A great basis for Chinese learning

par Geoline Denisse,

I'm delighted to have found this course, which combines a number of advantages: it's a fun way to prepare for the HSK, you don't have to take out a subscription (and it's very affordable), it's structured and instructive (especially for people who tend to get lost in various sites/applications/books/methods... like me), etc. In short, I think this course deserves its credentials, and I'd like to thank the teacher behind it.  I don't regret my purchase, and I think I'll continue learning Chinese at higher levels with this course as the backbone.



Highly recommanded

par Frédéric PINTREL,

I'm a french man of 55 years old. I have learnt English a long time ago (that I use daily), but also spanish, Italian, Corsican, a bit of Russian and Hebrew. Then, for reasons which remain unknown, including for me, I decided to learn Chinese and litteraly fell in love with writing characters : I could not know it yet, but I think I had caught the virus of this language, as maybe you do too if you are reading this comment.

I finally found out this website and decided to give it a chance and I will make it short : I highly recommand it. After 2 weeks, I am already able to read, say and understand lots of words and sentences and it was not the case before I joinned this programm. Above all, I have a feeling of constant improvement, which is clearly related to the method used here. Grammar lessons are explained the simplest way, with a minimum of words, and always go straight to the point.

Learning chinese is famous for being one of the most difficult language to learn for a non native so no one will do the job without lots of personal work (2200 hours are required for reaching a decent level) : but if you want to give you a chance to succeed, my opinion is that "Learn Chinese Online" is a very good place to be. I haven't finished the level 1 (I've done only about 50% of the programm) but yet I can say that, starting from absolutely nothing (except the few characters I had learnt before, through the list of vocabulary for HSK 1), I have found here a very efficient method and tremendously increased my skills.

The tests are just part of the learning process, and luckily,  you might be big enough for not having to justify yourself in front of anyone (except of yourself). So don't spend a lifetime on grammar lessons and learning new words (though of course this is something you will definitely have to do : just don't spend months on every lesson) and pass the tests at the end of every chapter : if you feel it's still too hard, don't send your answers, go back to your personal work of learning and memorization, but most of the time, you will see by yourself that you are maybe better than you  imagined.  

My challenge learn chinese online

par éric CHINIER,

My name is Eric, I am French with many friends between France and China attracted by culture and traditions at 60 I challenged myself to learn Chinese, after a long search on internet, I discovered this course and decided to add it to my project.

Mandarin is so different from our language, knowledge of the Chinese language requires a different perspective from those who are not native speakers, as to the difficulties to be encountered.

  Courses and teachers up to the language requirement - do not hesitate

Huge thanks

par Dominique PAPION,

66 years old, retired site manager for the company HPB (Holiday Property Bond), I took up Mandarin Chinese out of intellectual curiosity and artistic interest in its writing. Very quickly fascinated by this language and the Chinese culture, I completed the Learn-chinese.online training in 3 and a half years and can only recommend this fabulous method; I am very impressed by its efficiency. Although it requires a considerable amount of individual work like any learning process, the flexible schedule of an online method allows you to progress at your own pace. Added to this is the exceptional quality/price ratio of this online course. But more than anything, its major interest and particularity lie in its structured and progressive spiral method with a snowball effect that ensures a solid base and continuous growth. Everything is well thought out and well balanced. The new characters are broken down to practice writing them, with an indication of their graphic components to better memorize them. New vocabulary and grammar points are reviewed in sentences, texts, written and oral comprehension exercises, then revised in subsequent lessons. Consequently, if despite the effort made, it is still difficult to assimilate certain words or characters - which are not necessarily the most complicated but are then difficult to memorize for whatever reason - there is no need to be discouraged, to get bogged down, we can move forward with confidence because these words or characters will be reintroduced in new contexts, confronted with homonyms, homophones, homographs, heteronyms, associated with other characters, with additional information on their use, etc. etc. Moreover, one must also let oneself be 'carried' by the language and not seek a Cartesian explanation or a literal translation at all costs. This method promotes adaptation to a different frame of thoughts through its excellent introduction to Chinese culture. To me, Mandarin Chinese is a bit like Pointillism in painting. If too close, we do not see much. If we take a step back, we see and “feel” the painting very well. For Mandarin Chinese, you also have to let yourself be 'immersed', you don’t have to explain everything. This language requires a precise analysis of the genre '7 errors game’ to differentiate between very similar characters, a grammatical and syntactic knowledge, but also a ‘cognitive reframing software’ to replace for example our notions of conjugation by different grammar structures just as interesting, very rewarding. I also really like 'chengyu', these 4-character expressions with effective conciseness combined with a poetic halo. The exercises proposed at the end of the lessons also occasionally introduce new words formed from the juxtaposition of characters already seen, the meaning of the association is then quite obvious, and it is, again, a gentle introduction to the construction of words in that language. In addition to the usual visual and auditory memories, Mandarin Chinese also uses kinesthetic memory; it is sometimes very surprising not to be able to “visualize” a sinogram when the hand can reproduce it without visual support. And for oral comprehension, icing on the cake, the voices are extremely pleasant to listen to!
It is also important to supplement this learning with revisions via other resources, depending on individual interests. Personally, I watch a lot of subtitled series, I also listen to/read a lot of songs and, oh wonder
😊, the more vocabulary you learn in the course, the more you are able to recognize words, then whole sentences, on the different media used: very exciting and motivating!
Besides his integrative method, I am also very impressed by Tianxiang’s availability on the forum, his quick and encouraging responses, his kindness and his modesty. Truly admirable: a big thank you, Professor, for sharing with us your passion and your knowledge in such a generous way.
Dominique

 


An outstanding course

par Jean-Luc Oesch,

Hello!

The "internet planet" offers many online language courses, from the most serious to the less serious, the latter promising you to learn any language in less than six months, mostly focusing on speedy conversation. This is not what this course is about.

This present course is the most structured that I have found on internet, putting the learning of the character first, which is a fundamental point. Everything evolves around the learning of characters.

Then the vocabulary and variants come, followed by a contextual learning of sentences and progressive texts. This material is quite incredible and will give to any learner resources to go further in learning by himself or herself. Hence this is also the main advantage of this course, to build the capacity and skills of the learner by encouraging him or her to repeat, to pass tests and also by offering the possibility to have interactive exchanges on the forum.

In addition, this is a very reasonable price for such an offer. 

I am profoundly indebted to the teacher who created this course and who transmitted so well the love of mandarin, which brought me to beginner to intermediate level, and more to come, as learning Chinese is a lifetime adventure!

Jean-Luc

The Choice...

par Utilisateur supprimé,

Hello,

My name is Osmond, I am a 74 year old retired Brazilian who, after a long research on the internet, discovered this course; and, who decided to add it to his other life projects.

Then, my friends asked me - Why did you prefer to take a Chinese Course created by a Frenchman in France in English instead of one in your native language (Portuguese) done by a Chinese in Brazil? Here we have many of them very good and for free!

I gave them two answers:

First, only a foreigner knows exactly what a foreigner's difficulties are. The Chinese language is so different from our Roman language that teaching needs a special look by those who are not native speakers, about the difficulties to be encountered.

Second, teaching the Chinese language is not easy. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge, theory and practice (which Mr. Tianxiang has a lot). I am talking with the experience of someone who was also a teacher (in my areas of expertise - IT and Finance).

As we speak in my country - a good choice, so enjoy it ....


Many thanks for this great opportunity to learning Chinese

par serge viaud,

Hello,

My name is Serge, I am 70 years old, I am of French nationality and live in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. 

I started studying traditional Chinese medicine in the 80's and I remember buying a set of K7 audio “Let's talk Chinese” that I played and played again in the radio of the car I used to drive. I was even become able to repeat a number of words like a parrot! At the time, however, I neither had the time nor the money to afford a "real course", the only availability being to spend several evenings in a classroom. 

Now, 2019, I am just retired, but still active, from my traditional Chinese medicine products sales company. 

A professional trip to China was planned for October 2019 and I thought it would be great to converse a few words with my Chinese interlocutors (who only speak this language). 

So I signed up for this online course at the beginning of July 2019 and, after devouring the graciously offered, superb and very lively videos, I started the HSK course in intensive format for 10 to 12 hours daily. So at the end of September , I had completed HSK 1 and 2. At least I thought being able to secure little conversation. Unfortunately, the growing social unrest in Hong Kong October 2019 forced me to postpone my trip to the following spring, which would be later canceled due to the covid pandemic. 

So I continued to progress, in slower motion this time, and completed HSK 3 in February 2020. I have to say that from this level on that there is a lot more work and memorization which need to be achieved. If the first 2 levels can be considered simple and recreational, the 3rd and 4th, although being lively and attractive, are another „kettle of fish“ and require a lot of more attention and concentration. 

I really appreciate this course for the originality, the lively, progressive and playful character given along, one can feel a presence behind each sentence pronounced by the speakers, it is so "as in China" and, advantage of working online, one does not mind having the phrases spoken over and over again until they are fully understood, noticing that some words were far more resistant to my memory than others.

 Usually quite off-putting, grammar and syntax are tackled here brilliantly, in a simple and comprehensive way and immediately followed by exercises putting them into practice, all of this is very well organized, well done guys. 

Finally, I enjoy particularly the HSK tests which "set the record straight" by clearly indicating where the deficits are to be reviewed. So far I have done all of the suggested tests as many times as necessary until no more mistakes, before moving on to the next level or sequence. 

Moreover, quite often I had practical questions which were all answered almost immediately by our dear professor Tian Xiang, that would be very much appreciated and I am very grateful therefore. 

To make my life easier and easier to visualize the Chinese words and characters, I created my own word database on Excell whch is always on hand on my work screen. In this database, I progressively inserted the Chinese characters and their Pinyin and French correspondance, organized by level and sequence. I also added the graphic component (s) for each character when available. 

As in my company mostly uses traditional characters, I asked Tian Xiang for advice, and he kindly provided me with the appropriate transformation font. 

I reached the middle of level 4.1 last May but would be abruptly stopped in my progress due to the general pandemic situation and other obligations that kept me extremely busy. 

Since the beginning of December, I am back on track and currently reviewing the HSK 1, 2 and 3 in order to resume the course and be able to carry the follow up in good conditions. 

Many many thanks to you dear Tian Xiang and your collaborators for this great job, your presence and your kind attention to our requests. 

Sincerely yours

Serge


Testimonial

par cécile AUBEL,

Hello,

My name is Cécile, I am 59 years old. I am retired after having worked as a nursing assistant.

To occupy this new free time, I wanted to learn about sumi-e (Chinese painting); but to acquire the gesture of the brush it is advisable to carry out with the calligraphy which has the same fingering and the flexibility of the wrist ... So I enrolled in a course.

But now, drawing characters whose meaning I do not know bothered me. So why not learn the language?

While searching on the internet, I "peeled" the various sites offered and my choice fell on "Learn-chinese.online". The program seemed complete to me.

I registered in January 2019 and I am delighted with my choice. I did the first 2 levels easily with very good results.

Currently, I am starting HSK3 and there the level gets a little thicker, but I do not despair. It will just take me longer ...

At the same time, I use the HSK and Hello Chinese applications to revise during the day in a more fun way. My library is also growing.

All in all, when we start studying the Chinese language, the whole country wins us over.

I would like to thank you Mr. Tianxiang Li for the richness of your courses and all the work of organizing your site which is well structured. Thank you also for your videos. It's a nice little extra to look at.

Truly yours,

Cecile

My experience with Learn-chinese.online

par Assoh Doriane YAO,

My name is Doriane, I'm 29 years old, I work on a work-study program. I am in Master 1 Management and Business Strategy and I hold the position of Web Content Manager.

I have been registered on Learn-chinese.online (formely Cours-de-chinois.com) since 2016 when I resumed my learning of the Chinese language. A language that I had started to learn in 2011. I had interrupted my lessons because I had little motivation, especially because I had not yet found the appropriate method. Today we are at the end of 2020 and I am more than surprised at my progress. The method is pretty much the best I have been able to find so far. For my part, I complete my classes with books and I am very involved in Chinese culture in all senses of the word (news, films / series, music, books ...), I am interested in everything because it is the only way to understand the culture when you haven't been to the country yet. I plan to go to Beijing next year, probably in August for at least 3 weeks.

Finally, I would like to thank our teacher who set up this course. I am waiting for the continuation of the courses up to the highest level because I intend to continue my learning until the end. I suggest you visit my Instagram page (anien_kanwle2021) designed exclusively for language learning. You will be able to witness the wonders that the method imagined by our professor, Tianxiang, ​​had as results in me. You will find videos of me speaking Chinese and, why not, find tips that could help you to learn this beautiful language.

Yours truly,

My Chinese learning journey

par Lou Salomé,

大家好 (Hi everybody),

I'm Lou, a 40-plusser, with a sweet tooth for languages, ever since I earned my degree in linguistics, about 20 years ago. 

At that time, I also started studying  Japanese, but soon realized the language was not for me, as I hated hiragana and katakana and would by far have preferred writing everything in kanji, which probably explains my present fascination with Chinese. sourire

I started Chinese merely out of curiosity for a language with a non-Roman script, but soon got completely hooked. 

Self-learning seemed the best way to go. Of all the languages I've studied, Chinese is probably the one that is less fit for studying in a linear and formatted way, as is too often the case when you join a brick-and-mortar course. 

After having tried a few on-line courses, I chose Tianxiang Li's course as it's by far the best course I've found, for the following reasons:

- the fact that the course is structured by HSK-levels is a real asset, as it makes it possible to study by objectives (HSK exams) instead of simply based on (self-inflicted) daily or weekly plans. Clear objectives are fundamental when you study on your own, because it is far more difficult to remain motivated otherwise. At the same time, if a course's plan is too strict, not allowing you to stray away whenever you want to dig deeper into a problem, you will miss out on what makes Chinese so unique as a language, namely that researching one thing will lead you to the next and so on. By allowing us to study by HSK level, but giving us complete freedom within the lessons to study in the order we choose (which is not possible with most other courses), or even to study two levels at the same time, this course does exactly that. 

- I particularly appreciate the fact that the owner of the site is very responsive whenever we post a question on the forum. I must add that it would be beneficial to all of us if we were a bit more active and posted more questions, as we can learn a lot from each other's questions. 

- the grammar points, whether within the lessons or on the forum, go far beyond basic explanations and often stimulate us to dig even further into the matter. 

- the site is user-friendly and well-structured, and more importantly, all levels and lessons are easily accessible from the same place you've logged into (unlike a few other courses I've tried). 

I spend quite some time looking up vocabulary, grammar and love finding out more about the etymology of the characters. My bookshelves are becoming more crowded by the second! I'm becoming a total addict! Haha! One of the things I love most are the 成语 chengyu.

Among the other apps or websites I use are Duolingo, because I like the drill exercises, the spaced repetitions, comments (and billboards), and Drops because it's fun like an on-line game and because it allows you to study vocabulary by topics (clothes, colors, sports, etc.), and Pleco to look up stuff. 

I've really tried to work with Anki because everybody recommends it, and also created some decent decks, but it doesn't work for me, because I can't learn vocabulary out of context and I hate the fact that I have to check-in on a daily basis. Instead, I use a kind of personal logbook where I pen down all the things I research, whether vocabulary, grammar stuff, characters or radicals and the logical links I find between them, and that works much better for me. Unfortunately, I don't spend anywhere enough time for my listening comprehension and conversation skills. Any tips or suggestions you may have to improve these would be highly welcome! 🙏

Wishing you all the best on your journey!

Lou