Which free Chinese learning resources do you want?

[zhouhaochen]

Our Headteacher and I want to create some useful free for everyone Chinese learning resources for beginner/beginner-intermediate students.

My main problem is that when I was studying Chinese, we were using paper dictionaries and at times it was pretty difficult to just get email access in Beijing, so I back then did not gain a lot of experience regarding how to learn Mandarin with electronic/internet tools (I still think it is best for learning characters to look them up with a paper dictionary but thats a different story).

 

So here the question: Which free online beginner/beginner-intermediate resources would you want a professional Mandarin teacher to create for you?

 

Open for all suggestions. One friend of mine for example told me he struggled to find videos where a male voice explained tones, as almost everything seems to be spoken by women and he did not want to end up sounding like one - just as an example.

 

The only thing to keep in mind is that we are a Chinese language school, so anything regarding Chinese, tones, grammar, pronunciation, learning tips etc. we can help with - however, we are not an IT company, so anything requiring programming etc. I think we would struggle with. So please do not ask for a flashcard program, phone apps etc. (videos etc. are fine).

 

They will be posted on the LTL blog .

[耳耳语语]

I would love mp3s with sentences using hsk words in context.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41388-hsk-vocabulary-phrasebook-mp3s/#comment-317726

[zhouhaochen]

@耳耳语语

thanks, we will look into this, the thread you attached was also quite helfpul.

 

Anyone else? I kind of thought there would be loads of people who would want a professional teacher create stuff for free for them

Or already everything needed is out there?

[Argenia]

I think it would be useful to have linked resources.  For example, a video could take a vocabulary field and a grammatical structure as its focus.  The vocab field and grammatical structure would be reinforced with separate listening materials for comprehension; there would also be a link to written materials using the same vocab and structures for comprehension and expansion.  I completely agree that it would be useful  to have HSK words in context. It doesn't  matter if there are no flashcards, because there are other programmes that can generate these, for example http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=flashcard

 

And yes, you're right, people would really appreciate a learning resource like this.  Thank you.

[耳耳语语]

Thanks.

What i call "Hsk words in context" would, ideally, be something like this.

One MP3 by word. Two sentences using only words from the same HSK level or below.

A clear male voice is a plus

 

Example :

请客

今天我请客,大家说去哪儿吃?

我们一起出去，总是他请客.

 

Well it's a lot of work and I don't know if you would do that, but i'm sure it would be an useful and appreciated ressource.

[zhouhaochen]

Anyone else would vote for 耳耳语语s suggestion? Would be good to know how much interest there is from the general community.

 

Also, was thinking about how to structure it on a website, it could basically be an alphabetical list of words for that HSK level, with the pinyin, 汉字, english translation and then a button for the pronunciation of the word, plus two sentences below (each with pinyin, 汉字 and English) and a button to hear an mp3 with it. Something like this?

The question would be how to study with this, as it has the translations right next to pinyin and 汉字

[Silent]

 

Anyone else? I kind of thought there would be loads of people who would want a professional teacher create stuff for free for them

Or already everything needed is out there?

Personally I think a lot is already out there. However some of it can be hard to find, specially if you don't know what is out there and what you need to get ahead. In short it's hard for independent students to combine those various free resources into a balanced and structural approach. So I'ld say make a study guide that combines the already available resources and tools to a structured study plan. If by writing such a study plan you find some info is missing you might of course create it.

[Ania]

I personally am always looking for interesting reading material since I love to put my Kindle to use when studying Chinese

[Shelley]

I would really like a character practising app. Something that let you write the same character many times perhaps on a grid, so I can really get to know radicals and characters.

 

It would be good if it corrected stroke order and maybe highlighted the radical.

 

Thank you in advance

[耳耳语语]

zhouhaocen #6 The question would be how to study with this, as it has the translations right next to pinyin and 汉字

 

Well, for me, I would put the sentences by stacks of 100 in an MP3 player and drill it all day. Then erase the sentences when i know them perfectly,  and add some new.

I can also duplicate them, so that i can hear them twice in a row, and shadow the second time.

 

I'm already doing it with lots of sentences i've cut from textbooksCDs (using the Audacity software).

It's not really following the HSK curve, but I already feel like the robot learning languages in Prometheus.

[deremifri]

Something I looked hard for, but was not able to find:

 

A collection of self explaining sentences showing different grammar structures with accompanying audio and translation.

This would be enormously valuable for people who want to jump into native material as soon as possible without having to learn grammar explicitly.

Other than that, I think there is actually enough beginner-level material out there. Intermediate not so much. However, I doubt that you guys (no offence) can create material as interesting as stuff actually made for natives. Therefore something like vocabuary lists or maybe even transcripts for Chinese movies, books etc. would be great and probably also very much in demand.

Thank you

[clement]

Two things that I found hard to find under a permissive license while working on a Chinese learning assistant app:

• a high-quality database of all chinese sounds. There are a few ones out there, but the quality is not so great, and any way hearing different accents is always awesome. It also allows for basic text-to-speech.
• sentences with simplified, traditional, pinyin and English side by side; again, most resources include just characters+English, and the rest is generally automatically generated, with lots of mistakes.

Then again I think this would most interesting/useful to the learning community if it was under a permissive license, like CC-BY.

 

Cheers

[Baron]

1. Collocations dictionary

 

2. Decent vocabulary books that aren't just a list of words and translations. Stuff divided into topic areas, with a bit of context and some useful phrases.

[Silent]

 

maybe even transcripts for Chinese movies

Though often tricky to find for specific favorite movies, many are available. Search for subtitles.

[zhouhaochen]

Thanks for the suggestions, we are working on them. We will mainly focus on beginner to intermediate material to start with, so more advanced stuff has to wait a bit.

 

Keep the suggestions coming please, we do read them!

[roddy]

So, what free Chinese learning resources have we got? 

[lakers4sho]

distinguishing between 同义词

 

lakers4sho