Roll your own Hanzi practice sheets

 

Incompetech has a Chinese Character Sheet PDF Generator 

Quite good if you want to customise your Hanzi practice sheets.

Free

Sample of  CML Hanzi Practice Grid

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How to talk about "movies" in Chinese 电影 diànyǐng

How to talk about "movies" in Chinese - photo and dicussion of 电影 diànyǐng

Found this great post about how to talk about films in Chinese. Why is great?  Because it is about my level of Chinese.  I think it is the first time I have read something outside of my study / course materials and have understood the meaning of everything and can answer all the questions. I was able to do this with easy and quickly. So I must be making some progress in my studies.

电影院 diàn yǐng yuàn

Study more Chinese is a great site for;

• Learning Chinese at all levels
• Connecting with other learners
• Chinese Resources
• Seeking help and information about Chinese 
• Chinese Grammar
• Links to resources
• Discussions
• Blogging within the Study More Chinese site

Study More Chinese

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

Merry Christmas! 圣诞快乐 | Dear Dim Sum

Happy Christmas Everyone

Explanation of the Hanzi for Christmas Greetings from Dear Dim Sum.

Merry Christmas! 圣诞快乐 | Dear Dim Sum

The Secrets of Successful Language Learning

The Secrets of Successful Language Learning

Free ebook follow the link --> Smashwords - The Secrets of Successful Language Learning - A book by David Bolton

Chinese Picture Dictionary

Here is a great resource for visual learners. A Chinese Picture Dictionary. Lots of categories with the word in English, hanzi, pinyin and an audio to listen to for correct pronunciation. I found it very useful. There are 52 catagories from Airplane to Weather. Fast to load and quick and easy to look up. An excellent multimedia resource for learning Chinese.

The about page has this information

 “The Chinese Picture Dictionary is a multimedia courseware that aims to expand the vocabulary of beginning-level Chinese language students.  The Chinese Picture Dictionary presents several hundred pictures based on familiar settings of daily life. ..Each picture is presented in an individual page, along with buttons students can click to view the depicted vocabulary word written in Chinese script, view the pronunciation spelled out in Pinyin romanization, and  view a sample sentence using the word.  In addition, students can listen to native speakers of the language pronounce the word. 

The Chinese Picture Dictionary originated from the fact that pictures have long been favored by language teachers as a learning tool.  Because of their visual nature, they can say far more than words, and avoid the unnecessary use of translation.  The thematic presentation of 20 pictures together aims to help Chinese language students to streamline their learning and knowledge of new vocabulary in an effective way.”

Another Free Chinese Mandarin Learning Resource

Another Free Chinese Mandarin Learning Resource

I found another resource 好好学习天天向上 hǎoháo xuéxí tiāntiān xiàngshàng or the English title Day Day Up! - Chinese Free Online Chinese Mandarin Text book. I think it is a rather long winded title in Chinese and English. However, it is indeed free.

The methodology is that vocabulary and sentences are presented in small pieces or chunking the information. There is lots of repetition. The vocabulary is very practical. Most of the sentences are well explained with grammar notes. The site claims to have PDF downloads of each lesson but I could find none. There are MP3s in each of the lessons. It is not the easiest site find what you are looking for. 

The topics are;

Elementary

• Origins and Nationalities
• Relationships and Modifiers
• Coming and Going
• Time

Elementary II

• Study
• Wants and Desires
• Likes and Dislikes
• Work

There is even some humour scattered throughout the text. “It presents authentic and practical language that is immediately useful – no more dialogues about Beijing opera”. I have to thank my friend / fellow Chinese Mandarin Learner, Christine, for finding that gem.  At the end of some sections you will find “The horrors of pronunciation.” and “You cheeky monkey!”, to name a few of the sections.

Alas it looks like this site was intended to also cover pre-intermediate to intermediate II levels, but these pages are blank. It is a pity as it makes a very good quick reference resource.

The site has a similar feeling to the 中文Red中文Green and 中文Blue pages that I reviewed earlier. Overall, I find 好好学习天天向上 a useful site that I find myself visiting occasional.  Day Day Up Chinese!

NPCR1 to NPCR2

Recently I reached a milestone in my learning. I finished New Practical Chinese Reader and began New Practical Chinese Reader Two. There are some noticeable differences between the two texts. The most obvious is that there is no longer any pinyin with the dialogues that begin each lesson / chapter. The idea is that the text will gradually ween us off the use of pinyin. According to the introduction in NPCR1 this is part of the methodology of the series of books. A more subtle change is that the grammer, sentence patterns, questions and answers have become much more complex. I expected the texts to become more difficult, but there seems to be quite a jump from simple Chinese to more complex Chinese.

Here is something I did not expect. There are many suplementary resources for NPCR1 across the Net. As for NPCR2 there seems to be very few resources available. I can't understand this. It is as though learners had very good intentions to begin learning Mandarin, worked their way through NPCR1 and then stopped. Alternatively many of the supporting web sites seemed to have given up creating media that would help learners who choose this text. There are a few websites where I can still access some resources, but others finished with Lesson 14 of NPCR1. So this makes working through NPCR2 for me a bit more dull and less of a rich learning experience. I have searched for suplementary materials for NPCR2 and found nothing.

I still have access these sites;

Chinese Character Writing Exercise Sheets

Quizlet

YellowBridge

Hanlexon

I should mention that my university UNE does supply me with multiple resources to support my learning. The lesson guides are very detailed, well written and support my studies. There is much to do and much to learn in my course of study. 

So onward and upward using NPCR2. If anyone has a NPCR2 related resource or resources I would be very pleased to know about it.  

Chinese Character Etymology

When learning characters I often find one of the best ways to remember is by learning the etymology of the hanzi. This method helps me a great deal. By looking at how the characters have changed over time and seeing their original forms creates links in my memory. I much prefer this to rote learning the hanzi.

I have found three sites that are useful to look up hanzi etymologies.

YellowBridge has a Etymology Explorer which allows you to draw the character (using a mouse) to aid lookup. There are other methods of lookup too; English, Pinyin and others. After finding the hanzi, the explorer can then show the formation method, simplification method and character decomposition.

Hanzi Etymology Explorer

 Another site Chinese-Characters.org has a Pinyin index and a Radical index. Unfortunately the last entry into the weblog was in 2009 and the home page explains that it was a huge project and a labour of love. Do not expect this site to have everything. 

Chinese-Characters.org

Chinese-Characters.org

Third site that you can find much detailed information on hanzi etymology is 中文.com. While I like this site it does look very busy and complex. It displays the hazi with every associated compound. It does have multiple ways to lookup. You can even make quizzes with the learn page. 

Hanzi Etymology Explorer

Hanyu.com

So three very useful sites for etymology look-up. 

Does anyone know of any others? Leave a comment if you have a similar site to recommend.

MDBG English Chinese Dictionary

MDBG English Chinese Dictionary is the best online dictionary I have found so far.  The dictionary The word dictionary contains information about Chinese words, consisting of one or more Chinese characters. Results of searches in the word dictionary will show the following;

• Simplified / Traditional Chinese, the Chinese words matching the query
• Mandarin, the Mandarin pronunciation in Pinyin or ㄅㄆㄇㄈ (Zhuyin Fuhao)
• English, the English definition
• Traditional / Simplified Variant, the Traditional / Simplified variant if available
• HSK, the HSK level(s) in which this word occurs

I find it very useful as it has animated stroke order and you can hear the hanzi pronounced.   It will break the hanzi into character composition. The interface is very easy to use. So a very useful tool for a Chinese Mandarin Learner. Have a look for yourself MDBG Character Dictionary

The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency

The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency is an interesting website. The 汉字 hanzi are listed according to falling statistical order.

The tip from the web page introductions states that the list could be used;

"Students can use the character list to create flashcards in order to train Chinese. Teachers can aslo make such cards to use in their teaching. Write the Chinese characters (possibly both simplified and traditional forms) on one side of a little piece of cardboard. Write pronunciation and explanations on the other side."

The list has 2700 hanzi. It has the first 2400 hanzi and then there are gaps. I like the look of this web site and the list. It has hanzi, pinyin and examples of usage and sentences. Quite a useful resources. Here is an from the beginning of the list.





The most Common Chinese Characters in order of Frequency