Missing lessons for week of Mar 16 - 20?

[rodney]

No Intermediate or Upper Intermediate lessons were published for this week.

Or can I just not see them for some reason?

What's going on?

[cacevedo222]

Rodney,
We are in the middle of a schedule change...on April 15th we will be releasing two intermediate level lessons per week. Sorry for the confusing. I will keep you updated!

Thanks,
Carlos

[rodney]

Can you guys give us any more info?

Why two intermediate lessons? Who's going to give them? Will there be any upper Intermediate or advanced lessons at all? What ever happened to the proposed video lessons, or the possibility of a Mexican series?

At one point you guys were doing a fantastic job of letting us know what was going on and what the upcoming plans are. Now we're being left completely in the dark.

We've gone from 5 lessons a week to two a week. There was no notice that the number of lessons were going to be reduced, and no notice of what to expect in the future has been publicly announced.

I want to renew my membership, but at this point I'm pretty skeptical to do so. I like to know what I'm getting for my money, and have a comfortable feeling that this place is going to be around for a while.

Well, I hope somebody can come along and convince me I really should be renewing my membership.

[cacevedo222]

Hey Rodney,
We are going through some changes here at SpanishPod101.com. These changes are intended to improve the quality of our content and lessons. I know you’ve been with us for a long time and we really appreciate your overall participation. It has really added to our site and we would hate to lose it. I apologize if you feel left in the dark.
Why two Intermediate lessons? This has more to do with scheduling than with content. Our goal is to have our various lesson release dates be aligned. We have lessons projected through July so that starting on July 6th, we will be premiering Newbie Lesson season 4 #1, Beginner Lesson season 4 #1, and Intermediate season 2 #1 all in the same week. We want to streamline our schedule and to do so we had to make some changes in our current schedule (one of which is premiering 2 Intermediate series a week). We brought our number down because quite frankly we want to focus more on quality than quantity.
We have lessons stocked through the beginning of July and we are constantly adding as well as improving on our stock. With the Intermediate series you will be introduced to two of our new hosts, Alejandra and Michelle. Alejandra has 10 years of experience as a Spanish teacher and brings a new level of expertise and real world teaching experience to the site. She will be happy to answer any and all questions related to content and grammar that you may have.
The Mexican series is still on hold. We want to really strengthen our core curriculum series (Newbie, Beginner, and Intermediate) and this is our main focus at the moment. We will definitely keep you updated about the video lessons because we are excited about that prospect as well.

Stay with us, and we promise to keep releasing the quality content you have become accustomed to.
Thanks again!
Carlos

[mariposa]

Hi Carlos,
thank you for your update. As I already said in my comment to the last news section, I find it problematic to have only lessons with Costa Rican hosts. For me the diversity of the Spanish language is very important and above all in the Intermediate and Advanced series we should have hosts from other Spanish speaking countries as well. As I come from Europe I am confrontated above all with the Spanish spoken in Spain so if you won't have any lessons from Spain in the (near) future, it isn't so interesting for me. Maybe you could consider it (I am also a long time listener).
saludos

[cacevedo222]

Mariposa,
I appreciate your concern and I want you to know I take it seriously. I also appreciate the need to have hosts that speak Iberian Spanish. I do see the value in diversity. While all of our current hosts are from Costa Rica, (with a pinch of the US) this does not mean that in the future we will not be including Iberian hosts. When we have some developments on this specific issue I promise to reply to this thread once again. Our site is still developing and different ideas for new series are in the works.

Once again, thank you for your concern in the intellectual integrity of our site!
Carlos

If you do have any other questions concerning content or grammar questions, please do not hesitate to post!