Visualmandarin - Website with free chinese lessons/exercises

[simplyolaf]

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you know of a website I have been working on. It is still not finished(there is still a lot of issues to fix) but we already have a decent amount of chinese lessons/videos/podcasts and interactive exercises. The kind of exercise where you have a sound, 4 images and you need to select the correct option. Also there are memory games for those who want to improve their memory.

I hope it is ok to post the links ；-)

A couple of examples are:

Vehicles: http://www.visualmandarin.com/exercise.action?exercise.id=34

Sports : http://www.visualmandarin.com/exercise.action?exercise.id=17

Memory games:

http://www.visualmandarin.com/exercise.action?exercise.id=39

You can explore all the learning resources using our learning center.

I would be interested in hearing any feedback or of people based in Xi'an who would like to collaborate.

Best Regards,

Olaf

[roddy]

The kind of exercise where you have a sound, 4 images and you need to select the correct option.

I'm just getting a distorted mess and 4 images. The '对了' sound plays ok, but the 'question' sound is incomprehensible. Fortunately I knew the characters so I got them all right.

[simplyolaf]

Really?

The images were distorted?

What browser do you use? And what is the flash version? If it is a slow internet connection as it is normally in china, the images can take a bit of time to load. If you could send a screenshot it would be nice ;)

[roddy]

No, the sound, attaching a file with what I hear for 火车。 The sports one is the same. XP, Firefox 3.07, I'd imagine it's flash that actually the issue, not sure what version that is.

PS Yes I know I spelt it wrong.

houche.wav

[simplyolaf]

Flash 9 or above should be fine, otherwise you would have been asked to upgrade. Disd you try to repeat the sound? There's a button on the right hand side. Perhaps because the connection is slow it only plays half of the sound and starts buffering hence distoring the sound. I think I have seen that before. Since that is an issue you saw straight away I will look into that.

Thanks for the feedback :-)

Anyone else had a problem listening to the sounds?

[roddy]

It's definitely loaded, and happens if I press the button to repeat. Oh, and I got 100% and it still asks me if I want to improve my score.

[simplyolaf]

That's true... I will get that fixed, that's quite embarrassing

What is the exact version of flash that you are using? You can see that by right clicking...

sorry to ask you so many things ;)

[roddy]

9.0.124

You've also got a second tone on 她 in this video. Your presenter also appears to have a steel girder growing out of her head, but never mind

[simplyolaf]

lol... I'll get them to correct it. Thanks for that.

[yersi]

Some thoughts:

• - I had no technical problems with the site, the videos and games seemed to load fine for me. The only thing that sticks out is that I couldn't skip to other parts in the videos without waiting for them to load first.
  
• - the background noise on the video lessons is very distracting (the 生肖 video, for example, seemed to be recorded near a construction site or a heavily trafficked road).
  
• - the site is called "visual mandarin", but I didn't see a whole lot of visual learning employed in the video lessons. Most of them are just the presenter standing in one place and giving a speech. Maybe an idea would be to integrate more accompanying pictures or illustrations in the videos?
  
• - the content and design seems fairly rough and unpolished when compared with competitors like Popup Chinese. There are also quite a few spelling errors scattered throughout the site.
  
• - I like the presenters (Teresa is probably the best), but at times they seem to be quite impatient and not "serious" enough for the learner to feel comfortable. My apologies if this sounds vague but it's just a feeling I got from the content I tried out.
  

It's not a bad site but it still needs a lot of work if it's going to stand out from the jungle of other Chinese learning sites out there.

[simplyolaf]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback versi. Regarding the spelling mistakes I am actually editing all the descriptions myself and correcting that. The website is not finished and there is a lot of polishing to do.

Regarding the videos I have given your feedback to the presenters. They will try to use a lot more visual elements in the videos. For example if they are teaching you about colors they should at least show you a square with a color.... that's quite easy to do.

The sound is also an issue. We want to have a video/mp3 for each lesson. Obviously for podcasts the quality of sound is more important. It will ruin anyone's learning experience to have a lot of background noise... so we'll have to fix that. And I have personally instructed the presenters to double check all the tones when editing the videos. It can be quite confusing for a beginner to see the word 他 written with two different tones. It was an honest typing mistake... but still a mistake.

Our website is far from finished. But once is finished and the content is up to scratch to what I envisioned I think people will enjoy the site and will want to learn mandarin there.

I am still willing to hear other people's comments even if it hurts!

Best Regards,

Olaf

[imron]

Video encoding seemed to have interlaced lines for the video I just watched (Table-tennis/badminton one), which is distracting.

Reduce the length of your intro animation. While I'm sure it's fun to play with various different effects, from a user's perspective, the intro seems to finish, but then displays another effect, and then it seems to finish, but then still has another effect, and then another effect and then another effect. Currently it lasts for 13 seconds, and gets annoying after the first few times watching it. Personally I'd aim for something less than 5 seconds.

For advanced lessons avoid all English, including when presenters are introducing themselves etc.

Overall, it seems a good start, good luck with it.

[whereishunter]

I have just had a look at your website and it looks good.

The videos look interesting but the sound quality is not great. Voices are not clear due to the background or the echo if it is in a classroom.

I started watching a lot of your videos but never got to the end due to the bad sound quality.

I hope you will be able to fix this problem.

[simplyolaf]

We also got annoyed with the introduction so we have removed it from more recent videos.

The sound quality is quite important so we will address that ASAP.

Is the sound for this video acceptable?

http://www.visualmandarin.com/lesson.action?lesson.id=7

[roddy]

That sounds to me like it's been distorted during compression or something. Not sure if that's just a feature of my computer or what, but what I'm hearing is nowhere near ready for the public.

I don't want to sound negative as you've got a site and videos up, which is more than a lot of people manage and has obviously taken some effort. But you need to look at some basic stuff - one is the space rules for pinyin, you can't just put spaces after every syllable. The locations seem a bit random and odd - by all means send someone outside if necessary, but in the above video you've got half a plant, a corner of a desk or something, and a some of a bookcase. Read a little on framing a photograph and apply the same. And I can't see there's any reason for the presenter to be holding a candyfloss-sized microphone right the way through - get a stand or a smaller mike. Her poor little arm

A little interaction with the viewers wouldn't hurt. If you've told them how to say 'this is a 20Y note', there's no harm in a rhetorical 'so how would you say 'this is a 50Y note' later.

I only got four minutes in, but those are some thoughts arising from this and other videos.

One more general thing - the Internet is crawling with material aimed at beginners. Get some advanced material up there and you might have a smaller audience, but you'll be sharing it with fewer people.

[simplyolaf]

The reason we used that huge mic was because of the the wireless microphone we have has too much echo at least inside our building. Of course it doesn't look good in front of the camera... but we are going to look into that. So your sound doesn't work even for the videos? That's strange.... could you please check your version of flash?

The places where we film are currently just nearby our office. But we are going to do a lot of filming outside. We will go to restaurants for a lesson on chinese food, go to shopping malls for a lesson on clothes and to wherever it is relevant.

We have put a lot of work into the website, and we will put a lot more until we are completely happy with the quality of the website & content and there will be content for all levels.

[roddy]

I did, earlier. Don't usually have any audio issues.

[simplyolaf]

Roddy, I think we fixed the audio issue. Can you please give it another try?

[roddy]

I tried again, and I'm attaching an audio file of what I'm hearing. I did a CTRl+F5 reload to try and avoid any cached files. These are just recorded by playing the internal speakers on my laptop and recording with internal mic, which isn't ideal, but it's basically what I'm actually hearing - the quiz is unintelligible, the video is very poor but understandable.

First 20 seconds are the video, then '汽车‘ from the quiz. It seems the little ident section at the start is much clearer - are you doing something different with that?

visualmandarin2.mp3

[simonlaing]

Yeah this site looks to have promise.

The picking of pictures to connect with spoken pinyin is ok, but still has a multiple guess format and is not very flexible. Still it has promise and is more than most has done.

How do you think you will get revenue from it?

Advertising, subscriptions, or money from arranging language exchanges perhaps?

Also I think getting an english native speaker to help with some grammar issues and study help could be advantageous.

Good luck with it.

Another poster said there were other new websites cropping up, other than popup chinese and the Chinese-tools I am not sure which provides the lessons.

thanks,

SImon:)