You can win 200 minutes of free Chinese tutoring over Skype

[YuYang]

Dear Zeppa,

 

Thank you for taking the time to share this. As a relatively new service, we are extremely open and responsive to feedback.

To address your points, I should like to emphasize that our teachers are all qualified and very experienced in teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. They have developed proprietary material, aligned with the official HSK test standards, over the course of more than a year and we've been using it with our paying students over this time, iterating as necessary. Our 4 free lessons giveaway is designed not to give our teachers experience but to allow new students enough time to learn all about our service and get more out of their studies with us than they would with just one free trial class.

 

Of course, we appreciate that our approach may not be to your taste. As you alluded to, we don't provide the looser, language exchange style classes but carefully designed lessons that focus on vocabulary, pronunciation, reading and general conversation skills. Each of the exercises in a typical lesson tests these different skills; some may be a little easier or difficult for a given student - at least until we get to know you well enough to choose very targeted content and help you as you most need.

 

As for previewing your class materials, in fact it is possible to preview/review material at any time from your account on speakupchinese.com, so I'm sorry that you were not prompted to do this. Besides accessing your courseware, we also have practice items for each lesson. We are developing videos for each lesson as supplementary materials too. That should give our students opportunities to learn in their own time, not just in class. Furthermore, we will have language partners practice in the future - we would like to invite you to try this as soon as it's available, if that is what you are interested in. Our students' needs and interests come first and we want to make sure you are satisfied.

 

You are welcome to take your two remaining classes any time, and we thank you for getting involved.

 

Warm wishes and best of luck with your studies!

 

[YuYang]

Dear Milkybar_Kid,

 

Many thanks for sharing your experience with Speak Up Chinese. I'm glad you were satisfied and considering continuing your lessons! Also it's really helpful for us to learn your thoughts on where we can improve, so we can continue developing our service.

 

To your point, we are more structured than language exchange style services such as iTalki. We want to keep our students having fun but also focused and progressing. A general structure (with chat time included) is how we have chosen to approach this. As I mentioned before in my reply to Zeppa (above), we will be adding a looser practice partners service later, so perhaps you'll enjoy that.

 

Thanks again for your feedback - it's been a pleasure working with you so far!

[Zeppa]

Thank you, Michelle. I am sure your system is very good for beginners. I did not realize I could have seen the reading texts in advance. It seemed that everything was online without a chance to prepare. Sorry about that.

[YuYang]

Dear Zeppa,

If ever you want to go back to review the materials you studied during your classes, the 'courseware' is saved in your free account on speakupchinese.com and will remain there. Also there are some video clips for listening practice, in case you ever want to check them out. I'm available to help if you ever have any questions in the future.

 

Best,

Michelle