Your Wishlist for a Chinese Learning Program

[Xuesheng1937]

I decided to program my own chinese learning program because I am learning chinese and also thought it would be fun to program something out of the usual (compared to what I do for work).

Current and planned features include:

 

• Using CC-CEDIC dictionary. This has been coupled with a few other sources, namely a single character frequency list and a radical database.
• Has a dictionary mode. This allows you to search the database by simplified, traditional, definition, or pinyin.
• Has a flash card mode with multiple modes for flash cards. As you can see from the screenshot, one of the modes is hanzi drawing practice. I also plan on having a pinyin (front) to hanzi (back) mode, a definition/hanzi, simplified/tradional...etc modes too. Technically these modes will be configurable by the user checking and unchecking what they want to show on the hidden and reveal sides of each flash card before they enter flash card mode.
• Chinese text to speech... these tend to be a bit robotic, but they can still be helpful in my experience.
• Ability to favorite particular records in dictionary mode.
• Ability to manage, configure, and export/import flash card groups for studying. Considering CC-CEDIC makes all noun records start with a capital letter I've already created a noun group.
• If you word/phrase is greater than one character you can rollover that character (or click, still working out performance issues for hover) and it will bringup a popup box for that character, if found in the database. So even when studying higher character flashcards, or looking at higher character dictionary records, you can still break it down to the individual character level.

The frequency list I mentioned was used to compute the likely popularity/frequency of use for compound words and phrases. This is expiremental though and I'd like to find a list that gives the frequency of compound words themselves, not just individual characters. I did find a bigram (2 character) frequency database, but bigrams are usually just gibberish combinations and may even be 3 or more word compounds/phrases that got cut into 2 character bigrams, so that's not appropriate.

My plan is to release this as free open source (you can make changes to the code). Likewise, since that is the case all databases and information I use must also have a freely distributable license, so far all the sources used are as such.

If you have any suggestions, let me know, I'll definitely see if I can add them. Or if you think this is a waste of time on my part, let me know too ;-) I just find it a fun little side project.

[Lu]

I'd want flashcards with character - pinyin - definition - example sentence (and the other way around definition - character - pinyin - examples), so three or four 'sides' instead of two. Also I'd want to make my own cards.

 

Two possible issues: Pleco already has many if not all of the things you menion here, so not sure if anything you make can add something; and be careful not to build the mother of all learning Chinese-tools instead of actually sitting down and learning Chinese. This would just be a more digital variant of endlessly looking for the best textbook instead of using a good-enough one.

 

Good luck!

[Xiao Kui]

be careful not to build the mother of all learning Chinese-tools instead of actually sitting down and learning Chinese

 

 that's how I feel about it, too.  There are already plenty of great programs out there. My favorites are Pleco, LingQ, and FluentU.  Wenlin and Popup Chinese are also robust.  I don't think there's a one size fits all when it comes to software because different people have different learning styles. If you are good at programming you probably also have some innate ability when it comes to language learning, being able to recognize and reproduce patterns and all. I think your best time would be spent discovering and applying those abilities by tackling the language itself! But if you'd rather spend your time programming I wish you the best of luck!

[Xuesheng1937]

Lol, both are very fair statements. I think the side project started as me finding the software I was using (pleco being one) that lacked certain things I would like. Judging by your statements I won't invest much more time on the software implementing features that other programs already have. Though I may still program a few more things that are specific to my learning style and just use it personally.

I am glad to get some honest opinions here and look forward to spending more time on these forums!

[roddy]

Welcome to the site, Jarrod!

 

 

Why not list the functionality you feel is currently lacking from the tools you have - I suspect either someone will tell you where to find it, or explain why it's not that useful. 

[Xuesheng1937]

Well mainly, I learn well from what I call 'batch' learning. I prefer to just have a giant list (maybe 100 at a time) of single characters ordered by most common occurence. After that I prefer to view 2 character compounds using those single characters, again ordered by most common occurence, and if my memory is a bit fuzzy the ability to quickly lookup (by rollover or what have you) the individual characters... and then the same for 3 character compounds and so on. I find chinese is definitely a very pattern oriented language and this method makes it easier for me to remember the individual characters and their compound usages.

[Xuesheng1937]

So is this method of studying useless? If not, anyone have any existing programs out there? I'm all for saving myself some time, lol.

[alanmd]

I like the idea of learning words together that are related through sharing common characters- seems like it uses less total memory (in a "seeing the brain as a computer" way). That's the main reason why I created the character graphs, and why I am rolling my own quick free flashcard app (beta will be available soon), because every other one I've tried is missing that key feature.

[Xuesheng1937]

Ah, excellent, I'll checkout your character graphs later tonight for sure. Just browsing around your site I can see those alone will definitely come in handy. I also look forward to your flashcard app, let me know if you need any help, I know many different programming languages and platforms.

You are right as well, the technique is called linking, and it's been shown through studies to help with remembering items that are linked in some way, the more links you have the easier the recall is. I could get all pseudoscience-y and say that it is something to do with how the neurons encode data... but I don't know enough about the field to say.

[roddy]

So, how's this going?

[Lu]

XKCD made a comic about this: http://xkcd.com/1319/

[Xuesheng1937]

Lol, well as previously stated since alanmd is already working on some of the unique features I want, I have set aside my coding to see where his project goes first. In the meantime I have learned about 150 new characters, so I'm making progress ;-) Though I also recently picked up stock investing and piano, so my time has been divided lately.

 

P.S. That comic is quite accurate, though I think it's missing the point that if software is programmed that can assist others in learning, then it can be considered to have a larger impact than just my time involved.