http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/30/HNskypelearnchinese_1.html
Skype your way to learning Chinese
VoIP technology brings tutors and
students face to face, even halfway around the world
By Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service
April 30, 2007
Interested in learning Chinese, but don't have the money or time to study
in China? Some teachers are turning to Skype for help.
The high sound
quality offered by Skype's VoIP (voice over IP) software, as well as the
proliferation of high-speed Internet connections in China and elsewhere, make it
possible to dial up a Chinese tutor who can help teach you the basics of Chinese
or polish your language skills ahead of that big business trip.
Stephanie Xu, a tutor in Beijing, has been using Skype to teach Chinese
for a little more than one month. She found her first online student, a U.S.
businessman who already spoke some Chinese, through an
advertisement she placed on the Web site of That's Beijing, a local
English-language magazine.
"For teaching daily conversation, Skype is very, very good," she
said.
Xu charges 80 renminbi ($10.35) per hour-long Skype session. That's
less than the 100 renminbi she charges her offline students for face-to-face
sessions, but she saves time by avoiding the one-hour commute into downtown
Beijing from her home in the city's northern suburbs.
On the other hand, getting paid can be tricky. Xu's first student sent
a letter with 800 renminbi in cash after two lessons, paying for subsequent
lessons in advance. "In the future, I'm thinking about using PayPal or Western
Union," she said, noting that bank transfers to China can be complicated and
difficult to arrange.
Freelance tutors such as Xu aren't the only ones using Skype
to teach Chinese. Language schools are also taking advantage of the
technology.
EChineseLearning, in Beijing, offers daily Chinese classes
for a monthly subscription fee of $100. The 50-minute lessons are taught by
teachers from Beijing Language and Culture University and other schools that
work for eChineseLearning on a part-time basis. The classes are all taught
online, using the voice chat features of Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger,
AOL Instant Messenger, or Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger.
"We mostly use Skype because the sound quality is better," said Michael
Zhong, an eChineseLearning sales executive.
Founded last year, eChineseLearning currently has about 100 students
ranging in age from children to adults, mostly from the United States, Zhong
said. They pay for their lessons using PayPal or Google Checkout.
Beijing may be half a world away from students in the United States,
but the time difference is well suited to evening lessons for U.S. students,
Zhong said, noting that 8 a.m., Beijing time, is equivalent to 8 p.m. in New
York or 5 p.m. in San Francisco.
Building a business teaching Chinese online can be difficult,
especially for freelancers such as Xu who lack the deeper pockets of a
language school. Seeing promise in Skype as a teaching medium for conversational
Chinese, she posted several ads on Internet forums hoping to attract potential
students, without success. "Nobody tried to contact with me," she said.
Without the money for her own advertising campaign, Xu is looking for
creative ways to promote her business and remains enthusiastic about the
potential of online tutoring.
"I'm going to focus on Skype tutoring in the
future," she said.
