You can win 200 minutes of free Chinese tutoring over Skype

[Ollie]

Hey guys, I posted about this in a previous thread about Speak up Chinese - but that thread was old and technically about something else, so I thought I'd also write here...

 

You might have heard of Speak up Chinese. Basically they do Chinese lessons over Skype. I've been having them for a while and I'm really impressed with the teaching.

 

To promote themselves a bit better, they're currently doing a giveaway: 10 people will get four 50 minute lessons completely free. You just need to type in your email address to enter.

 

Here's the link to the sign up page.

 

The competition closes at the end of August.

 

Seems like a pretty great opportunity, right?

[lechuan]

Sounds exciting!

 

What is the site's definition of a valid email address? Every time I try to enter my hotmail email addres, it says "Please enter a valid email address".

[xuexiansheng]

Yeah, I was a little worried about that....Scam? That is why I always use my 'burner' email for these freebies.

[ZhiMu]

I recommend signing up for the giveaway.  I did the free lessons last year when they were offered.  I ended up purchasing 100 classes up front.  I can assure you that this is 100% legit and I do continue to have regular weekly lessons with the CEO 苏海峰 (Henry Su).  My Chinese has seen a vast improvement since studying with the SpeakUp Chinese program.  If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask me.  

 

If you pre buy 100 classes at a time like I do, it comes out to $15 a 50 min class which is pretty on target with people on iTalki, the big difference is that the material at SpeakUpChinese is very structured and you are provided with study guides, Anki flash cards, audio files and videos all related directly to your classes.  We spend the first 25 mins reviewing previous material and practice speaking and listening, with the remaining 25 mins used to introduce the new lesson.  I'm a really big fan of their program!!!

[Shelley]

$15 x 100 = $1500.00 that is a huge amount for a poor student like me to spend. What are the single lesson prices? or maybe 10 at a time price?

[Ollie]

The prices are all on their website here. http://www.speakupchinese.com

Individual 50 minute lessons normally cost $25 (although it looks like you can save a lot with bulk pricing).

[Shelley]

Well it might be the best, but it is way out of my price bracket.

 

Good luck

[imron]

Maybe try to win the free classes then

[Shelley]

ya but then I can't afford to carry on when the free lessons run out. 200 minutes is just over 4 lessons, they seem to be about 50 minutes each. So its not worth starting.

[imron]

You could always write a review.

[lechuan]

What is the site's definition of a valid email address? Every time I try to enter my hotmail email addres, it says "Please enter a valid email address".

[roddy]

Yeah, failed with three valid(ish) email addresses for me. Also, who are we actually giving our email addresses to? This is a speakupchinese promotion, you're chinese-musings.com, and you've never posted about anything but speakupchinese on here. I also notice your home page has 'subscribe to my emails' for a chance to win this same prize. Are we perhaps unwittingly signing up for some newsletter? Direct link to the competition on the speakupchinese site?

 

It's also pretty bad form to fail to point out in your original post that a) your link goes to YOUR site, not the one you're talking about, and that b) this is a company that sponsors your blog. 

[Flickserve]

USD1500 is a considerable investment for most people. I do understand it helps them with their cash flow and startup costs if they can get a few people to pay for that.

[Mr John]

I used a Gmail account to enter, worked for me. 

[Pokarface]

The Hype is real! I'm one of their former students  

 

Me singing in Chinese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQRIS3nWENc

 

你在中国吗？我也有YouKu!

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMxMjU0ODk5Ng==.html

 

When I read Chinese

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgVpy-7gcaU

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMxMjU1MTk3Ng==.html

 

 

[YuYang]

Hello, All!

 

This is Yu Yang (Michelle) from Speak Up Chinese. I'm really pleased there is such interest in our giveaway - thanks to Ollie from Chinese Musings for his support.

 

I would like to confirm that this giveaway is running until the end of August. There are two ways to enter: either sign-up at ChineseMusings.com or on SpeakUpChinese.com (register for a free account = entry). Essentially, it is a lucky draw. All those who sign-up will have a chance to win. We will randomly picked 10 people at the start of September and then email everyone who wins. We have just published a blog post about the offer here.

 

To give you some background on this offer: we had a great response from our launch campaign back in February (see the Chinese-forums post about that here). We found that when we give students more time to learn with our teachers (not just the free class trial), they can see the real value of one-to-one tutoring and enjoy learning with us. So, we wanted to extend our offer to 10 more students in case we can help more of you. We are relative newcomers on the scene, so we are doing our bit to let more people get to know our services.

 

For those who have experienced difficulties with signing-up, please email us at info@speakupchinese.com and we will assist you directly. 

 

In terms of pricing, all our prices are on our homepage. They're all very competitive with similar 1-1 services and I'd go as far to say they're better value but perhaps it's best to ask our students that :-)

 

Thanks again for your response and support! I'm here to answer any further questions.

 

- Michelle

[YuYang]

Hi Everyone,

 

FYI the 10 winners of our August giveaway have been selected and notified. Congratulations to those who won four free 50-minute Skype classes, especially if any of them are reading this post! 

 

If you haven't heard from us, this means you were not lucky this time. However, if you entered you are invited to take a free 50-minute class with one of our teachers, by way of thanks for your support. 

 

You can learn more about this on our blog: http://speakupchinese.tumblr.com/post/129078146736/last-months-giveaway-10-winners-selected

Should you have any questions, please contact me directly at info@speakupchinese.com

Michelle Yu

[Milkybar_Kid]

I'm glad to report that I was one of the lucky winners.

 

I will make sure to write a quick review after I have finished my 4 free classes.

 

A big thank you to Ollie for setting this up.

[Zeppa]

Has anyone entered for this and not won? I wondered if they are using these free lessons to get experience with their system.

 

I did two of the four free lessons but the system is not quite for me. I got the impression the school is developing its own quite good teaching material, but you can't prepare in advance. So we would go over some vocabulary, six or eight words, and my accent and tones would be grilled. But later I was asked to read an unfamiliar short text quite fast. I would have liked to prepare the tones in advance, but it went too fast. I also had to rearrange words to form a sentence. It was fairly easy so a bit of a waste of time. Then the teacher did not really understand my problems - but admittedly this was on the basis of two lessons. I had a feeling I have had with attempts at Skype lessons before, that the teacher was very keen to find advice for me and explain things, but he didn't understand where I had problems and where not.

 

There were also some Skype problems, although my internet connection is quite fast.

[Milkybar_Kid]

As promised here's a quick review of SpeakUp Chinese.

 

Overall the registration system was pretty good, their online system is easy to manage and pretty clear. Communication with Michelle was pretty good and all emails answered promptly.

 

After my first lesson I was graded as being at a 'low-advanced' level. This is about on par with what I'd expect as I've been studying Chinese for nearly 5 years now. During the second lesson I was told that they don't have many advanced students so there isn't any advanced material to use. This was a bit disappointing but I managed to make the intermediate content work for me. I always need more opportunities to practice speaking  Chinese anyway.

 

As others have mentioned there were a few Skype connection problems, however I blame this on the Internet connection between Taiwan and China as I've had the same problems on iTalki.

 

The teachers were generally pretty good. I enjoyed most of my classes with Helen Zhang who was very friendly and helpful.

 

I'm still considering whether I should sign up for some paid classes or not. I think I prefer iTalki due to the wider variety of teachers available, conversation partners being cheaper and more flexibility with the schedule.

 

Once again, thanks for posting the link for the free classes.