Online Chinese Learning-Resources!

[logos]

The following is a compilation of several useful resources that I have found or have heard about on this friendly forum. My goal is to provide a list of useful sites that are distinct, to keep things simple and provide awareness of these valuable free online resources in one listing. If there are any other sites that may be better than listed, please contribute to increase the integrity of this list and benefit the learners that can use them. Thanks!

[1] READING / WRITING

[a] LEARNING CHARACTERS

http://www.usc.edu/dept/ealc/chinese/character/

Shows character stroke animations, pinyin w/sound, and definitions for radicals, traditional and some simplified characters.

http://www.bluetec.com.cn/asp/mymandarin/class_book.htm

I recently discovered this site. It seems to have many useful lessons within.

CALLIGRAPHY

http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/callig.html

Printable calligraphy lesson sheets for practice.

http://www.pzlabs.com/chinesepaper/

Practice calligraphy paper.

[c] DICTIONARIES / REFERENCE

http://www.zhongwen.com

Comprehensive online dictionary.

http://www.yellowbridge.com

English/Chinese talking dictionary, and more.

http://www.mandarinteacher.com/dictionary/Wordsearch.asp

Another useful dictionary.

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm

Excellent resources by Dr Xie.

[d] READING

http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/index.html

Online Chinese Literature

http://faculty.virginia.edu/cll/chinese_reading/

Chinese Readings also with Audio.

[2] SPEAKING / LISTENING

[a] SPOKEN / SURVIVAL CHINESE (Multimedia)

http://www.wku.edu/~yuanh/AudioChinese/

"Audio Tutorial of Survival Chinese" Common phrases to get by with.

http://www.china.org.cn/e-learning/1.htm

Conversational lessons and audio files.

http://www2.kenyon.edu/people/bai/vcsc.htm

Video clips of Survival Chinese. Short video dialogues with simple quizzes to test

comprehension. (Note: Probably not for absolute beginners.)

http://www.pimsleur.com

Uses a unique approach to learning languages by listening alone. The first 30-minute lesson can be listened to on their site.

Mandarin:

http://www.simonsays.com/content/content.cfm?sid=128&pid=411823&agid=5

Cantonese:

http://www.simonsays.com/content/content.cfm?sid=128&pid=411921&agid=5

PINYIN / PRONUNCIATION

http://202.116.29.86:6600/web/others/pinyin.htm

Pinyin practice by Jinan University with audio.

http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/topics/tones/tones.html

A good site to learn pinyin pronunciation with audio examples. (Thanks JoH)

http://www.bluetec.com.cn/asp/mymandarin/pinyin/pinyin_main.htm

Pinyin letter pronunciation.

[c] LISTENING / WATCHING

http://www.wcetv.com

Collection of various tv channels, radio stations and videos.

http://www.cctv-4.com/

Online chinese tv channels.

[3] CULTURAL INFORMATION

[a] HISTORICAL

http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/PM-China/index.htm

Online Historical Textbook of China

http://china.tyfo.com/int/literature/jokes/i990813jokesindex.htm

Ancient Chinese Jokes

http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/AncientChina.html

"Ancient China to Modern Times"

MODERN

http://mclc.osu.edu/

The Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Center

[c] EXPERIENCES

http://www.freewebs.com/briggs_updates/

An account of Peter & Georgia's experience teaching English in China for a year.

[necroflux]

This is a great idea! I think a single, sticky post that gets regularly updated would be a highly useful asset to this forum. Most link-compilation sites for chinese learning out there are littered with nonexistent or otherwise useless sites. Thanks for your hard work on this.

Perhaps we could even somehow incorporate a ratings system for each site and/or some sort of indicator for material difficulty?

[gougou]

Oh yeah, and maybe we could make it a separate links section? Speaking of which, there IS a separate link section...

Sorry for the sarcasm, that is quite a cool collection you got there, it is going to take up lots of the spare time that already I have so little of...

[roddy]

The links section is entirely customizable - I can add extra fields for difficulty, extra categories / subcategories, whatever. There's already a rating feature.

Let me know what you'd like to see and I'll see what I can do.

Roddy

[logos]

I put together this list from the useful sites that I was aware. I didn't directly explore the links section then (only occasionally checked listed ones on sides of main page). But I've checked it out now, and in my opinion the "language learning" section, mostly contains entries for products and services that cost money or contact details. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it didn't tailor to what I was looking for.

The purpose of this list was to be a directory for free online resources. It is something that I also refer to from time to time, as it is more clearly organized than my favourites folder, and also accessible from other machines.

I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to amalgamate these resources into the link directory, but this list is something I planned to be dynamic and updated when more useful resource sites become known to replace or supplement current entries. (Although I haven't seen any way to edit the main post yet )

Most importantly, I wanted to share the list with others who are in the same boat as me, and perhaps needed a few sites to get started in their learning.

thanks,

logos

[roddy]

The reason that those sites are in the links section is because their owners are motivated enough to place them there - free site owners are much less likely to come along and add their links. As the links section is fairly new and nobody has yet added a great deal of free sites, the few sites that are there may tend to be commercial ones.

Using the link directory will let people comment individually on each link, rate it, and let you keep track of how many people visit it. You can also currently classify it by language and type of characters used, and if there's a call for extra fields, such as 'difficulty' then I can add that very easily.

Anyway, it's a useful list whether in the links directory or in a post - many thanks.

Roddy