ChineseClass101.com Blog

You were swimming, weren’t you!? Don’t worry, just checking. Summer’s here and we’re in the mood to celebrate this warm joyous season – and what better way to start summer off right than have a Summer Celebration Sale! Why celebrate summer you ask? Excellent question. Because not only is the sun shining and the ice-cream plentiful, but we also have a lot of NEW things to release. We’re kicking off July with 6 brand NEW languages, NEW Premium Flashcards, NEW lessons AND a NEW discount of 22% OFF for Premium Subscribers. Click here to get the discount and get all of our new features! This Fourth of July, we welcome Swedish, Dutch, Hungarian, Hindi, Hebrew and Indonesian to the Pod101 family! Also, our Premium... Show more

Hej! Hallo! Sziasztok! That’s “Hello” in Dutch, Swedish, and Hungarian. Did we get it right? We’re really excited about our 3 new European additions to the Innovative Language Learning family and today we’re announcing yet another three languages. We’ve held our breath for so long to keep these a secret that we’re just about ready to faint! Ready? Starting July 4, Hindi, Hebrew, and Indonesian will be getting the complete Innovative Language Learning treatment with their own 101.com websites! Now, even though these languages are spoken by a collective 725 million people worldwide, they aren’t given enough attention online – or anywhere for that matter. Until now! If you’ve never had a good reason to learn these languages before,... Show more

In case you thought we were kidding about world language domination, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. After months of hard work, we’re proud to announce the launch of AustralianPod101.com for all of you Down Under lovers! Just kidding. Though, we are giving this idea serious consideration. Coming this July to a laptop screen right in front of you, we will be introducing 6 new exciting languages to the Innovative Language Learning family. Dutch, Hungarian, and Swedish are just the first additions to our language family on track to be released July 5th. We’d love to tell you about the other 3 but it’s a big secret – you’ll have to wait another 2 weeks! Now, the Dutch, Hungarian and Swedish languages aren't... Show more

Premium Members, your Premium Account just got a whole lot more powerful! My Flashcards now allows you to study the Chinese words you want by importing lists from audio and video lessons, your My WordBank and the Chinese Core Word Lists 2000. Here's a quick rundown of the new features: My Flashcards Dashboard: My Flashcards have a brand new interface. Import words from any audio and video lesson, My WordBank and the Core Word Lists. Create, edit and delete as many decks as you want! Create a New Deck: How you want to study is completely up to you! You control what displays on the front and back of cards. Create new decks out of the existing words in My Flashcards. Simple pick the words, name your deck and you're ready to study. ... Show more

Have you used your Word Bank lately? Inspired by your emails, requests and suggestions, we upgraded the My Word Bank feature to make it even easier for you to study vocabulary on ChineseClass101.com! My Word Bank is a Premium feature that allows you to add vocabulary words from our lessons and word dictionary to a personalized central list for you to study from. Create online flashcards and hear native audio pronunciation with every entry. With the new My Word Bank features, you can organize, sort, export, and completely manage all of your vocabulary. Here is a complete rundown of the new features: 1. Group Words Into Lists – You wanted lists? You got it! Now you can organize your words with lists and labels. Create, edit and delete... Show more

Our annual Reverse Christmas countdown begins today with the biggest savings of the year! Save 50% off any Basic or Premium subscription until midnight EST tonight with our Secret Santa Holiday Countdown Tomorrow, the daily deal drops below 50% OFF, so upgrade to Basic or Premium right now. Just click the link below: Half off ChineseClass101 until midnight EST? Sign me up right now! Everyday until Christmas, we’re offering a daily deal on our Basic and Premium subscriptions. Act early and save more. It’s as easy as that! We can’t tell you what tomorrow’s deal will be, but we can tell you that it won’t be as good as today’s. New seasons of ChineseClass101.com begin on January 3rd, so there’s no better time than now to upgrade to... Show more

Hey everyone today we are going to show some common mistakes that Chinese learners make so that you guys know what to look out for! Common Error #1: Incorrect word order when forming questions: English speakers tend to use English word order when forming questions with question words. In English, the question word comes at the beginning of the sentence. In Chinese the question word comes at the end of the sentence. Common Error #2: Making verbs past tense: getting the particles 了 and 过 mixed up. Put in a simple way, 了 is used for a completed action. 过 is used to indicate previous experience. Common Error #3: Negating verbs: Getting the 不 and the 没 mixed up. Put in a simple way, the 不 is used to negate action verbs in... Show more

Today we are going to give you our top 5 recomended tools to help you with mastering Chinese. 1.ABC Dictionary by John DeFrancis This is a great pinyin dictionary with great definitions and easy lookup system 2. Adsotrans This is a really good online super-dictionary, found at www.adsotrans.com. Just paste in any Chinese text and let Adso analyze it. Mouse over the results to see what the words mean in English, and how to pronounce them. There are numerous other features that come with this dictionary as well. Check it out! 3. Chinese Pera-kun A firefox plug-in that lets you get translation for Chinese text by putting your mouse over the word. 4. Flashcards Try our flashcards on the site, chineseclass101.com.... Show more

Hey everyone, today we are going to be discussing the social structure of China. Beijing Beijing is also a city of contrasts.  The political, educational and cultural center of China, the history of Beijing can be traced back over 3,000 years.  With such historical relics as the Forbidden City, the Ming Tombs, and the Great Wall in close proximity, Beijing is a place one can get in touch with the China of old.  However, with the recent economic progress and the frenzy of new construction and infrastructure for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is now a changed city. Family Life Introduction: Families in China are generally still quite traditional, and the family is a focal point of life. Most holidays center around family... Show more

Last week we discussed the basics of Chinese cuisine, well this week we are back to talk about our favorite subject some more, food! This week we will be discussing dishes we strongly recomend, and some other dishes that we recomend for the brave! Top Chinese Foods to Try 小 籠包 (xiǎolóngbāo) - Probably the most famous Shanghai dish: these small steamed dumplings are steamed in a basket and stuffed with meat and a tasty broth inside. The connoisseur bites a little hole into them first, sips the broth, then dips them in dark vinegar (醋 cu) to season the meat inside. 油条 (yóutiáo) lit. oil stick - Long, deep-fried donut. A very popular breakfast in China. Typically consumed in the morning with soy milk (dou jiang 豆浆), the... Show more