My favourite Chinese learning tools

Hugh Grigg
2013 10 6
source: https://eastasiastudent.net/china/mandarin/chinese-learning-tools/

Heres a list of my favourite Chinese learning tools that Ive distilled over
several years of learning Mandarin Chinese. These are of course just my
personal preferences for Chinese learning tools - theyre the ones Ive used
and stuck with as Ive continued studying.
I can be guilty of finding one tool I like and sticking to it without trying out
new options, so just because I havent included something here doesnt mean
Im not aware of it or that I dont like it. Theres a wealth of cool Chinese
learning tools out there, and there are more appearing all the time, which is
great. Please do share _your _favourite Chinese learning tools in the
comments. Maybe we can all discover a couple of new ones this way.

Software
Im a huge fan of using software for language learning (and learning in
general). Ideas for software-aided learning have been well developed at least
since the time of B. F. Skinner, but it seems like we still dont make good
enough use of them, especially in schools. People learning East Asian and
other unusual languages (i.e. non-European, if youre an English native
speaker), do seem to do a better job of incorporating software to make their
study time more effective, though.
Anyway, here are the software tools that Ive found to be the best for learning
Chinese.

Anki
The best of the best! I cant praise Anki enough, and once youve used it for a
while youll know why. An SRS flashcards program, doing everything right:

Fairly easy to get started.

Completely customisable and very powerful for more advanced users.
Free.
Open source.
Multi-platform (I use it on Linux and Android).
Syncs between devices.
Easy to import and export data.
Large community.
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The list goes on! Ankis been going for some time and the project is very
mature now, hence it being so well-made. It can take a while to fully
understand everything it can do, but once youre familiar with it youll find
just how effective it is.

Skritter
Skritter is [another SRS system, but pretty different to Anki. For one thing its
certainly [not open source and it requires a monthly subscription to use (by
the way, if [you sign up for Skritter via links here, I get a small commission). I
would [describe Skritter as a kind of automated, stream-lined version of Anki
thats [customised and optimised for learning Chinese characters.
Skritter lets you practice actually writing Chinese characters (you need a
graphics tablet for the full effect) and keeps track of all your learning over
thousands of characters. It has loads of things built in so you dont have to
spend time finding and organising them yourself:

Pinyin readings.
Tone practice.
Character breakdowns.
Containing words.
Community-shared mnemonics.
Textbook vocab lists (so you dont have to type it all in yourself).

And various other things (they keep implementing new stuff). Skritter really is
the best thing for learning Chinese characters (writing plus other things about
them).

Pleco
My favourite Chinese dictionary! Pleco is an app for Android and iOS, and its
brilliant. I always have a big fat shortcut icon right to Pleco on my Android
homescreen, because I use it constantly in China. Its so nice having all this
Chinese language information in your pocket.
Pleco isnt actually a dictionary in itself, its just an fantastically wellmade interface for dictionary data. It comes with the free CEDICT dictionary
pre-installed, and you can pay for other dictionaries, such as the Oxford
Chinese Dictionary or the Guifan Chinese-Chinese dictionary. I have quite a
few dictionaries installed now, and its insanely comprehensive. You do have to
pay pretty much the full price for the dictionaries though - each one costs
about what youd pay for the paper version. Thats fair enough in my view.
Pleco also has several other paid add-ons, such as masses of audio recordings
for individual words, a handwriting-recogniser (pretty nice if youre feeling too
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lazy to search by radical) and various other cool things. It does have a
flashcards system built in, but Ive always stuck to Anki.

Firefox Perakun / Chrome Zhongwen

These two plugins (one for Chrome and one for Firefox) are both Chinese
annotators. You just mouse-over Chinese text and they identify Chinese words,
displaying pronunciation and definition information. This is obviously superuseful when youre browsing around on Chinese pages and see words you
dont know.
One drawback to using these plugins is that they can make you lazy and not
bother to actually learn new words you see online. Because it becomes so easy
to just mouse-over things, its easy to just rely on the plugin rather than your
memory, so be warned!

Dictionaries
Aside from Pleco on my phone, I also have a few favourite online dictionaries.

MDBG
MDBG is the standard quick choice for looking up a Chinese word. Its not so
great for looking up English words because the data behind it is only
structured Chinese English. When you search for English words, MDBG just
returns all the Chinese words whose definition includes that English word.
Search around a bit on the site and youll see why this is less than perfect.
Aside from that, MDBG is very fast and clean, and is nice for quickly checking
Chinese words. It also has an offline version, although Ive never used that.

Zdic
When you really want to look up a Chinese word and know a lot about it,
Zdic.net is the best choice in my view. I use this a lot for Classical Chinese
because its so comprehensive and tends to give a lot of detail. The interface
isnt too nice (they seem more interested in making it look cool than easy to
use), and it doesnt like it if you input traditional Chinese, but its often the
best bet for looking up any Chinese term you can think of.

Nciku
I have mixed feelings about Nciku. Its a really nice site with a lot of excellent
content, especially for English Chinese lookups and example sentences, but
holy shit is this site slow to load. Often it just doesnt load at all. I really dont

know what theyre doing at their end, but it seems like they need to pay for
some more reliable server equipment and more capacity.
Ncikus hand-writing recogniser is one of the best online (when it loads), and
theyve got loads of extra features if youre interested in all that. I also paid
for their Android app to give it a go, but thought it was nothing like as good as
Pleco, so I didnt use it for long.

Example sentences
I think that example sentences are a fantastic way to learn languages. Putting
example sentences into Anki and practising them both ways (reading and
trying to produce them) has become my core study method for vocabulary
building, reading speed, grammar, fluency etc. I get a lot of example
sentences out of the dictionaries I have in Pleco, but I also add a lot from
these sources:

Jukuu
For some reason I get the feeling that Jukuu steals a lot of their sentences
from elsewhere (theyve got tons of sentences from translations of certain
pieces of literature and technical manuals that I doubt they translated
themselves), but in any case theyve got a huge amount of example sentences.
Be wary though, as sometimes the Chinese is weird, the English is weird, the
translation isnt very close, or all three things are wrong with a sentence.
Generally its good stuff though.

Tatoeba
Tatoeba is a [super-cool translation web site that links up example sentences
between [multiple languages. Its a brilliant idea and the project is growing
nicely. [You can search around for example sentences to and from whatever
language you [like.
Tatoeba is great, but it does have a couple of issues in my view:
The search function is a bit annoying, because it returns sentences
ranked by
number of occurrences of the word youre searching for. This tends to
favour
the longest sentences available, whereas I think shorter sentences are
more
effective in SRS. Theres not a strong-enough system in place to police
unnatural or even incorrect sentences in each language. There are quite
a few
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 of these knocking about in Tatoeba so be careful. There are some pretty

annoying / arrogant pedants on there who like to argue about pointless
things
and turn totally nice, natural sentences into perfect but weird ones.
Grr.
Dont let that put you off, theyre just some minor things that I find irritating
with an otherwise excellent project.

Audio
Audio is still one of the harder things to get in adequate quality and quantity
for language learning. If youre taking classes and/or live in China, this may be
less of an issue for you as you probably get real Chinese audio every day.
However, you should still be doing active listening practice, and some of these
might help with that.

Tunein
Tunein.com is a way to listen to radio stations from all over the world [online
(not all of it is live, but that doesnt really matter in my view). [Theyve got
plenty of Chinese-language stations and I find its a great way to [add some
passive Chinese listening to my day. It also works for active [listening practice,
although its less consistent than other sources for that [(I would recommend
recording chunks of radio for active listening so that you [can replay bits etc.)
Browse around and find some Chinese stations you like.

ChineseClass101, ChinesePod & Popup Chinese

If you want to pay for something more guided and consistent, you might like
to give ChineseClass101, ChinesePod or Popup Chinese a try. These are all
paid podcast-based learning services. You subscribe and get professionally
made audio Chinese lessons to download each day, with dialogues and
discussions aimed at different levels. Ive found its a really nice way to
improve your Chinese listening and vocabulary.
There are more companies like the three Im mentioning here, but these are
the ones Ive tried. Theyre pretty similar, but the differences in my view are:
ChineseClass101 is a bit more straight-forward and light-hearted than
the
other two, sometimes the content can be a little bit silly or light but
its generally very good. ChinesePod is often quite business-focused and
tries to be super-professional. They also constantly go on about
themselves
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 and advertise themselves, but its not too intrusive. Popup Chinese
seems a
bit more intellectual (especially with their English-language [Sinica
podcast](http://popupchinese.com/lessons/sinica/)), and their content
can get
pretty bizarre sometimes.
The three services genuinely are pretty similar so I wouldnt worry too much
about which one to go with. Browse around and go with your instinct about
which one seems to suit you the most.

Grammar
In the final section on Chinese learning tools, I just want to mention a couple
of grammar resources. Grammar is a tricky thing to include in your studies,
because its easy to do the wrong thing and try to memorise rules down to
every last detail, rather than actively practising and trying to develop a
natural feel for Chinese.
However, it is generally quite useful to get a solid understanding of whats
going on in the sentences you use and what structures are available in
Chinese. Focus on example sentences and improving fluency rather than
scrutinising rules, though.

Chinese Grammar Wiki

I worked on this project for a few weeks before its public release, so some of
the content on there includes my writing. Anyway, the Chinese Grammar Wiki
is quickly becoming a really nice, comprehensive resource for Chinese
grammar.

ChineseGrammar.info
Uh-oh, Im recommending something I run myself! Seriously though, I do try
to make this as good a resource as possible. Me and a native Chinese speaker
friend work together on this to try and produce tightly focused articles that
explain Chinese words and grammar points with plenty of authentic example
sentences. Have a look at see what you think: ChineseGrammar.info.
What are your favourite Chinese learning tools? Do you like the ones listed
here? Please share all in the comments!