ChineseClass101.com Blog

That’s right; we said it! We don’t think you can do it! Oh, don’t get us wrong, we believe you can do anything you set your mind to here at ChineseClass101.com… but how hard will you really try to bleed us of our money? Hmm… I guess we’ll see at the end of August. What are we talking about?

Our $10,100 Summer Giveaway, that’s what! And what is THAT, you say? Well, first of all, we are giving away many, many, MANY free subscriptions – $10,100 worth of FREE Premium and 101 Basic subscriptions to be exact! And entering is a piece of cake!

You can enter in ChineseClass101.com’s $10,100 Giveaway, by doing one or ALL of the following:

 Follow ChineseClass101.com on Twitter

 Become a fan of ChineseClass101.com on Facebook

 Subscribe to ChineseClass101.com’s YouTube channel

Sign up on ALL 3 for three chances to win – and remember we have TEN sites. Think BIG! If you sign up at all of them, that’s a total of 30 chances to win!

One click – THAT’S IT! Yes, it really is that easy! And we still haven’t told you the best part! Our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts contain a rapidly growing amount of incredible original content you won’t find anywhere else!

Our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages are such wonderful ways to reinforce your Chinese speaking skills, practice speaking Chinese, and meet and communicate with others that share your love of Chinese.

Okay, okay, you’ve waited long enough – now for the best part! We believe in these methods of learning Chinese SO much that we are issuing you a challenge! If we reach one million TOTAL subscribers for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – we’ll give EVERYONE a FREE 6 month Premium subscription!!! Each subscription is worth $120 – and you can take part in the 120 MILLION dollar value for FREE just by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, or subscribing on YouTube.

Can you think of a better time or reason to get your friends and family signed up right now?! But you better hurry – as with all things good, it must come to an end, and this sweepstakes will run until the end of August.

Hey Followers!  Hopefully all of you have started following ChineseClass101 on Twitter, where we tweet one free mini-lesson a day!

Here’s the wrap-up from this week’s tweets on measure words, for your review!  Stay tuned daily for our tweets, and for those of you who haven’t started following us on Twitter, head there now and sign up!

1)    Quench your thirst   一杯水 (yī bēi shuǐ)
杯 (bēi) measure word for a glass of something

2)    Wear the pants 一条裤子 (yī tiáo kùzi)
条 (tiáo) measure word for pants, skirts, or long things

3)    That’s the ticket  一张票  (yī zhāng piào)
张 (zhāng) measure word for paper, flat objects

4)    Read all about it  一份报纸 (yī fèn bàozhǐ)
份 (fèn) measure word for newspapers

5)    Read more all about it  一篇文章  (yì piān wénzhāng)
篇 (piān) measure word for articles, essays

6)    Jack of all measure words   一个人 (yī gè rén)
个 (gè) The most common measure word. It can take the place of many measure words, when in doubt

7)    The way the cookie crumbles 一包饼干  (yī bāo bǐnggān)
包 (bāo) measure word for packages, bundles of things
More to come next week…!

Learn Chinese – ChineseClass101 has come to Twitter!

Here at ChineseClass101.com, we think that Twitter is great for communication and sharing information. We also think it makes for a powerful learning tool.  So, starting today, we’ll be introducing daily mini-Chinese lessons on Twitter that follow a set theme. Learn Chinese on Twitter!  Each day we’ll tweet at 10:00 a.m. , New York time.

Our first theme will be Chinese measure words (also known as ‘classifiers’).

Over the next couple of weeks, each day we will introduce you to a new Chinese measure word on Twitter.

So what are measure words and how do they work?  Measure words appear in Chinese between a number and a noun, i.e.

number + measure word + noun

i.e.

一个人
yī gè rén
one person

一棵树
yī kē shù
one tree

In the same way that in English a person says a ‘slice of bread’ or a ‘pair of shoes’, Chinese uses these measure words, or ‘classifiers’ when speaking about a certain number of any object.  This is because in Chinese, a numeral cannot quantify a noun by itself. It has to be accompanied by the measure word that is appropriate for the noun that is being used.

The most common measure word is 个 (ge). Most nouns are associated with a particular measure word.  They are often not predictable from the noun, therefore they must be memorized.  This comes with time.  Our daily tweet will aid you in this endeavor as well!

If you aren’t already following us on Twitter, make sure that you follow us so that you can get access to these daily mini-Chinese lessons. The first one comes out today! If you have any ideas for future lesson themes, please let us know!

To keep you updated on our lessons and better communicate with you, ChineseClass101 now has a Twitter account.  We hope you open one too!  In case you’re confused about what Twitter is, or don’t know how or why you would use Twitter, we’ve made a simple FAQ & guide just for you.

What is “Twitter”?

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service. Each post is limited to 140 characters so that each post, called a “tweet”, is short and to the point.

This makes it perfect quickly sharing internet links, messages or ideas with others.

To see automatic updates of others’ tweets, you go to their page and then “follow” them. If they want to see your tweets, they’ll follow you.

1. Start your own account

To start using Twitter, go to the official web page, https://twitter.com/ and register for an account. The sign up process is very easy to do and there is a lot of help on the official Twitter website.

2. Install the Chinese Input pack

Don’t know how to read and write Chinese on your Windows PC?

Install the Chinese Language Guide

And here is the Writing in Chinese Guide

 3. Follow us

After starting an account and making sure you can read and write Chinese characters on your computer, start following us to see our tweets automatically. Click this link here: https://twitter.com/chineseclass101 and click “Follow”.

Are you learning English? Or know somebody who is?
You HAVE to Check Out EnglishClass101.com!

50% Off Subscriptions for LIFE to the First 101 Sign ups!

Innovative Language Learning LLC, the company that brought you ChineseClass101.com, is proud to announce the newest member of our language family, EnglishClass101.com!

If you’re studying English, or know somebody who is, this is the perfect site for you!
Have you ever wanted to learn English for business, travel or personal fulfillment? If so, now is the perfect time to learn English!

EnglishClass101.com has all the same features as ChineseClass101.com to help you master both oral and written aspects of the language!

The best part:

If you are one of the first 101 people to subscribe to EnglishClass101.com you are automatically part of the Founding Fathers Club. This gets you…

• A 50% discount on your Basic and Premium Subscriptions for LIFE!
• An unlimited amount of 25% discounts for Friends and Family!
• 24 Hour Priority Access to Customer Service for ANY inquiries!
• Your very own EnglishClass101.com Founding Fathers Club Certificate!

Just follow the link below to start learning English Today!

https://www.englishclass101.com/ffc

Thank you for reading!

The ChineseClass101.com Team

If you’ve been thinking about how you’re going to make the most of this summer, we’ve got some great news for you.

You don’t have to travel the world to immerse yourself in Chinese culture. You can learn Chinese this summer at a teeny tiny fraction of what it would cost you to take a big trip.

Over the years, we at Innovative Language Learning have been working hard to develop the best Chinese language learning program available.

You can rely on our proven method. It’s been field tested over and over again. There are no weak points, no gaps and no traps. This program is FUN, FAST, and EASY and best of all …you won’t spend a lot of money!

In fact this your chance to get Premium level access to ChineseClass101.com for 25% less than standard pricing. That means Monthly Premium Access as low as $7.50 and Basic Access as low as $3.00!

Your ChineseClass101.com Premium Membership includes exclusive benefits like:

*Comprehensive, user-friendly, language lessons
*Quick Pronunciation & Accent Review
*Easy Transcription Translation
*Informal Speech Lessons
*Complete Audio Archive Access
*Instant Online Lesson Discussions (connect with other students online!)
*Instant Word Finder
*1-on-1 Live Instructor Hours
… and so much more!

Click here now to start speaking today. All New Lessons Start Next Week!

This is the perfect time to take advantage of 25% OFF!

How to Really Learn Chinese in Just Minutes a Day and Stick with it

The Myth

What if I told you mastering Italian wasn’t that hard. That actually learning the language itself is not nearly as difficult as you may have heard. And that the problem to progressing is an age old one…failure to execute.

The Real Issue

Said another way, “People don’t progress ’cause they don’t do! If you don’t do the work, you won’t reach your goals.”

Read the rest of this post »

You bet we are!

I got the news this morning. We are, officially, a hit. We have, as they say in the business, rocked the Kasbah. The Kasbah has been well and truly rocked. ChineseClass101, where I host the Beginner series, is ranked in iTunes #64 overall (above Anderson Cooper, Dilbert and ABC World News) and #1 in Educational podcasts.

That’s worldwide stats, folks. This isn’t the polling numbers out of Tulsa. We have met the the best and the brightest in our field and we have taken their lunch money and stuffed them in their own lockers.

(You must pardon me for the shameless crowing for just a second, folks. It’s a huge thing.)

I’m am so proud to be part of the team that made this happen. And it’s not just we folks in the Sinosphere, either. The folks holding the #2 slot in the iTunes Education Super Bowl is none other than our sister sight, SpanishPod101. Clock in at #7 are the great people at JapanesePod101, and further down on this same list, you’ll find my friends at KoreanClass101 holding tight at #21. (There were other folks from Innovative Language who also showed on the list, but I was too busy doing that crazy-legs touchdown dance in my living room to write them down.)

Now… this is a mostly personal blog. I try to filter anything professional I share here through the lens of my personal experience. That being said, this was not one person’s victory. It took a lot of us. Me, Dave, Echo, Gail, Andy, Apple and TianSen in Beijing. Amber, Eran and Victor in New York. Peter and his team in Tokyo. This took nations of people.

And you.

You guys went and subscribed and listened and rated and pushed us up that chart until we couldn’t go any higher. You did this. So take a bow, kids. This is your victory, too.

We thank you.

Dear Chinese Students,

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of ChineseClass101.com. This is a joint project between Popup Chinese and the folks at Innovative Language Learning.

If you’re familiar with the Innovative Language approach to teaching, you’ll know the strength of their materials has always been tight, step-by-step progressive lessons for beginners. At Popup Chinese, we’ve historically geared our materials towards more advanced students, so when we had the chance to cooperate with the Innovative team and work together to build something that could take advantage of the powerful system they’ve already built we leapt at the chance, and began work designing a focused and stepwise program for Mandarin instruction.

Although a few hints leaked out (*ahem*), for the past few months we’ve worked somewhat stealthily to build the best team possible for the task. You’ll find our progressive beginner lessons hosted by none other than the famous Frank Fradella. Other big names on our roster are Amber Scorah and of course everyone on our existing team like Echo Yao and Brendan O’Kane. This is a great team and I can say with confidence I’ve never worked with a stronger one. With more than 100 lessons on the new site, our content is off to a good start too. As Frank said once after a marathon recording session, “our first twenty lessons here teach more than I learned in a whole year studying elsewhere.”

We think this is a great step forward and look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts as well. It is definitely a major step forward for Chinese language education online. There’s never been a better time to learn Chinese, or a better way to learn it online. Regardless of whether you’re an advanced independent learner or a total newbie, we hope you’ll enjoy the work we’ll be doing both here and at ChineseClass101. Thanks for your support, and 加油 everyone!

Best from Beijing,

David Lancashire

Best from New York,

Amber Scorah