Frequently Asked Questions

For whom was this application created?

The application was developed for the beginning and intermediate levels of English learners of Chinese.

What are the requirements for this application?

Windows with Chinese (Simplified) Language Support, which can be downloaded from Microsoft.

What are Chinese materials used for this application?

Practical Chinese Reader Book 1 (Liu, X., Deng, E., & Liu (1997). Beijing: The Commercial Press)
Integrated Chinese Level I Part 1 (Liu, Y., Yao. T., Bi, N., Ge, L., Shi, Y. (2009), Boston: Cheng & Tsui)

What is the purpose of this application?

The application was designed to provide learners with an interactive opportunity to learn Chinese. Students have a chance to be actively engaged in the Chinese-learning process by inputting characters, or pinyin, or English.

What is the uniqueness of this application?

The application was designed with a clear goal to target at English-speaking learners' problems with Chinese learning, and to make their learning easier and enjoyable.

How to use the application to input Chinese?

Make sure your computer has Chinese (Simplified, China) Microsoft Pinyin added. First click the radio button for Character. Then key in pinyin and select the right character.

How to use the application to input English?

The radio button is set for English as default. Simply key in an English word that you are interested in getting its Chinese counterpart.

How to use the application to input Pinyin?

First, make sure that your computer is in the Pinyin inputting mode. Then click the radio button for Pinyin, and start keying in the pinyin form.

How to mark tones?

Simply use a numeral to indicate a tone. For example, the pinyin form for "person" is ren, which is pronounced with a second tone, so you should put in ren2.

How to input ü for the characters like nü3 "女" and lü4 "绿"?

Use v for ü. So for nü3 "女", please key in nv3, and lv4for lü4 "绿".

For any questions or comments, please write to Dr. Dongdong Chen at dongdong.chen@shu.edu.