Effective Chinese might be the only school in the US to offer 3 courses of pinyin only (ie, no characters). We understand that people with jobs don’t have time to learn a new language and a new writing system at the same time. We also developed our own course materials because there aren’t many that support pinyin only instruction. This is good news, because our materials are tightly integrated so you see the same vocabulary in the slide presentations, audio recordings, online quizzes and flashcards. And it also means that the vocabulary as relevant a possible to modern China.