For those interested in (or needing to) learning Chinese, there are no shortages of quality online learning programs offering you the flexibility of picking up a foreign language from the comfort of your own computer. One of the latest entrants into this competitive market is Innovative Language Learning’s ChineseClass101.com and we’re going to offer you some of our impressions of their service to see if you’ll want to take advantage of the 35% discount coupon we’ve negotiated for you (details below).
Like many online learning programs, ChineseClass101 operates on a freemium model, offering free account registration that allows access to certain content while other content requires either a paid basic or a paid premium subscription. Each free account includes a 7-day trial of the premium subscription’s features (most of them) so you’re free to sample the service’s more advanced learning materials before plopping down any money. You’ll want to note that a one-time 10% discount off the paid subscriptions is offered during your free account registration process. If you successfully resist the pressure to take advantage of that but later regret it, it looks like you may be able to get the same 10% discount again with an “OOPS” coupon code.
The members section of ChineseClass101, which is accessible after logging in with your free registered account is separated into five distinct sections:
1. Lessons
This is probably where you’ll spend most of your time on the website as this is where all the lessons are presented. If you’re familiar with WordPress blogs, the interface will be familiar to you as the lessons are posts shown in reverse chronological order, the most recent being first and the oldest being last. There are various categories of lessons ranging from “Beginner Lessons” and “Elementary Lessons” (not sure what the difference is there either) to “Advanced Audio Blog” and “Culture Class”, and you can fortunately search and reorganize lessons according to these categories, date, or keywords.
Each lesson’s post includes English introductions and all of the lesson’s materials segmented into Free, Basic, and Premium content. Under Basic and Premium will mostly be PDF files you can download and print out, ideal for visual learners to learn Chinese pinyin and characters. Under Free is the audio podcast, which you can listen to directly on the website, download, or pop-up into a new window. These audio podcasts are high quality mp3s and the hosts/voice actors all speak very clearly (unlike, say, Jay Chou). When playing the audio podcasts on the website, they would often be interrupted by pauses for buffering. However, it is hard to determine whether this is something related to my own internet connection or the website itself. In most cases, the pauses only occurred in the beginning of each podcast.
Since each lesson is presented as a blog post, each lesson also allows users to comment, asking questions and starting conversations. This is the “Instant Lessons Discussion” feature and, while there aren’t many comments on many of the lessons, it can be a great way to share stories and meet other language learners.
There is a new lesson nearly everyday, though not every lesson teaches the Chinese language. Some lessons focus on recent news or aspects of Chinese culture and are presented in predominantly English.
2. Learning Center
The Learning Center is divided into two sections: Lesson Specific Tools and Reference Material. The latter is mostly empty at this point but promises to be developed soon. The former, however, presents the same lessons as in the Lessons section but in a more “textbook” format, dividing a lesson into listening first, then reviewing, and finally practicing with flash cards (see right).
It is important to note here that while ChineseClass101 purports to teach “Beijing Mandarin”, the Chinese text used in ChineseClass101 are actually complex characters instead of simplified.
In addition to the above materials, there’s also a built-in Voice Recording feature that allows you to record yourself practicing your Chinese aloud and then compare with the pre-recorded native speakers. Finally,the Learning Center also lets you mark lessons as completed, helping you keep track of your progress.
3. Forum
The Forum is, as you can imagine, a fairly standard discussion board organized into sub-forums about China, the Chinese Language, Chinese culture, and general chit-chat. It’s a bit empty at the time of this review, but as users grow, forums like these always promise to be filled with random shenanigans.
4. Blog
The blog generally hosts various announcements for ChineseClass101. For example, one notable announcement is their current social-media marketing initiative asking you to follow their Twitter account, become a fan of their Facebook page, and subscribe to their YouTube channel. Doing so gets you up to three chance to win free subscriptions. Moreover, if they can get one million total subscribers, they’ll even give everyone who participated a free 6-month premium subscription ($120 value). Too bad everyone potential Chinese-learner physically already in China is currently blocked from all three services (Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) by the GFW.
Other than announcements, the Blog section also includes weekly “Twitter Mini-Lesson Recaps” that collect all of the Chinese mini-lessons they published to Twitter over the past week. Each of these mini-lessons are essentially bite-sized one-word vocabulary lessons. If you’re not on Twitter (or can’t get on), you can catch-up on what you missed here.
5. Download Center
The Download Center isn’t very useful for free account holders but possibly so for those with paid subscriptions. Basically, it allows you to use RSS feeds to have their lessons and content delivered to your computer without having to access the website. Free account holders can only access the latest 10 audio podcasts while paid subscribers have access to the full archive.
Overall
My main gripe with ChineseClass101 is with the website’s design and navigation. It lacks some polish in many areas (nothing major though) and the navigation can be confusing at times. For example, using the Learning Center often leaves me wondering just where on the website I currently happen to be.
Otherwise, ChineseClass101 offers a tons of high-quality free content for the casual learner of Chinese (and China). When you’re ready to step things up a notch, it offers three levels of extra learning materials, tools, and even personalized 1-on-1 instruction (sorry guys, I don’t think it’ll be with the qipao girl featured on all their art, like the one on the left here), all at affordable prices with flexible subscription periods. For example, one month for the basic subscription is just $8.00 while premium is $25.00. Longer subscriptions are up to 60% cheaper.
Of course, my advice is to remind you that key element for online language programs is you yourself, the student. If you’re diligent and disciplined, online language programs are an extremely cost-efficient and flexible method for picking up some foreign language proficiency. ChineseClass101 is a good option. However, if you’re a lazy slop, you might want to force yourself into a classroom paying a higher tuition in hopes of a more structured environment and a teacher to look at you disapprovingly when you goof off.
Read enough? Go learn some Chinese and…
…check out ChineseClass101.com for yourself! »
35% Off CNREVIEWS Discount Coupon
When ChineseClass101 approached us to review their service, we managed to con negotiate with them to give our lovely CNR readers some extra enticement for giving their service a whirl: A 35% off discount coupon that you can use by signing up through this page or entering the code “CNREVIEWS” when signing up for a Basic, Premium, or PremiumPlus account.
Innovative Language Learning is the parent company for ChineseClass101.com and offers a variety of other online language programs for Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Russian, French, Italian, Korean, and Spanish.
Disclosure: ChineseClass101.com affiliate advertising may appear throughout CNR along with its competitors.
Better than chinesepod?
Downloaded the ChineseClass 101 podcast for my iPhone, but it’s frozen!
http://www.imandarinpod.com and http://www.cslpod.com podcasts lessons are free, and have free pdf’s.
Both are owned & operated by Chinese nationals. They are much better than the high monetary subscription rates of the White-owned and run Chinesepod.