How to Choose Chinese Learning Software
Learning Chinese doesn’t have to be in a classroom any more. With the technology developing a lot of things can
be done with computer software. Learning Chinese with software is not an exception. There is a lot of Chinese
learning software on the web which is an advantage to learn Chinese.
However, there is also the dark side of overload information from the web. If you don’t know what exactly you
are looking for, you will be easily misleading and get overwhelmed. Today, I’m going to share my experience of
choosing right software for you.
So how to choose Chinese Learning Software for
you?
Since you decide to learn Chinese with software, you need to be aware that when you are working on the software
you mostly don’t have a real teacher with you. Although you may just use the software as a tutorial program to
help your study, you are mostly working on it alone.
When you are learning Chinese with software, you must make sure the software will teach you Chinese Pinyin.
Most of software will teach you the pronunciation, but to only know how to pronounce certain words are not
enough. Without knowing Pinyin, you may know some words but you don’t know how to pronounce new words when you
see Pinyin. Pinyin is the basic phonetic system of speaking Chinese.
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Once you learned all the Pinyin you can basically pronounce every word when you see the Pinyin. You can also
start to check the Chinese dictionary. The Chinese dictionary is very different with English dictionary. There
are two ways to check the words, one of them is to find the words according to Pinyin, and another way is to
find the word by those basic strokes. If you know Pinyin and you know the pronunciation of the word then you
can check the word by Pinyin.
Another function you should look for from the software is to allow you record your speaking and compare with
the original audio. This is a very important function. People use to learn Chinese by following the tape or CD
and imitate the sentences. But did you notice your voice sounds different when you record it and you may not
notice the minor difference. Recording your speaking and compare with the original audio technically would help
you to highlight all the aspect you need to improve.
The last thing you should check is whether the software teach you Chinese characters. There are some courses
and software teaches you everything in Pinyin. Well, Pinyin is a great tool to learn how to speak Chinese, but
Chinese character is the really tool people use to communicate in written. If you go to China, you don’t see
any signs in Pinyin, they are all in Chinese characters. You should not only be able to speak Chinese, but also
be able to identify Chinese characters.
Most of Chinese Learning software include audios and with Chinese demonstration and English translation. With
the above functions you can speed up your learning process and learn Chinese more efficiently. If you are still
not sure which software to check, then I strongly recommend Rocket Chinese to you.
Rocket Chinese is a software based program from Rocket Language Ltd, a reputable
language learning Organization. There are now offering a special discount with 67% off and you should
check it out now! There is also a Rocket Chinese Review you can check out.
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