tools for studying Chinese

Word Frequencies from Corpus Data

Knowing the frequency of the Chinese words you are studying helpful in a few different ways. If an unknown word is relatively common, then it’s generally more important to learn that word, compared to a less common word. With that knowledge in hand, you can feel less guilty about removing the rare words from your flashcards, and persist in learning the ones that are common yet difficult. If a word has a low frequency in general, but happens to be used a lot in a particular text, that word may be of interest to study. In the early stages of learning, studying the top N (100, 200, 500, etc.) words as flashcards is an effective way to bootstrap one’s word knowledge before diving into authentic texts. But it’s not 100% effective; the long tail of infrequent words will keep you busy learning new vocabulary for years!

So, how can we obtain word frequency data? With Chinese, it’s trickier than it sounds. (more…)

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Recording Streaming Radio with VLC

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Being able to stream internet radio stations from all over the world is a great opportunity for language learners. Living in a country full of native speakers is the ideal environment for listening practice, but not everyone has the chance to travel or to spend significant time in the target country. For the rest of us, listening to live radio online gives us a touch of authentic culture, whether it’s a call-in show, traditional or pop music, or even commercial ads. In addition to streaming radio, podcasts are another way to listen to native speakers. As podcasts are individual files that can be downloaded, they make suitable material for listening practice, with the ability to repeat or slow down sections that are unclear. But podcasts in Chinese are few in number. Being able to record streaming radio would give the learner a wealth of practice material with massive variety. Or it can just record hours of music for your listening pleasure. (more…)

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