Podcast (播客)

You might be wondering what has happen? There isn't any post of late. Well, actually I am still learning Mandarin everyday and progressing well.

Of late, I had been busy learning Mandarin from this site.

At ChinesePod, you can find many lessons from absolute beginners to advanced students. I like the conversation style of the teaching. Besides, the feature where one can bookmark or remove learned lessons is great. With this, I can now study on the go on my mp3 player.

Well, listen to the podcast below and judge yourself whether it is suitable for you.

Check out nciku

I found another very useful tool to learn Mandarin. It is nciku. From that site, you can even search a Chinese character by handwrite it.

The feature I like most is the ability to search any English or Mandarin words while surfing the web by just highlight any words if you had loaded the tool to your browser. You can also listen to native speaker the pronunciations for any words or sentences.

Check it out and let me know whether you also find it useful.

Using this tool, you can listen to any Mandarin characters posted in this blog.

Check out ECpod

Thanks to Susan recommendation, I do find ECpod an interesting FREE website (http://www.ecpod.com) that could assist me to learn Mandarin.

ECpod stands for "English Chinese Podcast". It is unique in that all their video clips are contributed by members (but vetted before posting) and hence encourages a vast variety of people to teach one another their native language via different teaching styles/methods.

Below is a sample about school:

A transcript is available for the above video.

Do check it out if you are interested to learn Mandarin or English via video and audio clips and at the same time make friends from all over the world.

It is a place where members from all walks of life in China and abroad can exchange culture.

Besides offering excellent interactive teaching tools for members to learn Chinese and English language, ECpod also

• build a community of individuals with similar interest of learning a foreign language,
• bring the world closer together and allow members to meet and interact with people from different cultural background,
• to promote Chinese cultures to the world,
• to promote English cultures to the world

They are striving to make education FUN and 100% FREE!
Tell your friends about ECpod if you find it useful like I do.

Thank you.
Sam Chan

Chinese Language Tools (中文工具)

To do well in anything, it is important to have the right tools. Recently, I purchased a Creative Zen V Plus MP3 player with 2GB storage. With this player, I could carry with me ton of audio books and songs so that I could listen to self-improvement books and study Mandarin wherever I go.

Repetition is the mother of learning. I am confidence to say that I could now sing the song (one of the best way of learning languages) 老 鼠 爱 大 米 well with understanding.

Nowadays, there are so many websites. Thus, we just need to go to some websites and learn almost anything. Younger generation this day don't face problem like those days where knowledge is scarce. One just need to spend time, put in effort and know how to be more selective. However, only when we apply the acquire knowledge, we will then benefit from it.

Below are some tools and websites that I used to study Mandarin:

• ZDT (Zhongwen Development Tool) - an opensource (free)
  - allow you to create your own word lists
  - learn words using three different flashcard modes.
  - a dictionary for word searching
• Wenlin - a full blown software for learning Chinese
  
• On-line Chinese Tools - with lots of useful tools to assist you in learning mandarin
  

What about you? Do you know of any good tools or sites to learn Mandarin?