Two-character "words" and how to study them

[phook01]

Hello,

I have the 888 flashcards, which I have found extremely helpful for learning the most common characters. As my ability in the language progresses, however, I find that two-character combinations occur very frequently.

Are there any books, online resources, flashcards or other where I can learn and drill myself on these two-character combinations?

Thank you!

[wrbt]

Find material at your level or slightly higher than your level then read, read, and read some more.

Others may have different opinions but in my experience it's very difficult to achieve good retention by simply wading thru vocabulary lists trying to make words stick. If you read you have the benefits of:

1. Encountering words in context

2. You'll come across useful words more often

3. Any subject matter will be more interesting than a vocab list

To throw a source out, try the Chinese voices project. Some of the material there isn't too advanced, you can use a plugin to hover over words you're unfamiliar with, it's got lots of diversity in subject matter, and you can listen to it spoken by native speakers. All free.

Good luck, have fun.

[renzhe]

Look for the HSK vocabulary lists, those words are mostly very important. There are flashcard decks floating around, with many linked on the forums.

I find that going through lists of flashcards helps my retention and recall, but I also agree that you really need to use the words in context and encounter them in real language in order to fully understand the meaning and usage.

[JenniferW]

Do you know about anki?

[Sarevok]

When making flashcards with multi-syllable words, throwing in an example sentence or two might help - they provide the necessary context during a review session and sometimes you encounter some more interesting vocab in those sentences...

[Mouseneb]

www.skritter.com

[phook01]

Wow, these are great resources! I especially liked Anki, the HSK vocabulary lists, and the Chinese Voices project. My only question about the last of those is what plugin you were referring to, and where to find it.

Thanks again!

Patrick

[jbradfor]

There are several plug-ins for a web browsers that will translate on-the-fly. I use perapera-kun, there are others. It's nothing specific to Chinese Voices.

[crazillo]

i sometimes don't like two character words, espacially when you can seperate them. it is so easy to forget about that. things like 我睡了一觉 can be fussy sometimes.