Best way to study with NPCR?

[Median]

Hello.

I've started studying with NPCR but I'm wondering what's the best way to use it? Should I just follow the lessons and do the work-book exercises as it goes on, or should I use resources on the side as well? Anki etc.

I've tried using Anki but I find it a real pain to use it for mandarin. Should I study characters or pinyin? It's quite annoying to type in pinyin because of the tone marks, but I've found something that solves it. But I really hate typing characters on the computer seeing as I will need to look up every character for every word.

Any ideas on how to go on? I'm kind of confused how I should do everything and this makes me a bit unmotivated.

Thanks!

[Shelley]

Hello,

I would follow the lessons as you said and do the workbooks, but also use any and everything else that you can that you find helps.

Pleco is very very good instead of Anki, i don't like anki very much. Pleco has many good features including flashcards, handwriting input, OCR, character lookup, dictionaries and loads more. Trial program available, and the cheapest paid option is very worthwhile the relatively inexpensive cost. It does need an phone/tablet device but it is worth it.

If you are using a PC try getting a tablet & pen input device and a program to let you write characters with a pen (Wenlin is good for that) I find this very good practice and helps loads with remembering them and looking up new words.

I like to have lots of different things available so that what ever my mood i can usually find something to do that is helping with my Chinese. Some people can't work like this and need to concentrate on one thing at a time. if this is you then just plod along with NPCR it is a very good course ( i used PCR when I started) and if you add only one thing, let it be Pleco.

Good luck

[renzhe]

Should I just follow the lessons and do the work-book exercises as it goes on,

Yes.

or should I use resources on the side as well? Anki etc.

Yes.

And any other resource you find that you deem useful. Stick to the textbook, supplement with anything you find useful.

I've tried using Anki but I find it a real pain to use it for mandarin. Should I study characters or pinyin? It's quite annoying to type in pinyin because of the tone marks, but I've found something that solves it. But I really hate typing characters on the computer seeing as I will need to look up every character for every word.

Anki has some plugins that help you look up pinyin for Chinese characters, IIRC. A good way to proceed would be to enter the NPCR vocabulary as you encounter it.

There are also pre-made deck (like the HSK vocabulary) which you might find useful. I memorised extensively from such pre-made vocabulary lists when starting, but fighting through looking up and typing characters is also a part of learning.

The best way to proceed is to make it less frustrating -- Chinese will take a long time to learn, and you will need to keep doing daily stuff (reviewing, listening, reading) for a long time to come, so try to find a programme which you can keep up for a long time. You'll be particularly motivated in the beginning, so use that for doing extra work -- listening, reading, exercises, etc. Keep the essential stuff (textbook lessons, flashcards) at a reasonable level, so you can keep it up even when you are not so motivated. One lesson per two weeks, with daily work on exercises, and up to 100 flashcards daily -- something like that.

[imron]

You might consider something like skritter: http://www.skritter.com which has pre-built lists for many textbooks.

You should definitely learn characters if your end goal is to be able to speak Chinese well. Once you get beyond beginner levels, there's little in the way of pinyin only learning material.

[大肚男]

I had a.lot of.trouble learning anything with anki, until I realized that anki is a great way to practice what you learn with other resources, rather than an actual learning method.

if you're going to use NPCR, there are a lot of anki decks that have the vocabulary lists from thay book.

I suggest studying with NCPR, then use anki to review.

If you want to learn how to read and write, I believe that heisig's remembering the hanzi, along with anki, are a great combo

[felixfan87]

If your serrious about studying Chinese, you can't avoid characters. During 2 years of living in China, I've never found any foreigner who learned to speak passible Chinese only using Pinyin. If a decision has to be made between reading and writing, being able to read characters is much more important than being able to write them. Don't worry, with enough practice you'll be able to get away from needing Pinyin above the characters.

Dimsum's Chinese tools Pinyin annotator is a good free download （even if a little outdated) You can put any amount of text in there and get pinyin for every character, I still use it to read books.

If your having problems typing characters, I reccomend you download Sougou Pinyin 搜狗拼音, it's way better than the standard IME that Windows provides (if your using a PC).

If you can find them, I actually like the original PCR books (even the ones with communist propoganda) better than the newer books, there isn't any Pinyin above the characters, but there are a lot of great grammar exercises that NPCR seems to lack. To give NPCR some credit, the way they break characters up into components makes much easier to learn.

[WestTexas]

if you don't like typing pinyin, just type like shi4 or dong1 or liao3 etc. It means the same thing. I still have no idea how to put pinyin on a computer and I see no need to, tbh.

[smurese]

@felixfan87 mentioned the older PCR series. This thread has been discussing the supplementary use of vocabulary tools, and there is plenty of supplementary vocabulary help available for PCR:

- andante.org has computerized tools for the earlier PCR:

- look for the tabular Character Finder, by radical, (simplified & traditional) on this andante.org page;

- a downloadable adaptive Flashcard Program for vocabulary in PCR 1, 2 & 3, lesson by lesson

- the "Ting" Chinese English online audio dictionary at the University of Maine has a search function for vocabulary in that old PCR;

- there are some great vocabulary activities using Flash for PCR Lessons 1-30 at csulb.edu

- character writing practice sheets for PCR at csulb.edu as well as calstatela.edu

I found these on the "Practical Chinese Reader textbook lessons, resources & supplementary materials" page of the LearnchineseOK.com web directory of Chinese learning resources that I administrate. Apart from vocabulary, you'll find plenty of other resources for that textbook there, such as videos, audio recordings, language exercises and lesson-by-lesson study guides - and the three universities so far mentioned are joined by the likes of Oxford University no less...