Free Chinese study software!

[student]

No, the working link is to a shareware demo. Not all of the features are enabled, and it has a 30 day limit. And it seems that if you try to register it, it needs to connect with

mandarinstudy.com ... which is down. So this is not much use.

Does anyone have the full working free version??

Otherwise, I guess we have to wait for the return of mandarinboy...

[student]

I meant that it seems to try to link to mandarinteacher.com

[venexia1709]

Hi,

I've seen the screenshots of your program and I'd love to try it, but unfortunately I can't manage to download it.

Could you please help me?

Would you mind sending to my email address?

It's mrrodriguezben@hotmail.com

Thank you for your time.

Maria Rosa.

[Kink]

Can someone please upload this program again?

[teng125]

i encounter these two problems which prevent me from installing this software.First,windows installer cannot update C:WINDOWSsystem32scrrun.dll

second,error 1935.message shows that an error occured during the installation of assembly.

can anyone pls help me...

thanx

[JohannesC]

I am actually having the same problems the above messages mention: I cannot download the homework.asp from Mandarinteacher.com, because the site is down, and the other download sites I find are all only shareware providers.

If there is any chance to get this programm I would be very thankfull to be told, seems to be the best available.

Johannes

[nalex]

hi mandarinboy,

thanks for offering the homework trainer for free.it´s a great software.

unfortunately the download stil does not work at mandarinteacher.com.

i am looking forward to it. do you know when it will be available ?

best wishes from germany.

nalex

[nalex]

thanks again for sharing.it really is the best mandarin software available, because it includes hanzi, pinyin, reading, writing and listening altogether in one unit.

unfortunately the download from mandarinteacher still does not work and a full version

is really important to create your own study lists.

does anybody know if there is a new site available or any other means to

download or post the software ?

thanks

[stephanhodges]

Not sure if previous poster was for real or not. The "mandarinteacher" web site has been taken over by a reseller, so it's probably not coming back.

Also, I own that software, and I would not say it's that good. The free things available now are just as good for most things, and better at a couple of features. Wenlin is still better for some features than the free ones, however.

[gato]

I tried this program, too. It's alright, but there are other free programs that are much better. Since this thread gets so many hits because it's got the keyword "free," let me list a few other free Chinese study softwares.

For more details see:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8195-best-of-chinese-study-tools-studying-chinese-online-and-off

Online Reading Assistant (instant pinyin and definition while you browse)

• popjisyo.com
  
• Rikai.com

Offline

• Dimsum (provides pop-up definition for both websites and offline texts; uses Java, should run on PC/Mac/and more)
  
• Wakan (PC; Chinese and Japanese dictionary, text editor, vocabulary manager, and text translation tool.).
  
• NJStar (not exactly free, but the free demo is fully functional; mainly a word processor, but version 5.0 also has a teaching mode which provides pop-up definitions and automated vocabulary list generator; need to pay for registration for all features, including the full dictionary)
  
• MyChineseFlashCards: nice open-source Chinese flashcard program (Mac, PC, Linux)
  

[roddy]

As the software is no longer available, I'll close this topic for now. If it comes available again I'll reopen it. (it has, I am doing so)

[mandarinboy]

If you like to study Chinese by your computer, we have now released our chinese homework trainer ( full version) for free. http://www.euroasiasoftware.com/ht/index.html

You can create study lists, edit your lists, keep track on progress, view stroke order animations, print flashcards(double sided) or study sheets, take tests, statistics how many characters you know, strokeorder recogniton, text anotation, import and export study lists, create MP3 files of your study lists, talking chinese dictionary and much more.

It used to be a commecial software but due to name napping of our site and other problems we decided to close the comany and release all our software for free download.

Please let us know what you think of the software on this or our forum. We are still developing the software with the latest relase today.

[Ag3nt]

hmm, looks pretty good. i'll give it a try

[Madot]

Just had a look at the site and it really does look good, but I am not an IT person. Is there any knowledgeable person out there who could look at the software and compare it, for example, to the PlecoDict, which--it seems to me--does pretty much the same thing (except for the voice part). I think there are probably lots of us out there who would appreciate a really good review of the software, so if anyone is willing... Thanks in advance.

Mado

[mandarinboy]

We are just beta testing some updates to the program and will release a new version in a few days. We have added the first book in the Practical Chinese Readar series, new tests, better ways of tracking progress etc. I spend the summer in Hangzhou, China and realy got my inspiration for studying Chinese back. Flease feel free to give me suggestion to other additions. If anyone have study lists in any digital form for new practical chinese reader i am very interested. Would be nice to add them. I have ordered all books in the serie but the some of the books where out of print so it will take a while until i have them.

[roddy]

As the software is no longer available, I'll close this topic for now. If it comes available again I'll reopen it.

Available again, so I've reopened this topic and am merging with another on the same subject.

[mandarinboy]

Yes we are on-line agaian but with a new site: http://www.freechineselearning.com

For lists of free software on our servers: http://www.euroasiasoftware.com/english/chinese/software/index.html

Our old URL: www.mandarinteacher.com got name napped and after struggling with this for a while we got tired and started a new one instead. We are working on several updates to the homework trainer and will release a new version later this week with several small and large improvments.

[mandarinboy]

Now the new version is ready. I am compiling the code right now and will have it up on my site from late this evening (Swedish time)

Among the new functions in this version are:

- Added new test function, multi test 2, with many new features.

- Made it possible to Import all study lists in one folder with one click on the button.

- Made it possible to export all study lists in one category with one click on the button.

- Added custom colors to controls on most windows

- All radicals in one window for faster lookup.

- Made it possible to choose study list to calculate statistics on.

- Made it possible to choose whether to update categories or not in multi tests.

- Added beta version of calligraphy test

- Added checkboxes to choose categories on multi test

- Added checkboxes to choose categories on drag and drop test

- Added many pre made study lists.

And more.

The idea has been to make it even easier to study just the words you need to study.

The program can be downloaded from: http://www.euroasiasoftware.com/ht/index.html

(The new version number is 3.4.0)

There will be more updates relatively soon. I have list with more than 20 updates to add to the program. I am currently working mostly on functions for texts and dialogues so it will be easier to go from words to dialogues to texts.

To give a better idea of how I work with word lists and piles I have put together a short help file:

To help my self study Chinese I started to develop this software some years ago. I needed to have a program where I could keep track of my progress, review words that I felt hard to remember and test my skills in as many ways as possible. This gave birth to the idea of develop Chinese Homework Trainer.

How to start:

- First you need to familiarise you with the concept of study lists and Piles. A study list is the list containing your words and/or characters. You can create as many study lists as you need and the lists can be as large as you need them to be. There are many pre made lists to use from start but you can also easily create your own or import lists from text files or from our database server on line. Your study lists can be exported to text or XML format to share with others or you can upload them to our public database server. This makes it easy to share lists with fellow students. You can also copy whole study lists or individual words to any other study list. There are functions to copy e.g. all unknown characters in your lists to a special list for further testing.

For every word in your study list there are fields that keep track of your progress. To avoid spending time on words you already know you can exclude them. This is the idea behind creating piles. From the beginning each word is labelled as category 0. This is the meaning of the different categories:

Category 0 = Untested or uncategorized word.

Category 1 = Well know words

Category 2 = Less Known characters

Category 3 = Words you have a hard time to recognise

Category 4 = Words you do not know.

When taking a “multi test” (from the menu “Testsmultitest” or Testsmultitests 2”) you can choose to automatically mark every word you are tested on as known or unknown. If you answer incorrectly on a word, that word will be marked as unknown even if you later answer it correctly during that test. To upgrade that word to the known pile (category 1) you need to take that test again and answer it correctly. You always need to have more correct answers than wrong ones on a word to be able to upgrade it to known from the tests. If you want to manually upgrade it to known you can do so by clicking on the unknown pile on the main window and mark it there as known.

Since our brain needs to repeat things over and over again to not forget things you also have to repeat your words every now and then. From the menu “FileSettings” you can choose to set the number of days it will take until words are downgraded from well known to less known etc. Standard settings are 60 days. If you have not taken any test for 60 days the words will be downgraded one step to category 2. After a total of 120 days (60 more days) they will be further downgraded to category 3. You can turn of this if you like to and you can also set the number of days for this manually.

If you want to combine study lists, there are two possible ways.

- Use the “EditCreate Pile Lists” menu. Here you can choose to copy whole study lists, one or many, to this special list. You can filer out categories you do not want to have e.g know words etc. This special list has one extra feature. When you are using this list to take tests, the underlying lists it is created from, will be updated as well. Since you can have only one such lists, you can copy this list to an empty list if you want to keep it for future tests.

- Copy one list or words from many different lists to a chosen list. This is done from the menu “EditEdit lists”

This is the basic. In each window there is a help object in the menu. Use that to learn how to use that feature.

Have fun

[mandarinboy]

Now it is released. I am working on another update for next week with many more updates. I am very interested:help in geetings users input to what to add more or to change. Event hough i have a long list of things to add it is so much better to get inputs from others than my self. I guess i am getting blind for obvious improvements by now.

By tthe way, it is totaly free, no shareware or anything. You get all functions directly. I will during the weekend also add a smaller package with just the update exe file and some databases. Thic package will be just 1/5 of the full package. People already using the old version can download this package instead.

Note!

If you have own study lists in your previous installation, please make abackup of those lists first. You can export them to textfiles or XML in the program or upload them to our sever. You can also take a backup of the database inside the program. This backup Ican help you to import to the new version. I am working on a feature to automate this als wee.

[bogleg]

Hi Mandarinboy,

There's something strange looking with your program on my computer. The text on the buttons seem all misaligned. I'm using Windows XP. Also, is it intentional that you install in the same default directory as DimSum? (c:program filesChineseTools)

Chris