I first started on Level 4 it was a bit of a shock having many more lessons without "set pieces" and english guidance....you see, I listen to the podcasts going to and from work, and trying to make sense of the explanations given in chinese was a bit dangerous, to say the least ( particularly when I had to keep refering to the english transcripts, Haha ).  But now I'm getting used to it...there is so much repetition that my understanding is becoming more "instinctive", and I'm preparing for each lesson in advance now. I think the Level 4 method is a good way forward !  I was thinking I might have to buy a new vehicle with automatic transmission for a while, but I'm no longer a danger to other motorists and little old ladies.  :-)

I've veen really enjoying your Chinese course, I still can't speak the language well, though my listening comprehension is improving remarkably thank to your progressive course!!! I love to read that [testimonials] page to encourage myself to improve my Chinese, it's quite amazing to know that there are so many Mandarin Chinese learners out there from all over the world, I'm so glad to have found your course by chance when I was browsing thru podcasts, any how thanks a lot again for your extraordinary course!!! I whole heartedly thank you for your dedication to the language education, xie xie nin de hen hao de bangzhu!!

I just love this course and tell everybody about it at the Chinese school where I have a 2 1/2 hour-lesson once a week. It complements and puts me several steps ahead of my presential classes - everybody feels awed by the sentences I'm able to build, my vocabulary and sometimes the explanations about a certain term that even the Chinese teacher is not able to explain (sometimes it's difficult for a native person to explain the mechanism of his own language, because it's just so intuitive and automatic for him).

Hello Adam!

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your course online. I subscribed 2 weeks ago and have been well impressed by the quality of your teaching methods. I'm also a teacher and I really appreciate how you cover the different aspects of Mandarin Chinese.

As I told you on a previous e-mail I studied Mandarin Chinese for 2 years when I was a student and decided to seriously get back to it. I reviewed my own lessons + everything until lesson 60. Tomorrow I'll start level 2 and my objective is to have a good intermediate level in about 4 months. Besides your courses, I'll try to start conversation sessions with a Chinese person from here.

Next month, I'll renew for 3 more months and in the meantime will recommend your website!

You've done a great job! Congratulations! Keep it up!

Regards,

Emmanuel

Hola Adam,

En primer lugar, me gustaría darles la enhorabuena por su curso online. Empecé hace dos semanas y la calidad de sus métodos de enseñanza me ha realmente impresionado. Yo también soy profesor me encanta como cubre los distintos aspectos del chino mandarín.

Como ya le comenté en otro e-mail, estudié Chino durante dos años en la universidad, hace 12 años, y he decidido volver a estudiarlo seriamente. Después de repasar mis propios apuntes, repasé sus cursos hasta las lección 60 para asentar mis bases. Mañana seguiré con el nivel dos y mi objetivo es tener un buen nivel intermedio dentro de cuatro meses. Además de sus cursos voy a intentar empezar dar clases de conversación con una persona china de aquí.

El próximo mes, renovaré para 3 meses y mientras tanto iré recomendando su pagina web!

Otra vez les doy la enhorabuena por su gran trabajo! Ahora a mantener el listón alto!

Un saludo,

Emmanuel

Bonjour Adam,

Tput d'abord, je tenais à vous féliciter pour votre cours online. J'ai commencé il y a deux semaines et je dois dire que la qualité d'enseignement m'a vraiment impressioné! Je suis moi-même professeur et j'apprécie la façon dont vous abordez tous les aspects du chinois mandarin.

Comme je vous avais commenté dans un e-mail antérieur, j'avais déjà étudié le chinois à l'université il y a 12 ans et j'ai décidé me remettre très sérieusement à l'étudier. Après avoir révisé mes notes j'ai revu toutes vos leçons jusqu'à la leçon 60, histoire de consolider mes bases.. Demain je compte commencer le deuxième niveau. Mon objectif est d'avoir un bon niveau intermédiare d'ici à quatre mois. A còté, je vais chercher une personne chinoise pour pratiquer un peu de conversation.

Le mois prochain je prendrai un abonnement de trois mois et en attendant je vais recommander votre website!

Encore un fois: félicitations pour votre grand travail!

Cordialement!

Emmanuel

I just purchased a one-month subscription to your site because I wanted to see how it works;-) I must say that I have already tried out some other sites (which you probably know;-) but so far I like your site best (even though I have not tried out yet many options in the premium section). I listened to the first 10 lessons before I decided to subscribe and I really liked the way you present the study material.

By the way, when I explored some of your premium feeds I was almost blown away by the massive amount of study material and its quality. I am planning on going to China next year in October and I would love to be able to speak some Chinese before I do. I hope your site can help me with it. Well, enough said now;-)

I tried to study Chinese before, but I'd like to start with your site right from the beginning again because I really like the way you present the material. I'm somewhat of a language professional myself even though I am not teaching. I work as a freelance interpreter and translator, amongst other things for the UN and the EU, with my working languages being English, Italian, French, and Spanish (and German, of course). I also studied Russian and Japanese. But I must say, so far I have never come across a site that offered as much interesting learning material as your site. I'm a language addict and finding your site was like hitting a hidden treasure to me:-)

I still need to learn how to get the most out of it. This is also the reason why for the time being I just signed up for a monthly subscription. If I feel that I can really make use of all your material I might decide to subscribe on a yearly basis.

One of the most exciting features to me is the one where you can record answers to short questions and send them in. If I understood your explanations correctly my recording is then checked by some of your teachers and I get a feedback from them. If that is true, that's just awesome:-) That would be really interactive:-)

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. And though I feel that both UCLA and NCCU language instruction was truly excellent, I also feel CLO lessons are equally superb and even superior in many ways. If I could do it again, I wish that I studied via CLO before going to Taiwan because it would have made my language immersion travels in Taiwan and China more effective.

Also, as I'm a very busy person, I like how CLO is very versatile for learning Mandarin that fits my hectic schedule. I listen to lessons while I eat lunch in my office at work, and review online in the evenings at home. The interactive online learning is one of the best I've seen. I also download the lessons to my iPod, and I listen to lessons in my car, at the gym, or when I'm waiting for business appointments. For a person who cannot travel to a Mandarin speaking country for language instruction, with CLO, you can truly immerse yourself in many Chinese language situations in your home, office, car or practically anywhere.

And since the lessons have titles, as an intermediate level learner, I can learn or review a topic and vocabulary that is important to my life. I can use vocabulary that I know I would use right away instead of studying a topic that have little immedate relevance to my real life.

Thanks Adam, Kirin and Rafael and everybody at CLO for making Chinese learning accessable to everybody in an easy, fun, and affordable way!

Thank you so much for these wonderful podcasts. They are clear, organized, thoughtful, and marvelous. I went to Beijing once in 1998 and have always wanted to go back. Im returning in sept for a bit and wanted to learn some chinese. I took chinese in college so its a review with some vocabulary. I have a bachelors degree in psychology. I really like the way you break it down into literal translations and help us learn about why word combinations mean new words.