We received an email today from a user today asking about our level system. This raised a number of questions we really haven't addressed adequately anywhere, so I wanted to start this post to explain our thinking behind our level system and solicit feedback. First of all, the background email:

I came as an absolute beginner and have made a lot of progress, but not as much as I'd like. Until recently I've been using Chinese Learn Online a lot, which I like, but when I tried PopupChinese I found I struggled to understand the elementary dialogues the first time round- mainly because the accent is very different to what I'm used to here and on other podcasts. I will be moving to Beijing in October, so I think PopupChinese will be invaluable in preparing me for the change in accent!

I really want to focus my studies more now and improve more quickly- I was a bit disappointed to see that I am currently struggling with your elementary level! I would like to know, what is the main difference between the different levels?

Because most people who buy language learning products are total beginners to the language, most commercial books and programs sell a progressive ladder approach: materials get more difficult over time and people are explicitly told what to study next. The problem is that it doesn't work for people who are past the very basics, and results in people eventually hitting a wall of frustration and wondering why they aren't making more progress. It isn't uncommon for people to reach the intermediate or advanced stages of these programs and come to China only to realize they can't communicate.

This is why we have only four levels: we don't think finer-grained distinctions are necessarily useful. Rather than think of the language learning process as a ladder, we think of it more as an expanding cone. The more you know the harder the fit to a mass course. This is why the fastest way to make progress is to work with a teacher for one-on-one lessons. One of the things we are committed to doing is making it less expensive for someone to get excellent one-on-one training than to signup for a night class or university program without that kind of individual feedback.

As a result, rather than create an explicitly hierarchical system which tells people what materials to study in what order. our level system is a rough categorization of materials by difficulty level. We do have our biases: we focus on the type of language we think provides the best framework for developing listening comprehension, which means a strong bias towards colloquial Chinese through the Intermediate level. It also means we avoid lessons that do what we call "noun stuffing" - randomly filling lessons with low-frequency nouns just to have something "difficult" to teach.

So when we categorize lessons, our focus is really on how much knowledge someone will need to be able to make them accessible. These are our rough criteria:

Absolute Beginner:

- focus on high frequency words and phrases

- simple sentences and clear speech

- little attempt to explain underlying grammar

- every lesson accessible to someone with no Chinese skills

- suitable for students with 1-6 months of language exposure

Elementary:

- focus on common words and phrases

- shorter sentences and more natural speech

- explanations of basic Chinese grammar points

- points made by native Chinese speaker are repeated in English

- suitable for students with up to 2 years of language exposure

Intermediate:

- focus on colloquial Chinese and natural sentence patterns

- more advanced grammar points that expect a familiarity with underlying Chinese grammar

- Chinese explanations are not immediately repeated in English, but eventually summarized

- suitable for students with up to 5 years of language exposure

Advanced:

- less emphasis on colloquial Chinese

- no holds barred on topics or conversation

- you are expected to follow full-speed native Chinese conversation

- intended for translators, Sinologists, bilingual professionals

We expect that university students with a year of study under their belt will start at the elementary level, and that students with two to three years of language study should be comfortable at the intermediate level. That said -- Chinese is a difficult language and there isn't any glossing over it. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to push themselves to communicative fluency and provide the necessary tools (contextual mouseovers, line-by-line recordings, generative audio reviews) for even beginner students to tackle and understand more difficult materials.

What do you guys think?