Terms of Service

These Terms of Service govern your use of Rays Chinese Class at rayslanguage.com and speaking.rayslanguage.com (together, "the Site"). By using the Site or creating an account you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the Site.

1. Who may use the Site

You may use the Site if you are able to enter into a binding agreement with us. If you are under 18, use the Site only with the involvement of a parent, guardian or teacher, who is responsible for the account and for what is done with it.

One account belongs to one person. Do not share your login with anyone else, and do not use an account that is not yours.

2. What the Site provides

The Site is an online Chinese course. Depending on which part of it you are using, it may include:

• Lesson pages with text, pinyin, vocabulary, audio and exercises
• Practice tools such as the pinyin chart, the tone trainer and the Chinese-to-pinyin converter
• Articles, saved progress and other free or paid learning material

It is a learning resource, not a substitute for formal schooling, a certification, or a professional language assessment. We do not promise how quickly you will learn or what results you will reach.

3. Your account

Saving your progress requires an account. You can register with an email address and password, or sign in with Google. Either way, you agree to:

• Give accurate information and keep it current
• Keep your password to yourself and let no one else use your account
• Tell us promptly if you think someone else has gained access to it
• Take responsibility for everything done through your account

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or that is used to harm the Site or other learners. You can ask us to close your account at any time.

4. Payments and access

Some material is free and some is paid. Where a price is shown, that is what you pay, in the currency stated. Paid access starts once payment is confirmed and lasts for the period described at the time of purchase.

Digital products are delivered electronically, so refunds are limited. The full terms are in our Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms.

5. Course material and copyright

The lessons are based on 《中文》 (Chinese, primary edition) published by Jinan University Press. That material is used with the rights holder’s permission and stays their property. The pages, arrangement, translations, recordings, exercises and software on this Site belong to us or to our licensors.

You may use everything on the Site for your own study, and a teacher may use it with their own class. That is the full extent of the permission given.

You may not copy, republish, sell, sub-licence, mirror or redistribute the material, and you may not use it to build or train another product, model or dataset, without our written permission.

6. Acceptable use

When using the Site, you agree not to:

• Scrape, crawl or bulk-download it, or reach it by automated means other than an ordinary search-engine crawler
• Share, resell or publish account credentials or paid material
• Break, overload, probe, or try to gain unauthorised access to the Site or its database
• Remove copyright notices or present the material as your own
• Submit anything unlawful, abusive, or harmful to other users

We may remove content, and restrict or close accounts, to enforce this section.

7. What you send us

When you send a message, use the contact form, or sign up for the newsletter, you are asking us to read it and reply. Answers you type into exercises are stored so the Site can show your progress back to you.

How we handle personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy.

8. Availability, changes and liability

We work to keep the Site available and accurate, but we provide it as it is. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any particular lesson, tool or feature will always be there. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of it.

So far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, lost profits, or loss arising from your reliance on the learning material. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

The Site can be reached from anywhere, but we make no claim that its content is appropriate or lawful in every country. If you use it from elsewhere you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for your local law.

9. Governing law and changes to these terms

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of Ontario have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

We may revise these terms as the Site changes. The date at the top shows when they were last revised, and we will say so on the Site when a change is significant. Continuing to use the Site after a change means you accept the revised terms.

10. Contact

If anything here is unclear, or you want to raise a problem with us, please get in touch — email is fastest.

Email: [email protected]