2010 Lesson Publication Schedule

[david]

A quick note to let you all know our lesson publication schedule for the next half year. On Mondays we'll be releasing our Absolute Beginner series, followed by Beginner and Elementary lessons on alternating Tuesdays. Our Intermediate and Advanced Audio Blogs are scheduled for alternating Wednesdays, while Throwback Thursdays will feature one of our archived lessons each Thursday. Our Video Vocab series will come out on Friday as usual. Saturdays are off, while we'll have our News series along with fun travel videos showcasing different parts of China on alternating Sundays.

We're moving to set the schedule for the second half of this year, so if there's something you'd like more of (or less of), please write us and let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Best,

--david

[JJBennett]

Will Victor and Amber be back in 2010? Haven't heard them in a while. I really enjoyed their shows.
I found their discussions of culture were as helpful as the language lessons when traveling in China.

JJ

[david]

Hi JJBennett,

Amber is on the current Absolute Beginner series which runs through June. We'll let everyone know about the hosts for the second half of the year when we know ourselves.

Best,

--david

[lan_dawei]

I would like to see more intermediate lessons, rather than alternate every other week. I can handle Elementary without any problem, so I like the challenge of going up one level.

[lan_dawei]

Would it be possible to stagger the Elementary and Intermediate lessons?
Have one on one week and the other on another? I would like to start to try
my hand at Intermediate. Having both on the same week is a bit of a distraction
towards that end. I don't know how Elementary users might feel, but that's my
two scents.

[go_sea_eagles]

Can I ask, what is the point of Throwback Thursday? These lessons are already in the archive for anyone to access. The only effect is to reduce your output of new material. It seems like a sneaky way of scaling down your operations. I would like to see an Intermediate and an Advanced lesson appear every week instead.

[david]

Hi sea_eagles,

Throwback Thursday is pretty much a constant across the Innovative Languages line, so it isn't an attempt to reduce the volume of new lesson creation or publication. One of the goals is giving free listeners a chance to hear what earlier lessons were like since they only have access to the latest few lessons through the site.

Right now we should have at least three new lessons across the difficulty spectrum coming out each week, plus a video lesson on Thursday and a News or Travel show each Sunday. I think we'll probably shift around the exact days lessons get published in response to feedback we've had from everyone here in the second half of the year - especially to avoid having Intermediate and Elementary materials come out the same week. And I'd like to see us publishing Saturday as well.

There is a bit of a bias towards beginning materials right now - once the Absolute Beginner series has finished running its first set we'll have that space for more advanced materials. And probably a culture show on Saturday. We won't have the schedule set for another two months probably, but I'll post here when we know.

Thanks,

--david

[go_sea_eagles]

In your early days, you released a new lesson every weekday. The way you describe it, it seems that paying subscribers are now paying the same money for fewer lessons, for the benefit of non-paying customers. But can't free customers listen to as many lessons as they like - isn't it only the PDFs that are restricted? And releasing an old lesson doesn't cost you time or resources, so you HAVE cut back on lesson production since your early days.

Well, I've been with your major competitor for the past year. I've paid for a month's subscription here to see if its worth making the changeover. But with half the number of new lessons each week, I think I'll be reverting once this month is up.

[david]

@eagles,

I'm just trying to answer your question, that's all. Right now we should have 4.5 new pieces of content coming out each week, and then throwback thursdays on top of those.

We do appreciate your feedback and will try to incorporate it when scheduling for the second half of this year. One of the general themes we're hearing is a request for more advanced podcasts and the return of our culture show. These would have to replace either the absolute beginner series or one of the video series. Probably the latter.

That said, pratically speaking, we won't be able to commit to what the calendar will look like for the second half of this year until we're actually producing the content, since whether we do one particular show or another will depend a lot on which hosts are available at what time and what level shows they want and can produce.

Best,

--david

p.s. just to answer your question, free users don't have access to the complete audio archive. If there's a concern that paying customers are getting short shrift - that's something we'll clearly look to address by rebalancing our show schedule when putting together the second season.