Actively Learning Chinese Online Has Never Been Easier

Most people learn a new language as part of their school's elective program, for a college credit or because they're about to travel to a foreign country and want to be able to get around.

With internet capabilities expanding every day, learning to speak a language such as Chinese online has just become even easier at www.activechinese.com.

Just logging onto the site you are offered a variety of opportunities, lessons and videos about culture, mannerisms and language. But with so many language sites on the web are you really learning proper Chinese? Or is it a quick course in disaster?

I was invited to check this site out and being Taiwanese American, I asked my mother to watch the demo with me and she said with a resounding yes that this is the proper way to learn her primary language of Mandarin Chinese. And added it was refreshing to hear her own language after being away from Taiwan for many years.

Here is what I also found out about the site. This site is the creation of Larry Chen, an Internet and IT veteran, and David Cheng, a founding partner of a law firm in Shanghai who created this site based on the growing interest in learning Chinese.

"Through two decades of law practice involving China trade with top English firms and multinational corporations in New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai, I saw first hand the growing interest in learning Chinese among people in English speaking countries and expats living in China," Cheng said. "At the same time, we saw gaps in the market with lack of qualified teachers and outdated course teaching materials and methodologies. We recognized that by leveraging Internet technologies, we could take down the barriers of learning Chinese."

By recognizing the advantage of internet technology Chen and Cheng were able to connect those with an interest to learn Chinese.

"Our background of being Chinese and having worked and lived in North America gives us unique insight on how to help native English speakers learn Chinese," he continued. "Additionally, we have Mandarin speaking expats on our team that has helped guide us in developing and marketing our product to the English speaking world."

Chen said by using three integrated elements of their business content, services and community the ActiveChinese products offer on-demand eLearning solutions for understanding the Chinese language as well as the culture. But is it effective?

I think ActiveChinese's approach is very effective, even for me who rarely get a chance to practice Chinese except for a few words to communicate with my grandmother when she calls. So I took the opportunity to try the demo and found it was very easy use.

From the moment you log into www.activechinese.com and select the "View Demo" button at the top, visitors are immersed into the language with the help of a virtual instructor as she welcomes you in Mandarin Chinese.

"Our multimedia lessons are fun and engaging," Chen added. "We used a unique approach that combines personalized, multimedia content and services with online communities and social networks."

The demo begins by teaching the basic introduction phase of the conversation at first in Chinese so the visitors can understand how a basic conversation will sound and followed the conversation with translation and structure.

"We believe that it's important to take a systematic approach to Chinese language learning," Cheng said. "Especially for the beginners, so our material is carefully organized to help our learners gain confidence in learning the new language effectively."

According to Chen, the full featured survival Chinese course is free but users can pay a subscription fee for the more advanced lessons and also have the opportunity to buy sessions to work with professional Chinese tutors.

"We see technology as being a great enabler to make Chinese language learning fun and ubiquitous," he said. "Our users can learn Chinese anywhere in the world at any time whether on the web, with an iPod, mobile phone or through talking with a Chinese tutor remotely. Our target users are professionals and school students, and we have an impressive advisory board with diverse backgrounds and good relationships with several multinationals and private schools, which helps immensely with product distribution."

Since its release last September, ActiveChinese has already gained subscribers from more than 35 different countries and plans to continue designing ways to give students a great experience in learning Chinese.

"We are always designing new ways for our students to interact with our material in as many ways as possible to ensure efficient learning for all types of learners," Chen said. "We also have all kinds of interactive online drills to ensure students really retain what they learn. We believe that learning about the culture is an important aspect of learning Chinese, so we developed a 'Culture Shocker' program that compliments the language learning."

The lessons were easy to follow and the characters are fun to follow as they move from simple greetings to sentence structures using flash animation. Being able to stop the lesson to reflect on the lesson, practice the new words or even catch up on your notes. There are many language courses online that move so quickly that leaves the student frustrated and lost.

Having a way to pause the lessons is a great feature designed by the creative production team of ActiveChinese.

"We are very fortunate to have some of the best Chinese teachers, script writers, flash animators, and web programmers working for us," he said. "The creative process is somewhat similar to producing an animated TV series, with a recording studio built directly into our office."

Chen added that since its launch they have received many positive feedbacks from subscribers and will continue targeting the Internet market for now with plans to expand the programs to include lessons for children.

"I'm very excited about a kids' Chinese program scheduled to be launched before the Chinese New Year in February, and I believe that we have not seen anything quite like this in the market," he said. "Right now, we leverage heavily on the Internet to market ActiveChinese. Our lesson videos can be found anywhere from YouTube to iTunes. In the initial stage, paid advertising on search engines like Google and certain expat websites are an important marketing outlet for us. Since our company is headquartered in San Francisco, with a presence in Boston, Shanghai, and Singapore, we also organize marketing activities in these cities. Besides individuals, we market through corporations, schools and organizations."

With the site already gaining subscribers, its definitely bound to be a hit on the Internet, but is this a phase? Or does ActiveChinese have future plans for its product. Chen said for now the site is gaining subscribers through word of mouth but soon all that will change.

"Our goal is to become the leading provider and brand of on-demand, personalized eLearning solutions of Chinese language and culture for English speakers," Chen explained. "In the content area, we plan to have lessons for all levels of students, both adults and children. We will also develop specialized content for business people, travelers and for special events like the Olympic. We've already seen that when people experience our program, they know they have found something they have never seen elsewhere. When people blog about our product and link to it on their own sites, it drastically increases our online exposure and helps prospective users find us online."

Chen also added that visitors can expect more lessons and content in the future.

"As for content, we currently have over 30 lessons and five series of the Culture Shocker program," he said. "Right now, we are working on 60 more lessons as well as additional episodes of the Culture Shocker series."

For more information or to view the site for yourself, visit www.activechinese.com.