This web-based project is designed to act as a study aid to help students understand and benefit from the intermediate Chinese textbook, A New China by Professor Shih-ping Chou at Princeton University. Its goal is to provide students with background knowledge of the book and facilitate comprehension. All video footage is based on the book, and the companion audio and written materials are simplified versions of the text. In order not to give students extra work, the creators limited the number of new grammatical points and patterns that are introduced.

The program synthesizes classroom learning and computer-assisted learning. Students listen to the explanation while viewing the video. The hidden written texts can be accessed when students have problems understanding what they are listening to. The underlined words are the new words in the hard copy textbook. Students can find the definition and pronunciation by clicking on a particular word.

With the information provided by the video, students are expected to be prepared to start a new lesson in the classroom.

This is a collaborative project. Dr. Qiusha Ma wrote the proposal to initiate the project. Mr. Kai Li made all the arrangements for the footage shot in Beijing. Special thanks is given to Mr. Weiping Liu, a professor at the Department of Education Technology at Beijing Normal University. Without his help, the video footage could most likely never have been done.

Susan Binkley's guidance in technology helped us to avoid an unnecessary waste of time and energy. Our student helpers, Cindy Lee and Jonathan Tao, also made contributions to this collaborative work by providing technical support. Marcus Lofthouse in the Language Lab, was always there to give us a hand when we had problems. Our final acknowledgement goes to Nelson de Jesus and Ohio-Five. Without their financial support and suggestions, this project would not have been completed in so timely a fashion.