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Additional Press Releases

Washington, D.C., March 2, 2001 -- The Voice of America's Chinese Branch has just launched Learning English, a new Internet-based English-teaching series for its audience in China.  Just under 60,000 subscribers will receive the weekly e-mail along with an e-mailed downloadable audio file. 

"We use a software which allows us to send Learning English by FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to our listeners," said VOA’s Peter Chen.  "The beauty of this is that users do not need a website to read the page.  Subscribers can not only read, but also listen to the lessons." 

File Transfer Protocol is widely available in China and allows listeners to download the weekly English-teaching script and the audio file.  It also offers faster download speeds -- an important consideration in a country where e-mail can be expensive. 

Since 1997, VOA’s Chinese Branch has been successfully sending news by e-mail to more than 100,000 daily subscribers, and each one of these e-mails has included an English word or idiom. Using material from the Branch's daily radio broadcasts, six full and part-time staffers compile concise news reports for the daily e-mail service. 

VOA broadcasts twelve hours in Mandarin and two in Cantonese daily, including five weekly one-hour TV satellite broadcasts.  The Voice of America broadcasts world, U.S., and regional news in 53 languages to an estimated 91 million people each week.