Learning Chinese just got easier with the introduction of our newest site feature: practice speaking lessons. These experimental new lessons are part of our ongoing efforts to create the most innovative and affordable environment for learning Chinese online. They are easy to use and inexpensive to boot. Access comes bundled with our existing premium subscription and all you need to start talking is a working telephone.

How exactly are we going to give you feedback on your spoken Chinese? Just click through to our text section and follow the instructions there. We provide a toll-free telephone number you can use to call us, along with a lesson-specific PIN number we will use to identify you. Start telling us about yourself when prompted, and when you're finished we'll queue your recording for review by one of our professional CSL teachers. They'll listen to it during working hours here in Beijing and get back to you with feedback by email. You did sign up with a valid email address, right?

Please note that because of the extra workload providing individual feedback places on our staff, this feature is reserved for premium subscribers. If you like the sound of giving us the sound of your Chinese, and getting full access to the best-darn-Chinese-learning-platform-known-to-man, head over to your account page and upgrade to a premium subscription. And if you want even more one-on-one attention, consider signing up for our private telephone tutoring service.
 said on
July 6, 2009
Let's bump this to the top of our comments section. If you're a premium subscriber interested in helping us beta test our latest feature and get some one-on-one feedback on your spoken Chinese click through to the text section and give us a call.

In addition to helping us get to know you, be sure to let us know what you think of the service, and ways we can improve it to make it even more convenient for you. Beta is beta, but we want to give this feature a permanent home.

Cheers.

--david
 said on
July 6, 2009
Wow that's pretty awesome.

Regarding Skype, is it possible to set up a native Skype user set up for this? Hrm, I guess you're doing something interesting with the pin to route messages to the right place though.

 said on
July 6, 2009
Mat, my version of Skype has a virtual dialpad between the contacts and history tabs. You should be able to use that to dial in and enter the number.

http://websearch.about.com/od/freedownloads/ig/Skype/dialer.htm

 said on
July 6, 2009
Not a problem to dial in skype. It's just a little bit of messing around and it costs money. Where as actually hosting it via skype somehow, purely via the internet, might not cost anything.

It's not really the cheap-skate issue that I'd rather avoid really, it's the whole connection to POTS which is fiddling and lower quality and means I have to mess around topping my skype up with credit I don't normally need to do.

But I stress, it's just a "nice" thing, and not a showstopper off this very interesting service so let's not get too sidetracked here :)
 said on
July 7, 2009
@mat, Skype calls to the toll-free line should be free although there is probably a connection charge.

I've dialed in before using an IP card from China as well. The trick there is that only some IP cards offer decent rates internationally. The normal IP cards you can buy at most newspaper kiosks will milk you on international long-distance calls. The best ones I found were explicitly for international calls, and offered something like one mao per minute Beijing->Toronto.

 said on
December 7, 2009
I like this service that you offer and I just tried it!

Hope to see from PUC soon!

 said on
December 7, 2009
I received feedback from Gail when I logged on this morning, text along with an MP3 attachment. She pointed out some of the errors that I made, one which was a bit amusing in retrospect, so it will be easy to remember how to correctly explain things next time. :-) A majority of her feedback was in Chinese, so

I had to listen several times to get the gist. This sort of stretching is good for the learning experience.

I think this is a very convenient and tremendous feature!!

 said on
December 8, 2009
@蓝大卫

你是说那个关于你为什么学中文的句子吧?那真的是太好笑了。哈哈。

Gail听的时候就在笑,我问她笑什么,她就告诉我了,我也笑翻了,希望你不会介意:)
 said on
December 8, 2009
@LanZi,

Hey, I laughed at myself, so I don't mind your laughing. We say in English,

"you are laughing with me, not at me." I thought I heard some laughing in

the background during Gail's call. It was all in good fun and part of

learning the language. Haven't you been in a similar situation learning

English? ;-)

For the other readers, without getting into details, I made a mistake in

causality that a native speaker would find amusing.

 said on
December 9, 2009
@蓝大卫,

sorry, i just couldn't hold my laughing when somebody else laughed.

Anyway, you will send us your speaking practice again this week, right?

Since your wife is Taiwanese, your children must be beatiful!

 said on
December 9, 2009
@蓝大卫

Yes I made similar mistakes learning English. They are really helpful. So bring us more fun mistakes!

@Gail

Hmm... in most cases 混血儿 are beautiful, but I have seen some 半兽人 too. Really scary.
 said on
December 9, 2009
@Gail

当然!我肯定要给你们打电话! 我认为Speaking Practice 非常有用!

在台湾很多人说:“你的女儿很漂亮”。 我一定同意! 但是我回答:“我儿子呢?

我叫他“帅guy". :-)

@Lanzi,

Linguistic goofs stay entrenched in one's mind. In college, I learned to speak a little Vietnamese, which like Chinese, is tonal. I once did their equivalent of the fourth tone when I should have used a rising tone. My friend went into a hysteric fit because I said something that should not be uttered in mixed company. (insert blushing emoticon!).

 said on
December 9, 2009
@LanZi,

半兽人?!

我听说过“半妖”。日本的那些动画片里到处都是,但都好帅哟!
 said on
December 10, 2009
@蓝大卫,

我也没听说过“半兽人”我只知道“恐龙”。
 said on
December 10, 2009
@Xiao Hu @ Gail

周杰伦有一首歌名就叫“半兽人”... 很多年前了。plus, that was a joke!

@蓝大卫

很好奇你的儿女都长什么样,照片!照片!

 said on
July 8, 2015
Now a day it's a easy thing to learn something new.

If any one want to learn any new language he have meany option or way..I learn my Chinese lesson over Skype. When i want to learn it I was very nervous but my teacher teach me well. I did a lot of conversion for the purpose of learning. Any way I found that teacher at http://preply.com/en/chinese-by-skype.

Any one can check out that link, They have many other courses .
Mark Lesson Studied