Free Mandarin Chinese Lessons

I recently came across a  list of free Mandarin Chinese lessons and spent a good bit of time exploring it.

Actually, first I poked around the website where I found it, a place called Open Culture, a bit to get an idea of its quality. I was impressed when I found that the main editor, Dan Colman, is the director of the Continuing Studies program at Stanford. Being a Stanford grad myself, that said something to me (think hard work and high standards). I really liked their mission statement, where they comment that the internet is full of useful, intelligent audio and video which is free. But it’s hard to find, so the purpose of Open Culture is bringing it all together.

So after being distracted by a series of articles about the Kindle and something called Smart Youtube, I settled down with the list of Mandarin lessons.  Each of the dozen or so websites listed has a title and a description. It also says: iTunes Feed Web Site — and it took me a while to realize that those were links to (duh) itunes, the rss feed for the site, and the site itself.

I clicked through and immediately noticed that many of the sites may have some free material but also have paid options where you get more. Still, this is a list that anyone looking to learn Chinese online free would benefit from. I imagine that this list represents some of the best of the genre.