Thank you to all the users that took our survey! Thank you for both the positive feedback and the suggestions for improvement. We are taking them to heart and will work to improve your experience using our materials.

Congratulations to the winner of our drawing, Stefan L.!

Here are some of the questions and suggestions you had and our responses:

Q: More tutorials for beginners!
A: We're working as fast as we can on posting tutorials while maintaining their quality. We hope to have the tutorials that we have envisioned completed by the end of summer 2011.

Q: Online chat with tutors and native speakers!
A: We will be instituting a weekly chat with Macedonian speakers and tutors, but unfortunately this service will most likely not be free, since we want to have quality tutors there for you! We have identified native speakers who could join us for these sessions as well, but we are still working out privacy issues regarding this type of a collaboration.

Q: More conversations, texts, and vocabulary!
A: More conversations (podcasts) and texts (in the wiki) are in the plans, but unfortunately that will probably have to wait until all the tutorials that have been envisioned are created. Also, we will work on integrating the texts (in the wiki) better into the lessons. As for more vocabulary, as you continue through the lessons, you will get more vocabulary. We felt it was important to start slow with vocabulary as you are getting introduced to the language, its sounds, grammar, and basic structure.

Q: Turn the podcasts into downloadable apps for the iPhone!
A: We have looked into this and we need a developer who can help us with it. We will keep looking, but if you know of anyone or can do it yourself, we'd love to talk!

Q: The Cyrillic alphabet... Can some resources be made available for people who do not want to learn the alphabet first, like with English alphabet versions of Macedonian Cyrillic words? Can the exercises in the tutorials be modified to make it possible to use the Windows character map?
A1: The first of these is kind of a philosophical and pedagogical question. We could spell words out phonetically in English, but it would not capture the Macedonian pronunciation. An English A is not pronounced just like a Macedonian A, even though it is the same written symbol. And a British English speaker would not pronounce it the same as an American-English speaker from the South, the North, the Midwest, etc. We also have many learners who are speakers of other languages, which even further complicates the issue. We have found that our students who have not learned the Cyrillic alphabet first have trouble pronouncing certain words because the way a Macedonian would write the word with Latin letters is not how an English-speaker would write it to pronounce it correctly. So we have found that it is better for the learners' pronunciation to learn the Cyrillic alphabet and correspondences between letters and sounds; and only use the Latin (English) letters to help themselves remember how to pronounce the word (check out our downloadable tutorial for learning the alphabet - many learners have liked it!). Many learners who grew up with relatives speaking Macedonian know how to pronounce words even though they don't know how to write them. This is why we try to have sound files for each of the words in the tutorials. If you do not want to learn the Macedonian alphabet, simply listen to the sound file and jot it down the way you would say it in your language/script based on what you heard.
A2: As regards the exercises in the tutorials, we realized that perhaps it is not clear how to set your keyboard to Macedonian, which would make it much easier to type answers than using the Windows character map (which will not be accepted by the software we use to create the tutorials, so we can't do anything about that). If you were wondering how to set your keyboard to Macedonian, please click here (or the home page of any of the units in the beginners' tutorials) and scroll down to Activating Your Macedonian Keyboard.

Q: More access/information about children's books in Macedonian!
A: One of the reasons we published our children's book was because we couldn't find children's books in Macedonian that were available for purchase world-wide! We are working on a few more books of our own, but unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be enough interest to warrant publishing them. We are looking at making them available through Amazon.com, which would perhaps help with sales.

Q: Clearer home page, simpler pages!
A: We will work on making sure it's clear what the links on the home page mean and keeping the pages simple.

Q: Sometimes I'm confused about what the Macedonian words and phrases in the tutorial mean. I have to ask my significant other, who is a native speaker.
A: All of the vocabulary is listed in the vocabulary section of each tutorial. Part of the learning process is making hypotheses about what you think is happening and seeing if they are valid as you gather more information from the tutorials and from the vocabulary and grammar sections under the tutorials. And remember, sometimes a direct one-for-one correspondence between English and Macedonian doesn't exist! So, it's good to get used to just getting the jist, without even trying to translate it directly into the words of another language. If you are the type of learner that is not comfortable with this type of language learning, you can always look at the grammar and vocabulary first, before looking at the tutorial. Once you're comfortable with those two, then look at the tutorial to see how the material is used in conversation. And most of all, email us if you ever have any questions! We can't underscore it enough: we LOOOOVE your feedback! :) Lastly, it's good that you have someone to ask - for two reasons: one, it's good to have that kind of support for your learning, and two, it's good for your significant other to know what you're learning so he or she can modify his or her language accordingly and provide you practice in real life for the material you're learning.

Q: Homework assignments would be useful!
A: We are actually developing a course that will be offered through the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill for credit from this American university and this course will use the tutorials, additional exercises, and homework. You will have to sign up for the course through the university, and information about how to do that will be available when the course is completed and open for enrollment. In the meantime, we are thinking about offering additional exercises and homework, but this service will not be free, since someone will need to grade the homework and provide you with assistance. We are looking at a monthly (for a fee) user subscription that would include that kind of services.

Q: It would be nice for the exercises to be graded one at a time, instead of all on a page simultaneously.
A: We agree! Unfortunately, the software we are using does not allow for that. However, the exercises are for your own self-assessment, so even if it says you got the entire page of answers incorrect and then when you look at the correct answers, you see that it was actually only one incorrect answer, you still have an understanding of how you did and how to improve.

Q: Lessons in my native (non-English) language!
A: This would be difficult to organize, since we can't provide lessons in every world language. But if you have an interest for lessons in a specific language, please email us and we will try our best to find a tutor for you who will meet your needs or we will work with you to translate some of the key tutorials into your language (but you have to help us since we have very few resources available!).

If you have any other or further questions or suggestions, or simply want to discuss one or more of our answers above, please feel free to let us know via email. Thank you again for your input!