I would love feedback on this learning site

[wangweijing]

Hey everyone,

I'm pretty new here, and I actually joined because I was hoping for some expert feedback :-)

You see, I've been studying Chinese now for around 1.5 years and even though it's hard I keep moving forward. The main reason of course being my Chinese fiancee.

Anyway, a while back I started listening to Chinese songs for kids in China. My fiancee helped with some translation and it was a real fun way to learn =)

Since I'm a web app developer by heart we decided to put all of this online, try to make a sort of extra learning tool for anyone who wants.

Now the first version is up and I would love to get some feedback from on things such as:

• Do you think it's a good/fun way to learn?
  
• How can it be presented better on the site?
  
• Any more additional features that would be helpful to learn easier (such as export functions, pdfs, quizzes or similar)
  
• How's the price and payment?
  
• Any more songs you want up there? :-) (We are still working on many more of course)
  

You can go to the site and check: http://www.chinese-children-songs.com

And as thanks to anyone willing to check it out I would love to give everyone here free access to entire site for a month, so just use the code CHINESEFORUMS to sign up for the premium version if you want. Otherwise you can also just check out all the translations by just registering.

If you use the code and don't want more than a month, remember that you can stop it anytime.

Any questions or similar, just let me know.

Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it :-)

- Matthew M. McEwan (Wang Weijing)

[Shelley]

Had a quick look, I don't think this is the sort of thing for me because i can't carry a tune in a bucket and I would drive everybody around me mad with my horrible singing.

One thing did jump out at me and it was a bit of an irritating thing. Every where you have written Chinese Children Songs, i think it should be Chinese Children's Songs. But .......are they Chinese children singing or are they children's Chinese songs? So should it be Children's Chinese Songs or Chinese Children's Songs. There is a difference.

Keep up the good work, all Chinese learning tools are worth the effort.

Good luck

[wangweijing]

Hey Shelley,

Thanks for checking out the site :-)

Yeah, I'm actually not a native English speaker so sometimes those things kind of miss my radar. I heard this before as well, that probably it should be Chinese children's songs... but haven't really found a solution yet. Perhaps I could just change all the text and headline so I stop annoying people with better grammar skills ;-)

Sorry about such a silly error on the site, I will fix it. Just keep learning :-)

[Rawley]

Just had a quick look to your website, and I like it! The interface is quite easy to use and the global aspect is good (maybe except there's too much red :-)).

Learning Chinese using Chinese songs for children, why not. But why reducing it to songs for children? It could be applied to all songs in Chinese. When you reach a certain level (it's not my case!), songs for children become too simple. Especially if you want to make some money with it.

The problem with learning Chinese whith songs is: the tones are usually not respected in them. So it's not a real good way. Of course it's easier to memorize that way fo some people. But when you start learning Chinese it's important to catch up the music of the words themselves (the tones).

[wangweijing]

Rawley, thanks for looking!

I'm gonna try to make the red a little more discrete... :-)

Yeah, you're definitely right, it works for many more songs, very good thinking. I just had to start somewhere. If some people find it useful, I think it might go in that direction, but perhaps under another name.

I see your point about songs and I think that these songs should definitely not be the only way one learns, but as a one of many tools and methods - I find varying among methods works quite well. A little bit of watching TV, some listening to music, some pods and some textbooks is a good combination.

Thanks again!

-M