Tofu Learn for learning Hanzi

[tofulearn]

We are the small team behind Tofu Learn vocabulary learning tool, and we are posting here to announce our big update for Chinese (mostly Mandarin).

 

Tofu Learn is a free advanced Spaced Repetition Flashcard system. And now we are adding a whole lot of features for Chinese to it. 

 

https://www.tofulearn.com/chinese

 

The two biggest things we are adding are:

1. Learning writing the characters (you write with your finger or mouse, the system rates your performance and offers you the character for next review at the right time). There's a demo on the front page.
2. Built-in dictionary. It’s available by itself, plus it is accessible from every Mandarin card for quick lookup.

 

The Tofu Dictionary is designed for language learners, to help understand and memorize the characters and words by decomposing them and showing related items.

 

This is added to the other useful stuff: tone coloring everywhere (fully customizable colors), both pinyin (in various notations) and bopomofo support, both simplified and traditional characters.

 

We don’t impose a specific approach to learning Hanzi: you can do it in any way you like, and we have decks prepared for each way. Recognizing characters, reproducing characters’ pronunciation from characters, learning writing characters from meaning and pronunciation.

 

For each of these we have pre-made decks for all six HSK levels, all with audio. Also you can easily create your own decks, or import Anki decks (audio, images, and progress all imported).

 

The whole thing just like the rest of Tofu Learn, is free.
There are Pro accounts for advanced stuff like automatically fetched pronunciations from Forvo with region preference (Mainland vs. Taiwan), but even those are free while we are in beta.

 

Please tell us what you think of the features, and if you would like anything added on top!

[Apollys]

This is actually pretty sweet.  I love that you have included the character decompositions - normal I go elsewhere and look that up whenever I learn a new character.  I would like to see the option of mixing recognition with writing all in one (or maybe it's there and I haven't discovered it yet).  Only played with it for a little while so far, but who knows, it may be time to say sayonara to my Skritter subscription soon.

[fabiothebest]

I'm about to try tofu learn, I saw there are some wordlists for HSK vocabulary that you can use to make a deck to study. It seems that the deck for each level contains only the new words for that level, is it right? For example for HSK 4 it doesn't contain HSK1-3 vocabulary but only the 600 characters that are new. I think it's useful for the active part of studying new words, then when you learnt them, it would be useful to have a larger deck that allows you to review all the 1200 words. I think each deck uses a SRS system, though the statistics are separate for each deck.

I'm gonna try it right now.

[tofulearn]

4 hours ago, Apollys said:

This is actually pretty sweet.  I love that you have included the character decompositions - normal I go elsewhere and look that up whenever I learn a new character.  I would like to see the option of mixing recognition with writing all in one (or maybe it's there and I haven't discovered it yet).

 

Thanks!

 

Mixing recognition with writing is a bit tricky, since in Tofu Learn terms, recognition is "reverse" (i.e. Chinese to English), and writing is direct (English to Chinese). That is, in one case English is on front of the "card", and in the other it's Chinese on front. So these wouldn't work as several types of tests within one deck.

 

Our current suggested solution is that you have one deck for recognition, and another one for writing. You don't have to pass the learning cycle for all the cards in the second deck: when viewing the deck, select the cards and press "Auto learn" to mark them as learned, so that you only review them.

[tofulearn]

1 hour ago, fabiothebest said:

It seems that the deck for each level contains only the new words for that level, is it right? For example for HSK 4 it doesn't contain HSK1-3 vocabulary but only the 600 characters that are new. I think it's useful for the active part of studying new words, then when you learnt them, it would be useful to have a larger deck that allows you to review all the 1200 words.

 

That is correct, HSK 4 would not include HSK 1-3 in it. 

 

If you want just reviews and not learning from a deck (like the HSK 1-3 you already know), you can skip the “learning” phase. Create the deck, then in each level select all cards and press “Auto learn”.

[Shelley]

I gave it a try, looks really good. I have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to have a choice of landscape, I think it works better on tablets in landscape.

Will it be possible in the future to have word lists from text books?

Thanks for your efforts.

[Luxi]

I haven't yet tried it properly but first impressions are good. I very especially appreciate the flexibility in learning and the UI simplicity, no distractions.

You've done a very good job! 

[tofulearn]

20 hours ago, Shelley said:

I gave it a try, looks really good. I have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to have a choice of landscape, I think it works better on tablets in landscape.

 

Thanks!

We'll add the suggestion about landscape layout to our backlog.

 

20 hours ago, Shelley said:

Will it be possible in the future to have word lists from text books?

 

Tofu Learn is designed in a way that everyone can contribute. You can create and publish these word lists yourself.

 

We've made it very easy:

1. Just take the list of Chinese words without translations
2. Create a word list in Tofu Learn, paste the words into it
3. Below the words table, in the "Auto fill" area press "CEDICT" to fill the translations from CC-CEDICT dictionary. You can also press "Wiktionary", it will fill more fields (like part of speech and notes)
4. And you're done. After you tested the word list yourself you can make it public (just click the switch).

[tofulearn]

9 hours ago, Luxi said:

I haven't yet tried it properly but first impressions are good. I very especially appreciate the flexibility in learning and the UI simplicity, no distractions.

You've done a very good job! 

 

Thanks!

[Shelley]

I was very glad to see you had included the NPCR word lists. I tried studying lesson 14 from book one as this is the lesson I am on. but it seems to want me to go through all the lesson sequentially. Is there any way to study a lesson on its own?

I will be starting book 2 soon so I will be starting that from the beginning so I won't have that problem but I thought it might be useful to be able to pick any lesson you want.

[tofulearn]

You can ignore (disable) the words in the lessons you don't want. To do that, in deck view expand the set you don't want, click [Select all] and then [Ignore selected]. The words will be marked ignored and won't be served for learning. You can un-ignore them in a similar way at any later point.

 

Alternatively, you can use [Auto-learn selected], in this case these words will be marked as learned and will only show up for reviews.

[Shelley]

Thank you that makes it very easy to pick lessons.

[Shelley]

I was disappointed when I realised that there are no writing exercises for the NPCR. Its okay using the HSK writing practise but I wondered if you were going to add writing exercises for NPCR?

 

Thanks for your efforts in building this useful tool.

[fabiothebest]

I haven't used Skritter for long time but I know there are many wordlists based on popular textbooks there. Anyone can create lists and also tofu learn website says users can create and share lists, though having the creator of the website creating the lists and guaranteeing their quality is a huge timesaver. Skritter also has an app and tofu learn doesn't, as far as I know. Is it currently providing a mobile version of the website for its use on the phone? Just asking and I'm not criticizing tofu learn in any way. I know it's relatively new and I hope it will develop further. Also taking a look at the competitors' work isn't a bad idea. Tofu learn is in beta and currently free. I wonder whether it will stay free forever or not. Free things are awesome, but it's right that the creators have some revenue, I just hope that if they'll charge for the use of tofu learn, the price will be low enough to be affordable for many.

[tofulearn]

On 04/03/2017 at 1:08 AM, Shelley said:

I was disappointed when I realised that there are no writing exercises for the NPCR. Its okay using the HSK writing practise but I wondered if you were going to add writing exercises for NPCR?

 

We've added word lists with writing exercises to all volumes of NPCR and Integrated Chinese.

 

Writing word list for NPCR 2

[Shelley]

Oh wonderful, Thank you I will get on with learning new characters.

[tofulearn]

On 04/03/2017 at 1:17 AM, fabiothebest said:

I haven't used Skritter for long time but I know there are many wordlists based on popular textbooks there. Anyone can create lists and also tofu learn website says users can create and share lists, though having the creator of the website creating the lists and guaranteeing their quality is a huge timesaver.

 

So far we maintain word lists for 3 most popular textbooks: New Practical Chinese Reader (volumes 1-3), Ingegrated Chinese (volumes 1, 2), and Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (all 5 volumes).
 

On 04/03/2017 at 1:17 AM, fabiothebest said:

Skritter also has an app and tofu learn doesn't, as far as I know. Is it currently providing a mobile version of the website for its use on the phone?

 

Right, TOFU Learn works as a mobile website if you open it from a phone or tablet.

We are however planning to create native apps for Android and iOS later on.
 

On 04/03/2017 at 1:17 AM, fabiothebest said:

Just asking and I'm not criticizing tofu learn in any way. I know it's relatively new and I hope it will develop further. Also taking a look at the competitors' work isn't a bad idea. Tofu learn is in beta and currently free. I wonder whether it will stay free forever or not. Free things are awesome, but it's right that the creators have some revenue, I just hope that if they'll charge for the use of tofu learn, the price will be low enough to be affordable for many.

 

What's free in beta but won't be free further on are additional Pro features, such as fetching audio from Forvo if a word list doesn't have audio (however all the HSK and textbook word lists come with audio for all words anyway).

The general functionality including character writing tests, will remain free.
 

[atongmu]

hello, I have been using tofu learn for the last month and am really enjoying it.

 

the only issue I have is that it seems to not work well in China. At least for me. When I use it with vpn at work and home there is no issue. But when I use it in a public place, it doesnt load, or if it does, some features dont work. this has happened in three different places recently.

 

i am not sure if others are having this issue, but it is a shame as I do like to study outside.

[tofulearn]

 

On 2017-4-1 at 10:23 AM, atongmu said:

the only issue I have is that it seems to not work well in China. At least for me. When I use it with vpn at work and home there is no issue. But when I use it in a public place, it doesnt load, or if it does, some features dont work. this has happened in three different places recently.

 

 

Thanks! This must have to do with the Great Firewall. We'll look into that and see what we can do.

[Bigdumogre]

 It's say it's actually pretty fun the way the flash cards are set up