If you have never heard of Skritter before, it allows you to practice writing Chinese by hand and provides you feedback on your writing. It is an excellent example of the possibilities to combine technology and Chinese learning.
It’s pretty slick in that it carefully provides repetition of the characters you are learning to help you optimize your learning. With it, you can learn characters wherever you go in the palm of your hand. If you’ve never heard of it before, now would be a good time to check it out!
One cool feature is the ability to study select word lists. We’ve been in touch with the folks at Skritter and we’re happy to announce the word lists for all of the Mandarin Companion books are now available on Skritter! We compiled a list of every word used in each book in order of frequency. So if you want to read “The Secret Garden” but only know about half of the characters, you can join Skritter, select “The Secret Garden” word list, and in a short time you’ll be ready to read your first book in Chinese.
Learning the characters is the first step. The next step is understanding how they are used. Skritter is a useful tool to help with the first step and Mandarin Companion can help you with the second. Click on the title below to be taken to the word list on Skritter.
- Sherlock Holmes and the Red-Headed League 《卷发公司的案子》
- The Country of the Blind 《盲人国》
- The Monkey’s Paw 《猴爪》
- The Secret Garden 《秘密花园》
- The Sixty-Year Dream 《六十年的梦》
We are developing new ways to make the Mandarin Companion readers more accessible to all learners. We want to see you succeed!
– Jared Turner
