I am no longer satisfied with these courses, so I have made them “Unlisted.” This means they no longer show up in the course lists, but you can continue to take them if you were already taking them. I’m posting the links here in case someone misplaces them.
I am no longer satisfied with them mostly because I am no longer satisfied with the cedict definitions I’ve used. If you would like to become a contributor let me know.
If you would like me to help you make a course, let me know and I will see what I can do.
If you are more advanced, rather than studying lists of words, I recommend you learn words in context using Pleco, and perhaps http://chinesetextanalyser.com/ I like these programs because they allow you to very easily learn the words in context.
Yeah, after all those years I last checked, the courses are still terrible. Pinyin in the same column as definitions? This gives the learner the answer, lmao. And who needs pinyin next to the characters in the others, must be a really lazy learner. And as always, millions of words cluttered into a single level, which kills sense of progress. Haha
@Pope_Pius_IX, we’ve had this discussion before. My reason for doing it like this was to increase the exposure to the right pinyin of the other 7 choices in the MC test. As for why I now no longer recommend the courses, see my original post.
I now recommend reading books and watching TV series and movies with your smartphone or tablet in hand. And on that device have Pleco installed and in Pleco have added the text or subtitles of what you are reading or watching, and a user dictionary you’ve made yourself of the book or movie you are watching. (If someone wants help with that, I’d be glad to help.)
Then you can tap on the text in Pleco, cycle through different dictionaries in the pop up, including the one you made for the content, and with a tap add it to your flashcard list.
I am now watching 《武林外传》 for example. If I come upon 下水道 and decide I don’t know it, I can look at my entry for it. I can see the word is used in 武林外传 4 times, all in episode 15. It is not a very uncommon word as I can see in the frequencies per million of different studies. In subtitles of TV series and movies its frequency is 8.67 per million, on the internet it is 2.53 per million and in news articles it is 2.22 per million. Most importantly, if in the future when I do my reviewing I forget the word, I can look at the line again and that will jog my memory.
I have downloaded some 200 Chinese movies. My current project is to gather the subtitles for them, collate them, and make a user dictionary out of that.
No worries I was just trolling
That’s an excellent idea actually, you sound very passionate. Must be a ton of hard work since subtitle files doesn’t always sit around on their own out there
It’s going to take me a very long time to watch 武林外传 so I will not get to that for a while I think. I should just bite the bullet and find the time to spend half a day or however long it takes to find, say, 50 subtitles.
My dictionaries up till now:
I was actually lucky I found the script for 武林外传 as it is a series I enjoyed watching previously, and the only subtitles I could find for series were for 士兵突击, which doesn’t look like I’ll enjoy, and one for an adaptation of 红楼梦 from the 80s.
下水道