Welcome to our Mandarin language course. My name is Julian Luo. Are you here to learn Chinese?

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Yes | No, just curious

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Click here to view the SITE MAP: links of all our website pages: our classes, etc.

what’s special about our course
click here to try to write a simple profile in Chinese before you even start to learn anything. After that, you may post it on our site, and talk to a friend living in China.

Great. Are you new to our site?
Click here if you have read about our studio and your course.

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Yes, this is the first time being here

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My studio teach Chinese language from a mountain surrounded town online. Most of our students are from the USA, Europe, Canada and Australia. I hope we will find learning Mandarin useful and interesting as well. In the future, if you are not clear about us, how we work, how much we charge as tuition fee, just click the website title or the Home link above, you will come back to this page, and find most of the information about us.

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OK

Check out Our Classes

If you are here mostly for fun, click here to try to write a simple profile in Chinese without learning anything. After that, you may post it on our site, and talk to a friend living in China.
Otherwise, click here.

There are three features of our website compared to other Chinese language teaching sites:

This website focuses on teaching Chinese grammar. In other words, we make sure our students can write their own words at the beginning, instead of encouraging our students to repeat after a tape/audio file.

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I see

We do not teach Chinese characters. We believe it is wiser to learn it in Phase Two, when you are able to handle basic communication. Just like a child, learn to talk first, then learn how to write and read. Many Chinese courses try to teach everything at the beginning. Our Mandarin course is different, hope you agree with us.

So when you are traveling in China, you will be able to ask directions from the locals, but won’t read the signs unless you have a dictionary app on your smart phone.

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• We also believe having a couple of penpals who are native Chinese speakers will make your learning process more interesting. So we designed a tool to make your international friends-making easy. You can always find the link below on this page. Just click Home on top menu, and scroll down.
• I learned all the basic grammar in school, but I couldn’t speak, and my reading skill was very limited. So I decided to learn online by myself, by learning from the native English speaker friends I found on the Internet. It worked well, after some years of hard working I became an agent in the international architecture design field. 🙂

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OK

We understand some of you just want to learn a little bit of Chinese, as a hobby or preparing for a trip to China. Some of you may not able to afford the tuition fee. That’s all right. You may learn by yourself and submit your exercises on this site. Some Chinese users may help you. Click the link “Try to write a sentence in Chinese” on each page. It may be to the right of your computer screen.

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However, if you want to join our Skype classroom, have us to check your exercises, listen to our teacher explaining the mistakes found in the exercises of all students, you will need to pay a tuition fee through Paypal (It’s safe because you do not need to give your credit card information to us.) Click tuition on the page bottom to get the information.

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Our course is very different from any other Chinese courses you may have seen. We would like your advices/suggestions to make us better through the comment forms. Just click Contact on the bottom of each page to open the contact form. Or click Report Error if you encounter an error. Thank you.

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OK

Probably you are not used to this kind of grammar-focusing Chinese course, without a tape for you to listen to while learning. Why do I make it so different? I designed the site based on my own experience of self-learning English. Memorizing all the grammar was difficult at the beginning, but once they are in your memory, you will be able to put together a sentence without much mistakes and people will understand you. It’s just like typing on your keyboard, once you remembered the locations of each key, it save your time forever.

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Got it

Even though very few of native Chinese speakers you found on the Internet are Chinese language teachers, you can still learn from them. You just need a platform to guide both of you, like this one.

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Yes

How do we teach? Simple, everyday, write a few sentences on a piece of paper(or on your computer) that you would like to learn to say to a Chinese penpal, our website will teach you how to say them. You send the preliminary results to us, our teacher will review them and explain to you through email, and in your class.
In addition, everyday we will send you practices. When you have time to finish them, submit them to this site, we will explain your mistakes in the class.

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Got it

For example: if you want to learn to say “How do I go to the train station?”, click “Try” on the top menu, we will guide you to rebuild this special question with Chinese grammar. It will tell you that you should say like this: “I how go train station?”. And provide a link directing you to Google Translate, showing you what the Chinese sentence is like, and how to pronounce each word.
Google Translate will show you both Chinese characters and Pinyin: “wo zenme Qu huoChe Zhan?” That’s it. Below the box you will be able to listen to the voices as well. Just repeat after Google translate, even though your pronunciation is not correct, we will most likely get what you mean.

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Got it

Possible topics to write: self-introduction, travel guide, direction, shopping dialogue, costs, price, transportation tickets, friends/penpals, family, health, cloth, love and romance, appearance, weather…

Do not type anything too personal, your message/practice will be submitted for review by our teachers, and other students, unless you do not want us to check your homework. The website will not record anything without your consent.

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Got it

Our teacher will only check exercises submitted by paying students. Paying students may submit their practices/exercises through the comment form of this site, email, our Facebook page, or Wechat app, whichever convenient.

Other users who do not want to become a paying students, are encouraged to submit their exercises through comment form of this website, not email. The English learners of our site may help you.

Why don’t I just use Google Translate then? You may still want to ask.

Google Translate does not teach grammar, and you will not be able to build sentences in Chinese if you only rely on Google Translate or other online dictionary. Also its translation has too many mistakes. If you talk like a Google Translate robot, people will laugh.

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About our team

I have learned enough about you, just take me to the course.

Let me ask you an important question.

In your opinion, what is the most important factor of learning a foreign language, say Chinese?
Most people would say it is the environment you live in, where everyone/many people speak in fluent Chinese. For a baby to learn to speak, their parents are the environment, no doubt. For adult to learn Chinese language, a real human teacher is the key. The problem is that the teachers you can find or afford, may not be available all the time because of the time difference.

This site is set up to solve this problem.

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Got it

We are a team of native Chinese speakers. My assistants and I live in a city called Changsha. I myself live in a small rural town called Jinjing in the middle part of China. The photo below shows the Dapoling village where I live. My town Jinjing is famous for organic tea plantations.

The white building is a country inn, owned by my family. Our office is inside the building.

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Got it

Why do we choose a rural town to teach online?

1. I have set up an English club for the kids in my town Jinjing, helping them to communicate with the rest of world.  It is a non-profitable organization. I encourage them to make friends living in another world, it is no doubt a great way of learning English, and learning about the world.
2. According to my personal experience of learning English online, the excitement of being able to talk to a foreigner living in a totally different world who are interesting, kind, educated…romantic, funny…pushed me through the obstacles of learning a foreign language.

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move on

Or take me to your English club.
Show me your country inn.

Trust me, among 1.4 billion Chinese, there are millions of English learners who are interesting, funny, educated…and they are waiting for you to reach out since most likely you know better about how to reach out to another world – at least you are not blocked by the government to access the free world.

At least this is how I learned English years ago, when Internet was becoming part of our daily lives. My penpals were from Australia, Canada, UK, US, Netherlands…

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For those who are learning a foreign language, there are online translation tools like Google Translate to help you, but those instant translation is not even close to be accurate, at least between English and Chinese. And more importantly, they do not teach grammar, they do not explain anything. You won’t learn much using Google Translate because it does not teach you anything, just save your time. Google Translate is accurate only for words/phrases/terms, not long sentences.

We provide additional support that Google Translate does not provide: We have teachers to check your homework/exercises, to talk to you on a regular basis. Students can ask us questions anytime and from anywhere using your smart phone or email. If you go to a local language school, I doubt the teachers will be available all the time answering your questions. We do.

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I understand

If you are not very prepared in spending too much time in learning Mandarin, just hope to learn some simple phrases. — No problem, click here to learn those frequently used Chinese phrases only.

If you want to say: “Great! I want to learn Mandarin and a team of native Chinese speakers living in a rural town sound great, and affordable!”, click Move on please.

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I have learned enough about your team, just take me to the course.
I do not mind learning more about what you have to say.

Learning a foreign language should not be restricted to a specific time of a day, just like a child should be encouraged to ask questions anytime they want! Although you won’t see your teacher – including me – all the time, leaving me a message is very easy – use an app called Wechat or email on your smart phone. I work in my own studio, you will have a teacher with very flexible schedule. And you will see how important it is.This is me. Photo taken in 2012. I do look like a teacher, don’t I? 🙂

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sure

• I have an English club helping local kids to learn English. They are my little assistants who can be quite helpful if you want to test your Chinese writing/speech/pronunciation/listening skills. They will come to our English club after school to check your Chinese translation/questions/answers, and answer them in Chinese. They learned Pinyin in school. You may just speak to your phone on Wechat, they will responde using my phone. Some of them can use smart phones and Wechat account of their parents/grandparents to talk to you. Skype and Wechat are only available for paying students. If you cannot afford the tuition fee, you can use this website to upload your messages/exercises.

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sure

What can I do to learn if you just want to try as a free member of the site?

We understand there are many of you who are young, or live in an isolated place somewhee, and cannot afford our Mandarin course, which is fine. If you are seriously learning this language, you will find many help on this website without paying a cent.

1. You may use the Try to Translate a Sentence tool to learn how to build a sentence in Chinese, to write a short message in Mandarin introducing yourself, or tell a story, and post it on our website to let our readers know about you.
2. You may ask us any questions about China and Chinese language using the comment form. Our readers and our English club members will answer it. Those who are not paying can still learn from our questions and answers posted by all of our students and visitors. If you cannot afford the tuition fee I specified in this website, you are encouraged to ask their questions on this website anyway because our Chinese students and their parents will not charge you by helping you, especially you eventualy become penpals.
   I myself will not answer questions from the paying students.

So, whether you are just curious to know how to say something in Chinese, or you are serious about learning our language, make your first move and see where it takes you.

There is no limit of asking questions.

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Got it

Who Am I?

I live in a beautiful town called JinJing (Golden Well) in the middle of China, owning a country inn in amazing tea plantations and mountains, away from the pollution of China. It is a popular biking destination. Want to know more about my hometown? Click here.

With years of experience of working as a translator in China and California, and based on my own experience of learning English, I decided to teach Chinese language using a simplified/non-traditional approach, to give travelers another option of learning, and save their time.
These children are from the mountains of Hunan(more remote from civilization compared to our town which is close to a big city Changsha).

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Got it

Skype Classes

Our Wechat Class

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TUITION FEE

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Tuition Fee

A week : $50.00 USD – weeklyA month : $180.00 USD – monthlyA year : $1,600.00 USD – yearly

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If you just want to attend our Skype class, please use the following buttons to pay.

Attend Skype Class

One class : $10.00 USD – weeklyFour classes : $40.00 USD – monthly

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close tuition fee information

Type the subjective modifiers, then the subjects.

The subjective modifiers can be a phrase, a clause, or your sentence may have multiple subjects. Take your time. Don't forget to add a [de] between these modifiers and the subjects. We will let you know in what cases [de] should be omitted if you submit your exercise through the comment form. If you do not know what this mean, then you should click Home above, and take the basic course first.

Got it

Are you clear how many adverbial modifiers exactly? We will need to put all of them between the subjects and the predicate verbs or adjectives. If not clear, remove all the adjectives, pronouns, nouns and take another look. [Not] [haven't/hasn't] [now] [in the morning] [in my car] [with me] ...are all typical adverbial modifiers. Some adverbial modifiers tend to stay right after the subject, while some stay closer to the predicate. There are no strict rules about the sequence of the adverbial modifiers, just remember to submit your sentence and the reorganized sentence, in addition to your translation to us, we will let you know if your work is correct.

Got it

Got it

If you are not sure, just type everything that left behind here, and submit it using the comment form below. However, some words should be omitted, in most cases: "the / a /an/ to / and".

Got it

Got it

Got it