Language - Learning Resources

Chinese Language - Learning Resources

  • UCD Chinese Course Materials
  • Listening Course Materials on the UC Davis Language Center Website: UCD students can log in and listen to the course materials accompanying the textbooks.
    GLOSS by Defence Language Institute: The lessons are developed for independent learners to provide them with the learning/teaching tools for improving their foreign language skills. Reading and listening lessons are based on authentic materials (articles, TV reports, radio broadcasts, etc.) and consist of 4 to 6 activities.
    Read Chinese! (阅讀中文): There are about 60 lessons each for novice and intermediate levels and a dozen cultural lessons in both simplified and traditional Chinese forms. Each lesson contains overview, source (Chinese text), four activities, text plus (audio and side by side Chinese-English translation), note, glossary, dictionary, strategies, etc. The graphical interface is clean and consistent.
  • Online Dictionaries

  • Chinese-English English-Chinese Dictionary 
    N 词库: You can search by pinyin or character to get definitions in Chinese-English and Standard Chinese dictionaries, pinyin, pronunciation, and stroke animation. You may be able to get example sentences, pictures and videos.
    在线新华字典: Provides Chinese definition of a searched word as well as its separate characters. There may be many related words listed at the bottom page.
    Pin1Yin1: Gives pinyin with tone marks, English (and possibly additional Chinese) under each words. Input can be a word or a paragraph, and all characters line up well within the system. If you click a character, there will be detailed explanations and words with that character.
    MDBG Chinese-English dictionary (with other useful learning tools)
    Zhongwen.com (Chinese to English dictionary and other resources)
    Chinese Characters Dictionary (by Chineselanguage.org)

  • Pinyin

  • 汉典工具--汉语拼音方案: On the page, Chinese consonants and vowels are listed with audio attached to them. This site has other tools such as dictionary of words, idioms, poems, calligraphy, classics, and other tools.
    Pinyin Practice: There are instructions on how to practice tones, initials, finals, self quiz, and games on the web site. When a user enters the page, a randomly generated pinyin will be presented. It is time to click it to hear the pronunciation and accomplish the tasks described on the page.

  • Adding Pinyin to Characters

  • 紫宣文化 (Purple Culture): It adds pinyin with tone marks above Chinese characters, and the output lines up well even after it is copied to Word.
    Chinese Pinyin Converters (Words-Chinese): The converter can convert Chinese text to different results: Pinyin (All), Pinyin & Chinese, Pinyin, Chinese & Definition, and Pinyin + Number > Pinyin + Tone Mark. It's a very good tool.

  • Chinese Characters (Stroke Order and Etymology)

  • http://zhongwen.com/zi.htm (Characters genealogy and dictionary)
    Tutor for simplified-traditional character conversion (by Prof. Cecilia Chu et al of UC Berkeley)
    Characters are presented by lessons based on Integrated Chinese textbooks along with English definition, pronunciation and related Chinese words. A good site is 國字標準字體筆順學習網, which allows a user to enter a character to get stroke animation, pronunciation, component, etc. If you want to search by A, B, C, and D, you may want to check at Tim Xie's web site.
    eStroke: A tool to generate animated stroke and definition.

  • Chinese Conversion Tools

  • 笨笨網站繁簡文字轉換系統: It can convert between simplified and traditional Chinese characters encoded in Unicode, GB, BIG5. There are other useful tools on the web site. 

  • Chinese Text to Speech

  • SitePal which has narrators and effects to choose. InterPhonic may be a good tool to purchase and install on your local computer.

  • Mouse-Over or Click-on Annotation

  • RiKai: This site allows you to paste your text and get pinyin and English definition when moving your mouse over a word or character. In addition, you can simply type a URL to get a whole site annotated if you like.

  • Memory and Games
  • Anki: It is designed based on the spatial memory so that it is more efficient than the traditional study methods. It will randomly generate words or characters, switch roles of answers and questions, repeat what you miss, track your performance, remind your to review, etc. You can download and install the tool on your computer or portable device. After installation, you can start up Anki to download the teaching and learning materials shared by other people. The materials may contain audio, pictures, and videos, but you can easily make changes if you like.
  • Chinese Songs and Music
  • Chinese Songs: There are many selected Chinese songs with lyrics (Chinese + pinyin with tones+annotations) and audio file to download.
  • 评书，相声，有声小说
  • 评书吧: The web site contains many 评书, 相声, 金庸作品全集, 综艺节目, 百家讲坛, etc. You don't need to install or download the audio files to listen. Another similar site is www.mmmppp333.com which requires users to install a web tool to download and listen to the shared files, but it may have more materials.
    有声小说 (yousheng8.com)：This site has many more audio books or audio novels than the sites listed in this section in addition to other kinds of audio materials. You can listen to the books or novels without installing plug-ins or downloading them. NOTE:  This website may be slow in opening.
  • Audio News, Newspapers
  • The three best news sites with audio may be 德国之声(short podcasts and analysis), Radio France (broad array of topics), and 美国之音 (consistent US and Chinese daily news). There are many good newspaper sites such as BBC – Chinese (a variety of topics and analysis), 多维新闻网(news related mainland China).
  • Chinese Culture
  • China.Com: The web site contains very concise, selected information about China, hanyu, literature, history, geography, traditional culture and tourist attractions or resorts.
    中華里：A site allows users to search by topics (人物系列, 歷史系列, 中華美德系列, 生活時令系列).
  • Integrated Chinese Companions
  • IC-1 multimedia exercises (by Ying Yang of UC Berkeley, very helpful but accessible only in Internet Explorer)
    IC-1 Vocabulary PowerPoint Files (by Mindy Zhang and Julia Kessel)
    The textbook serials homepage with comprehensive resources for IC learners (by Prof. Tao-chung Yao of Univ. of Hawaii) *please note that this is a PDF and may download the entire book to your computer (it is a large file)
  • Materials For Advanced Learners
  • SCOLA Insta Class ("News for Language Learning" with video and audio files as well as English translation. Audio and text files can be downloaded to your computer. New files are added weekly. Ask your teacher or Language Lab stuff for login info)
    DW News (a site where you can read the daily Chinese news about China)
    Links to Internet Chinese libraries etc (novels or stories can be easily found through those links. Collected by by Dr. Tianwei Xie of CSU, Long Beach)
  • Comprehensive Learning and Research Resources
  • Learning Chinese Online (by Prof. Tianwei Xie of CSU, Long Beach)
    China Links (redoubtable list of resources in Chinese language, linguistics, literature, culture etc. by Prof. Marjorie Chan of OSU)
     
  • UCD Chinese Computing Labs
  • UCD Language Learning Center (LLC,18A Olson Hall)
  • Resources of Literature, Culture, and Society
  • Chinese Classics (with annotations in English, by Rick Harbaugh)
    Culture of China (Wikipedia)
    Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization (prepared by Patricia B. Ebrey of University of Washington)
    Modern Chinese Literature (collections by Kirk Denton)
    China Internet Information Center (by China's government)
    Hong Kong Wonder Net
  • Video Materials
  • Survival Chinese: There are 20 video clips for you to teach or learn Chinese by topics or functions such as asking for direction, hotel check-in, post office, seeing a doctor, etc. After watching a clip, there are some questions to check listening comprehension.
    Chinese Movies with Subtitles: There are many (Chinese) movies with separate subtitles for you to search and download. There are instructions and tools to play movies with separate subtitles on the web site. Other Chinese movie sites can be Tudou, Sohu, etc.

Japanese Language - Learning Resources