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General Information

History

Chinese-Lessons is a hobby website established in late 2001. I originally registered under another domain sometime in 2002. The site was re-launched as chinese-lessons.com in 2006. It is developed and maintained by me, but with important contributions from some of my friends. The site is not a business and does not represent an organization, but I hope input from visitors to the site can begin to make the site into a community.

Mission Statement

www.chinese-lessons.com is dedicated to the promotion of friendship and cultural exchanges between Chinese and Westerners. I believe that understanding one another's language is an essential part of these goals and most content on this site is intended to help foreigners learn Chinese and Chinese people to learn English. My hope is that my efforts will result in a useful aid for language learners and help bring Chinese and Westerners together for the purposes of friendship and language learning.

Vision and Development

Currently, the site offers basic Chinese lessons in Cantonese and Mandarin dialects, a discussion forum, a list of tutors for Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. There are also small sections on Chinese characters, Chinese culture, and various essays about learning languages.

The ultimate goal of the site is to become a community where westerners will come to learn Chinese, Chinese people will come to learn English, and both will meet and share ideas and help each other in learning. I don't expect the site to ever replace classroom learning, textbooks, or private tutors. Instead, I hope for it to be a useful supplement to help with individual study alongside traditional learning methods and classroom learning environments.

Currently, most efforts are aimed at making the Mandarin section of the site equal to the Cantonese section. The next major phase will be to create the English learning section, including phonetics, idioms/slang, essay writing, high frequency words, and English word formation. Long term projects include live chat, Cantonese for Mandarin speakers/Mandarin for Cantonese Speakers, character flashcards for each word on the site, and lots of interactive self-assessment "tests".

Funding and Profits

Up until recently, I bankrolled the website myself out of pocket. The site is not intended as a source of income for me, but there are ways in which the site earns money. I keep a list of recommended materials in an Amazon.com affiliate bookstore. These are items I have either used, or seen and believe will be useful for site visitors. I am also participating in Google advertising. I chose Google because it shows advertisements relevant to page content, sometimes even complementing what's already there. With these two sources of income, the site has begun to pay for itself and will likely even make a small profit for me. NOTE: Please do not repeatedly click on advertisements on my pages as this will not help me and will most likely end up costing me money.