"n+1 word" reading website

[Tatarik]

I've seen that I'm not the only disappointed with Bliubliu (http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/44587-bliubliu-review/).

 

WOuld you know any good n+1 word Chinese reading website? Basically a website that learns the word you know and display texts that are exactly matching your level/vocabulary.

 

Thanks,

T.

 

UPDATE: By "n+1" we mean a system that would (1) remember/store the words (mono- and bigrams) you know and (2) proposes you texts according to these n words you know + some extra ones to help you making some progress.

[imron]

Not a website, but I developed Chinese Text Analyser for basically this purpose, however you need to discover texts on your own.

 

The program highlights unknown words and allows you to export them for use in flashcard programs and the like.  It also keeps track of your vocabulary over time.

[Tatarik]

@imron. Interesting. Too bad there's no screenshot/bideo on your website. WOuld be good to get a (visual) idea of the tool before having to download anything.

 

Also, how does the program differenciate between mono- and bi-grams? :0

[Shelley]

You could try Mandaread here http://mandaread.com/

 

They have texts of varying levels that you can read along with varying degrees of help.

 

its available for PC, android, and iOS.

[Tatarik]

@Shelley, from what I can see, nothing new there. And that's not "n+1".  I don't mind promoting your tool, but if only it was as relevant as @imron's..

 

There are tons of pop-up translation software including the mighty Pleco, that do the same thing as your website (and more).

What would be great is to have something that (1) remembers the words you know and (2) proposes you texts with the n words you know + some extra ones.

[AaronLIC]

Have you seen Duable Chinese  ?

Seems to be what you are looking for, pity its still in Beta 

check it out 

[Tatarik]

@AaronLIC. Thanks for sharing. This indeed looks like a great candidate, with all the required features. I registered for beta and will be waiting for it

[Shelley]

Its not my tool, I just use it and find it is good for me.

 

I guess I didn't understand what you meant by n+1 word.

[Tatarik]

@Shelley. Okay, fair enough. I will update OP with n+1 features. FYI, you might as well use Zhongwen, Perapera or Pleco Clip Reader (sorry you probably know them already). I don't see the added value of Mandaread.

[Shelley]

The added value is they find things to read at your level and you can have a series of texts that increase in difficulty as you progress as it does keep a record of what you know and what you are learning if you register which is free.

 

I use pleco, perapera, pinyinr as well.

 

I find Mandaread is different from them.

 

Hope you find what you need.

[imron]

Too bad there's no screenshot/bideo on your website

Yeah, screenshots and better documentation are on my list of things to do, but low priority because there are still new features being added so want to wait for the interface to settle somewhat first.  You can find some screenshots and a discussion here.

[imron]

Also, how does the program differenciate between mono- and bi-grams? :0

Chinese Text Analyser works on words.  Some times these are single characters, sometimes two characters, some times three, four,  five (or more) characters.

 

The program basically has a giant word-list (generated from CC-CEDICT at present), and it parses Chinese text and attempts to segment the text in to words.  The segmenter is quite basic at the moment so it misses out quite a few things - especially things like names, but I plan to improve it once I get the rest of the program in place.

[Shelley]

"UPDATE: By "n+1" we mean a system that would (1) remember/store the words (mono- and bigrams) you know and (2) proposes you texts according to these n words you know + some extra ones to help you making some progress."

 

From my experience this is what mandaread does.

[Tatarik]

@Imron: Thanks Imron. I understand and I actually have been confronted to similar issues. I've red on the thread you linked to that your tool just take first candidate. As you're aware of context does matter.

For instance, if the text includes 你好 then Chinese Text Analyzer would always propose the monograms 你 (you) followed by 好 (good), without proposing the bi-grams.

Problem is, monograms almost always have a definition, so does CTA feature some sort of automatic (or manual) word mapping?

note: I can take this comment to the relevant thread if you think that's more appropriate. ? let me know

 

@Shelley: Yeah I guess Mandaread could do a better job displaying the product features on their website (that's the least we could ask for).

It is not obvious they keep track of your vocabulary... it looked more like they would display texts from standard levels (as opposed to customized level) like for example beginner/intermediate/advanced... I'll have a look then to see if that's effectively the case.

[tiantian]

You could also try "Nuli! 努力！" (http://www.nulinu.li/). It will only give you sentences consisting of words you already know. Just try it. Its still in beta and completely free.

 

You can read more about it here: http://howcanilearnchinese.com/chinese-vocab-learning-tool/

[imron]

For instance, if the text includes 你好 then Chinese Text Analyzer would always propose the monograms 你 (you) followed by 好 (good), without proposing the bi-grams.

By design, Chinese Text Analyser always focuses on words.  If you have the word 你好, it will propose 你好 as a word and allow you to mark that.  It (purposefully) does not allow you to mark individual characters in that word unless the word is only a single character (or if the segmenter failed to identify a group of characters as a word).

 

Individual characters do have meanings, and while it can be helpful to understand them, in my experience it's far more useful to learn words as the primary unit.  Which is not to say that you shouldn't learn the characters, you should, it's just that emphasis should be "this is a word ABC, made up of the characters A, B and C", rather than "The characters A, B and C make up the word ABC".  The distinction can be subtle, but it can make a huge difference to your learning.

 

E.g in English, if you learn the word 'upset', you don't learn it as 'up' and 'set' and then put them together to get 'upset', you just learn 'upset'.  The same should be done for Chinese.

[Tatarik]

Thanks Imron, got the point. Just wanted to make sure that the parsing was done well, and I have to say after trying out your CTA yesterday night, I found it very effective. I'm still getting my head around it to understand all functionalities, but so far great job with it!

 

[Tatarik]

@Titantian: Nuli! looks really promising! many thanks!

[imron]

Just wanted to make sure that the parsing was done well

I would say at the moment that the parsing is done acceptably, but with plenty of scope for improvement.

 

I'm still getting my head around it to understand all functionalities

Feel free to ask any questions you have in the main thread.

[Tatarik]

@Tiantian: do you know if Nuli! is still under development? I couldn't find anything about the founders, nor did I egt any reply to my request for support on different topics.