Anyone have any experience with Online Tutors?

[PinYin55]

http://www.chinesetutor.net/

I was checking out that site.

I am currently using a "attack from all sides" approach using basically every type of self teaching tool you can. But I keep hearing people saying that it really is a good idea to invest in a class or tutor.

Well, I don't have thousands of dollars laying around, and that is about what it costs to sign up for a class around here.

However, I keep finding site like this. Online classrooms eh?

Part of me is telling me it couldnt be very good, that the technology must be clunky, etc etc.

But another part is telling me, "it's so cheap! And its better than nothing!"

I am going to continue self-teaching, but does anyone have experience with this site or any other related sites?

[simonlaing]

Dear Pinyin55,

Hi, I am Simon the customer service officer of www.chinesetutor.net. I hope I can answer some of your questions about our site.

Our tutors are well educated and most with good English language skills.

We have different students who want to learn Chinese for different reasons. Some are students or do international trade and want to learn it for professional reasons. Others are learning Chinese as a hobby or to get some knowledge before they go to China to travel.

We use Skype MSN and yahoo messenger services.

Most students use a textbook as well with our tutors. This provides texts, vocabulary and exercises that you can do together. We recommend the New Practical Chinese Reader, though Tutors have used several books and some times write the material themselves and send it over email.

We start with a free trial lesson of 20-30 minutes and then arrange classes after that usually. When would you like to have class, (bear in mind the US east coast is 12 hours ahead of China) so morings or evenings are best.

If you have more questions you can PM or Email me.

Simon:)

[Paul Smith]

Pinyin55

I've been studying Mandarin Chinese online for seven months now with a site called Word Learner Chinese ( http://www.worldlearnerchinese.com ). It was a gift from my dad.

I have been using their self-study course for 3 months before starting their virtual classroom. I now have 7 students in my online class. The teacher teaches very well and I'm very happy with the connection. It looks like they are using a large bandwidth system because the people in my class come from all over the world! It's like a real classroom. We can see the teacher, talk directly to the teacher , rise our hand...sometime we even see other classmates! We meet online twice a week and the classes are 50 min. long.

I found out that the online I'm in cost about US$550.00 for about 4 months. Not bad for the good service. Oh, their lesson matterials is both in Simplified and Traditional Chinese. I'm more into speaking Chinese myself.

Bed time for me. Tell you more later. I hope this helps Pinyin55.

Paul

[中国男子汉]

it's definitely not a good idea to pay for online training.

an alternative is to find a pen pal for language exchanges, lol

[abuck]

I'm considering the online tutor option myself, mostly because my spoken Chinese needs improvement and I'm not keen to pay tutors in my area $15 - $50 an hour for lessons. Any thoughts/experiences to share? Thanks!!