Online tutoring and software - free trials!

Just did a quick scout of the Internet to see what I could find in the way of free trial lessons from online tutoring services, and free trials of Chinese learning software. I've looked specifically at products that are paid for, but have freebies to get you interested, so this isn't free stuff as such - but if you're keen you should be able to set up a free lesson and get a temporarily free bit of software every day for a week.

Please note that inclusion in the list doesn't mean endorsement, and if any of the software wipes your hard drive - well, bye.

If you have any contact with any of the providers, it would be appreciated if you tell them where you heard about them from. Highlighted links are from site sponsors.

Online tutors

Echineselearning.com

Chinesehour.com

http://www.accentmandarin.com/

http://www.learnchineseonline.org (I think this is a free online lesson, rather than live tutor)

http://www.chinesetown.com/trial.php

http://www.chineselearnonline.com/one-on-one (lessons follow on from their podcasts)

http://www.hellomandarin.com - online tutoring and content theft on a massive scale. Tell 'em Chinese-forums.com sent you, and we're mad.

http://chinesevoice.com/

http://www.studiochinese.com/try_now

http://www.tutorming.com (flash animation says sign up for a free lesson)

http://chinmaionline.com/learn-Chinese/online/signup.htm

http://www.chineseontheair.com/index/SignUp.aspx

http://www.mandomandarin.com

http://www.guavatalk.com/chinese/free-chinese-lesson.php

Software

Penpower (10% discount here for forums members)

http://www.taipansoftware.com/

http://usa.mytino.com/learn_chinese/lessons.php

http://lchinese.com/download.html

http://en.100e.com/Default.files/use02.asp

http://www.taipansoftware.com/

http://www.declan-software.com/chinese/

http://www.clavisinica.com/downloads.html

http://www.l-ceps.com/en/chinese-mandarin/learn-chinese-mandarin-ptrainer.html

If you try any of these out, don't forget to report back on your experience. If there are any others we can add post the details and I'll edit them in.

Under “Online Tutors” you can also list:

http://www.chineselearnonline.com/one-on-one

(Sorry, no review, as I’ve haven’t tried it.)

Added that in.

online tutoring and content theft on a massive scale. Tell 'em Chinese-forums.com sent you, and we're mad.

Roddy, can you elaborate a little. I assume you are mad about the "content theft". Who was it stolen from?

Based on the front page, they appear to be ready to teach anything to anybody.

See here and after. They may provide perfectly adequate services for all I know, but I couldn't let their marketing go unnoticed. Any discussion in THAT topic please, rather than this one.

Added:

http://chinesevoice.com/

http://www.studiochinese.com/try_now

http://www.tutorming.com (flash animation says sign up for a free lesson)

http://chinmaionline.com/learn-Chinese/online/signup.htm

I believe that's mandarin specializes mostly in traditional classroom teaching than online tutoring. The owner is a nice guy and says the right things about the importance of motivation and student-led learning though.

Right enough - I'm sure they used to do online stuff, but maybe I'm getting mixed up with someone else.

Nobody trying any of these?

added Chineseontheair.com

You can also add L-Ceps Personaltrainer Mandarin under software:

http://www.l-ceps.com/en/chinese-mandarin/learn-chinese-mandarin-ptrainer.html

I use it personally and I am very happy with it.

Hi Roddy,

I could try a few online tutoring website for Chinese thanks to your recommendation. Here is my reviews from the one i like best to the one i like less:

1) chineseteachers.com

- very flexible, pay as you go, decide how long the lesson should be, decide who is your teachers

- good level of service: they rate the teachers accoridng to their experience and also let the student grade and nominated their best teachers. I was surpsied you can't actually check other students comment but youc an still have an good vision of who are the best teachers.

- Technically good. They help you check your sound system and there is a system to share your own document with the teacher. You choose what you want to study.

- Price: cheap

2) Chinesehour.com

-The teacher i had for the trial had a good level of English and was very kind and professional.

- Technically they were the best. They have a system of virtual class with webcam, you can record the lesson, share internet browser with your teacher, any document, make annotation on the document...it was great.

- You have to buy a package of lesson but it is not expensive at all.

3)echineselearning.com

They are presented as the leader but seriously...the service is not great.

They just use skype with webcam. Send you document by email. The teacher is OK but not really professional from my point of view. And they try to force you to buy their package after the trial lesson (i hate that).

But they are friendly and cheap.

4)Chinesevoice

Actually i didn' t try it because you have to register for 60USD before having the free trial...what's the point? And the commercial was trying to persuade me that it was totally normal and that i HAD to buy their package.

They seems technically ok as they send you a specific software+ headphone, help you to install it, explain you how to use it....

But once again it work by package and i would not take the risk to enroll in such a non-transparent service.

http://nicemandarin.com/

Sign up to get free Chinese resources!

Live lessons by private tutors, worth 50 usd

Ebook about China's culture, history, languages and business information, worth 100usd

I don't know what you actually get. Given the "original" artwork on the site I wonder about the origin of the ebook.

They approached a friend of mine to teach there, he is already busy with his own teaching online. I took the opportunity to pass on some comments about the English on the site and the fact the "nicemandarin" sounds a bit wet in English.

Nothing changed, it is another site that has concentrated on using "flash" instead of paying some starving native English speaking student in Shanghai US$100 to work through the English and fix the obvious errors.

I also commented on some of the presentation, I mean design getting in the way of readability. Click on "contact" and you will see what I mean. Anyone can make those sort of mistakes but whey then are told and "then do nothing" ?

All of the above is a pity because they do use genuine native Mandarin speakers to teach online and their approach to teaching seems reasonable.

Please go to register page and fill in the essential information

Within 24 hours, our colleague will contact with you to arrange a free trial lesson

If you think everything is fine, your personal tutor will set the curriculum schedule with you together

Then please arrange the payment and start to enjoy learing mandarin!

There are several Mandarin teachers on Edufire and Wiziq. On these sites individual teachers provide lessons. Some offer free introductory or assessment lessons and some offer free materials to their students. Search for "Chinese" or "Mandarin" teachers.

Each site has a system for rating teachers. The ratings on Wiziq are more reliable, there are lots of technical issues with the other site's rating system.

Both sites are teaching platforms which use a flash implementation to provide a shared electronic whiteboard, webcam, sound and recording.

I have taught some English classes on both platforms. I still use the Wiziq platform, it is technically a lot better. The electronic classrooms are more stable and the video recordings are divided into small chapters. I also prefer the management policies, much more professional and responsive to any problems.

Recommended

http://www.wiziq.com/

Not recommended

http://edufire.com/

Okay I just gave chineseteachers.com a try, that's pretty neat!

What I like:

- No minimum. You pay to load a bank of minutes then use as you want, you can use it for five minutes if you want, or two hours it doesn't matter. Seems like many online teaching sites you have to pay for some program of x number of lessons or hours, so the flexibility of this program is great.

- No software to load. It's all browser based you go to the site, pick an available teacher, and start talking. I'm always suspicious of loading crap from people I know little about onto my computer.

What I didn't like:

- I'm practicing conversation skills and prefer standard mainland accents to do it, but it seemed the majority of the teachers online (at least the few times I've been on) are located in Taiwan. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning.

Maybe not the best site for a beginner that requires a more structured program with study materials but for those looking to polish kouyu it's definitely a low hassle way to do it. We just jabbered back and forth and whenever she'd say something I didn't catch she'd explain it in Chinese, quite fun.

Addendum to my very positive post about chineseteachers.com, I've run into a complete roadblock this afternoon trying to find any teachers that are available. I know it might be excessive in expectations to always have someone available but I've been checking it most of the afternoon and the page has looked something like this:

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/6256/teachers.jpg

I think at some point it's reasonable to count on not having to stare at the screen hitting F-5 hoping to beat someone else out to a student slot, especially in what is surely a prime learning time of their target audience.

Would anyone else like to comment on this subject?

Edit:

I selected Chineseteachers.com. Most of the teachers are "busy" probably because they try to stay "booked" instead of sitting, waiting. I would.

First, I tried two teachers at random who were available. I had technical problems that were probably on my system. (Chineseteachers said my email to them helped them fix (work around) this known problem in Flash 10 for linux/mac.)

Then, selecting a teacher whose profile looked interesting I booked a lesson for later that day. I am very lucky that this teacher seems to be a direct hit, satisfying everything I was looking for.

Getting started was terribly stressful. I asked the teacher if I could warm up by reading some children's poetry, and in about 10 minutes I was settled down into a good learning mode, exchanging my prepared dialogue with him. (Of course, my goal is unprepared, spontaneous dialogue.)

End edit.

Any more happy users of some of these services?

@querido

Thank you for sharing your experience on this forum, and especially on being open about how stressful the first lesson can be. It is indeed stressful calling someone we don't know yet, especially in a foreign language. We are glad our teachers put you at ease quickly. Please let us know if you have ideas on how to make the first lesson even less stressful.

The key to speaking Chinese well starts from actually *speaking* it, not necessarily with Chinese teachers of course. We aim to provide a place where you can feel comfortable asking questions and practicing speaking Chinese whatever level you are, whether it is a few minutes or a few hours every so often.

@wrbt

Thank you for your review!

You no longer need to refresh the full page with F5: our teachers list is now refreshed every minute, and you can see the countdown before the next refresh. In case you are waiting for a teacher that you booked, we also added a refresh button so that you can refresh faster. We have added the possibility to book lessons with most of our teachers (a few of our teachers prefer to stay very flexible with their schedule, so you will not see their 'Contact' icon). Booking lessons in advance is the best way to make sure you have the teacher you want available when you want. Booking lessons can help those that prefer a regular practice schedule.

Regarding your point on where our teachers come from, the majority of them come from Mainland China (a minority from Taiwan), but they are currently living in many parts of the world in different time zones. If a teacher is in one of the 3 teacher categories, their Chinese pronunciation will be 'standard', but if they are from the professional category, they can have 'non-standard' accent. This category is useful if you want to prepare yourself to understand the accent where you will be moving to, like North of China or Taiwan. For most teachers, you can listen to their audio introduction to check their accent.

We created a page where you can see all our teachers: http://www.chineseteachers.com/All-our-Chinese-teachers-to-learn-Chinese - we hope this is useful.

@all

We have created this account in this forum so that you can feel free to ask us any questions (or improvement request) you have - please do not hesitate - we love to improve.

Hi roddy, just to add to your list, our friends at Skritter.com offer the first 2 weeks for free.

please add www.speakchinese.cn

Chineseteachers.com -

First thanks for your reply to my feedback, much appreciated and it's good to see you active in this forum.

Regarding where the teachers come from I'll acknowledge that my statement most were from Taiwan was either a misconception or has changed over time. I'd definitely agree that most are from mainland China on the site right now and I've not had any problems communicating, the quality of the instructors is outstanding.

Teacher availability is still something I take issue with. Being able to book in advance is a great option for people with a more structured program but you advertise the flexibility of being able to hop on and practice for whatever amount of time one needs, the site says "No need to book in advance" on the front page. I think this is a great feature and something that really sets your service apart. However I've been checking the site for over two hours this morning and haven't seen an available teacher yet, and on days when I do see an opening it's usually just one teacher from the lot. Maybe I'm consistently picking busy times, but bottom line it is often quite a challenge to be able to spend the account minutes that I have prepaid for due to lack of available teachers, and I could certainly prove this by taking screenshots of the screen status at hourly intervals throughout any day.

I believe low staffing levels are the one glaring negative on an otherwise great service that employs quality instructors and a technically solid, easy to use web solution.

Keep up the good work, and hire some more teachers!