Where to Find 'Series'
- In the "Courses" section, you'll notice there are two additional options beyond the main Courses of our comprehensive 6-Course program - the Chinese Grammar Series and the How to Say in Chinese Series.
Series vs. Courses
- On Yoyo Chinese, a lesson that belongs to one of our main 6 comprehensive Courses contains not only a video lecture but also a number of interactive Practice activities as well as a 10-question interactive Quiz.
- Series on the other hand, do not have Practice activities (aside from Lecture Note PDFs and an FAQ section), nor do they have a 10-question Quiz.
- *Not yet at least! If you'd like to see Practice and Quiz functionality added to a Series on Yoyo Chinese, please feel free to let us know! 😊
- Series, however, are still organized into convenient course-like pages so that you can learn the lessons in the correct order and track your progress with a 'Complete this Lesson' button. And yes, you will still earn XP while completing lessons in a Series!
Series Lessons in Courses?
- If you take a closer look at some of the lessons in the Chinese Grammar and How to Say in Chinese Series, you'll notice that some of the Lessons also appear in our Beginner, and much more so in our, Intermediate Conversational Chinese Courses. In total there are exactly 61 of these 'overlap' lessons, as well as 61 additional unique lessons not found in the courses among the lessons found in the two Series.
*Yoyo History Trivia! This is because we built our comprehensive Courses using some of - but not only - videos that were originally created for a Series. By combining Series and creating new lessons we were able to create a more optimal curriculum that has the student switch between grammar, conversation, dialogues, etc.
- If you complete a Lesson in a Series - it does not complete the corresponding Lesson in the Learn Course, nor does it prevent you from earning XP from the other lesson - and the same the is true of the reverse.
- In other words, they may have same video, but are distinct in terms of your Study Stats and progress tracking on the Yoyo Chinese web app.
Chinese Grammar Series
- The Chinese Grammar Series contains 71 Lessons focused specifically on Chinese grammar broken up into Units (mostly) by grammatical topic.
- The level of the 'difficulty' (or like we like to say 'accessibility' - nothing is too difficult with the right tools and support!) of the Series is approximate to our Intermediate Conversational Chinese Course, though an ambitious beginner learner could certainly benefit from the lessons as well.
How to Say in Chinese Series
- The How to Say in Chinese Series (*formerly titled 'Chinese Learning Tips' which you'll notice on the blackboard in the lessons) contains 51 Lessons, each with a title like "How to Say 'Want' in Chinese" that tells you right away what you'll be learning in the Lesson, highlighting our 'Learn Chinese in Plain English' philosophy so many of our students love so much.
- *TL;DR - Instead of shunning your native language in hopes that you can simply 'immerse' yourself in Chinese and actually learn it - we help you USE your English to help you learn Chinese! And it works! 😊
When Should You Use the Lessons Found in Series?
Because both the Chinese Grammar and the How to Say in Chinese Series are:
- Accessible to mid-beginner level learners (i.e. you've at least completed all of the lessons found in Beginner Conversational Levels 1, 2, and 3) and Intermediate learners alike,
- Filled with Lessons Chinese language learners of any level can benefit from learning or reviewing,
- And organized a way that makes them easy to reference and selectively learn from....
We recommend Yoyo students of a mid-beginner level and above use the Series not so much as a strictly linear portion of your overall Yoyo Chinese Lesson curriculum, but instead as a useful set of reference videos you can use anytime when:
- You'd like a change of pace from Lessons in the Courses,
- You need a bit of a refresher on a specific Grammar point or other piece of lesson content found in the the Series or,
- Whenever you'd like! Because we really think all students will enjoy these Lessons!
- *After all that's why we integrated so many of them into the core curriculum of our Courses! 😊