Supplemental Chinese Learning Resources

Over the past few years more Chinese language resources have emerged online. The most popular of these resources remains Chinesepod.com, which offers podcasts at various levels. Other Web sites have popped up to enhance the learning experience by catering to different needs of students. Some sites are specifically set up to teach reading or writing, while others are geared toward listening. Unfortunately, there are still only a few sites that explain grammar effectively.

Two years ago, I signed up for Livemocha.com, which offers users a choice of languages. The appeal of this site is that it is community driven. It is possible to speak with other users online for a language exchange. There are also writing and speaking exercises which can be corrected by native speakers. And, it provides an opportunity to submit better translations of materials and create public-use online flashcards. The problem with this format is that some translations are not accurate and some corrections made to assignments are ambiguous or entirely incorrect. It does provide some useful repetition of sentence patterns within the lessons that can be helpful as a supplemental resource.

Nciku.com was founded in 2003 but didn't gain recognition until 2008. It began as an extensive online translation dictionary and grew into a much larger resource for Chinese and English learners. Today, the site offers a daily conversation with Pinyin and audio, a daily character writing lesson, and many more example sentences in its dictionary than when it began. The community section has exercises and tests as well as radio shows. It now allows users to search its database of short conversations and create vocabulary lists.

One hidden gem on the Internet is the Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System. The entire site, run by the department of Asian language and cultures at Rutgers University, is set up like a textbook and meant to supplement the required classes for four years of Chinese study. Each unit of the course has a dialogue, short reading, vocabulary, grammar and exercises. There is also streaming audio for the dialogue and reading. For absolute beginners, there is a page with a Pinyin pronunciation guide, which can be difficult to follow without proper instruction. This online teaching system is the equivalent of many textbooks used in Chinese universities. However, using this system requires a lot of dedication to self-studying.

All three resources are useful for students who want to learn or improve their Chinese. These resources are not meant to be the only resources for studying, but rather as supplements to regular classes.