As announced earlier, I have now updated the pricing page with new options for our subscribers. Once upon a time, we offered online, offline and one on one plans that were all recurring. The one on one plan was then replaced with a one time payment option that offered more flexibility by letting you just purchase the time you needed, until it ran out. Well I’m happy to say that the offline recurring plan has now been replaced with a level download plan that is also a one time download. Each level has been reduced to 4 zip files that together contain hundreds of PDFs and review audio files for all the lessons in that level. The individual levels are priced at $19.95 USD each.

Note that these level downloads are also optional purchases for existing premium subscribers. While online subscribers can still download individual PDF and audio files for each lessons, the convenience of downloading them all together will be a separate option. As older lessons are updated, the relevant PDF files and audio files for them will also be updated. You can see the sizes and latest update dates in the level download chart on the bottom of this page. Users who purchase level download access, will have access to the directory for 30 days from purchase in order to take advantage of any updates that may occur in the near future. Enjoy!

As our lessons have moved from typical conversation based lessons to articles and discussions, we have been looking for a new podcast review format. The one we have decided on (suggested by one of our long time listeners), is to offer a simple review of vocabulary for each lesson - first in female Chinese, followed by male English translation and then male Chinese. Hopefully putting together a few podcast reviews together can provide you with a good review playlist. You can find all this goodness on the premium review feed (the first four lessons of level four are available free to all listeners). Enjoy!

This is a notice to let you know that I will be removing the premium offline plan from our current pricing plan options next week. The plan will be replaced with the option to purchase PDF and review audio sets separately for each level. Current premium offline subscribers will not be affected and can continue to keep their plans for as long as they want.

This change is being made in response to demand for bulk PDF downloads. As a result, both bulk premium audio and PDF sets will soon be available for purchase separately by level. More information will be announced here when the new packages are ready.

I’m happy to announce a new category to this Updates blog - Lesson Updates. From time to time, we are going to be updating older lessons - whether to improve sound quality or to improve the course content. Each time a lesson is updated, I’ll make a note here. If it’s a lesson you have listened to before, you may want to download it again.

The first update is lesson 231. The original video featured some words that weren’t taught in the lesson. So we have now simplified the video and included some more vocabulary in the original lesson.

I have made a couple of adjustments to our pricing page.

In response to user feedback about our Skype one-on-one plan, I have changed it from being a recurring plan like the others to just being a single payment of 5 hours of sessions. I realize that you are all busy people and can’t always make the rigid schedule set in our previous plan. Others were interested in having more sessions than our plan originally offered. So in response to these issues, the new option allows you to purchase time in sets of 5 hours, to be scheduled as and when you please over an extended period. As before, your first hour of sessions is free, so try it out and see what you think!

The second adjustment I have made is to introduce a new partner to the companies we have chosen to work with. You can now use TrialPay to receive a month of Premium online access without having to pay us again. The graphic below explains how it works.

I hope these options provide more choices for CLO users. As always, if you have an idea that you think would benefit you, please let me know.

I’m proud to announce another nifty new feature. Throughout our site, we offer scripts in pinyin, simplified Chinese characters or traditional Chinese characters. It has been easy to switch from one mode to another by just a click of a button. But what if I could save you that click? How much time would you save over a lifetime if you didn’t have to make that extra click? Minutes? Hours? Perhaps days??

Well now you can do just that, by specifying your mode preference on your account page (found on the right sidebar under the Sign Out button). The default is pinyin like before, but now you can also change this default for the entire site to simplified or traditional. Try it out and let me know what you think!

We’ve added a new review tool to the lessons in Level 4. Every few lessons, you can test your understanding of the vocabulary taught recently by dragging the appropriate word from the list on the right into the blanks on the left to form sentences with meaning. Not only does this teach you to recognize the vocabulary and its usage, it also gets you working with grammar and sentence patterns.

This activity may be a bit more difficult than the traditional activities since it also incorporates supplementary vocabulary (not explicitly taught in the lessons). The good thing is that every word can be searched from the word bank, so this is also a great tool to expand your vocabulary.

As usual, you can choose your mode - pinyin, simplified, traditional or even English.

You can test drive this feature by clicking on “Fill in the Blanks” in the middle of this page. Enjoy!

In light of the recent performance issues on our website, we will be performing a server upgrade on our site on Tuesday, May 20 from 12 a.m. to 1 a.m. EST (4 a.m. to 5 a.m. GMT). I apologize in advance for any user inconvenience this down time may cause. The end result though, should be a smoother and faster user experience when using our website.

An update will be posted here when this upgrade is complete.

Update: The upgrade went smoothly. Everything should be back to normal now. Thanks for your patience!

The site was down for about 16 hours over the past 2 days. The problem was identified as a systematic attack on our site from professional hackers, I suppose. Someone seems to really like us out there! Hopefully the problems are behind us now. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

We have and are taking further steps to minimize future disruptions. The podcast files are now hosted separately from the main site, so if the site goes down, you should hopefully still be able to access the files themselves. We will be looking at other ways to improve our infrastructure in the near future.

Regards,

-Adam

11 new videos have been added to Level 4. My favorite? Well that would have to be lesson 188’s. Enjoy!