Начальный курс китайского языка · Т. П. Задоенко, Хуан Шуин
The course that Moscow State University's institute built its first year on, in three parts. Every word from every lesson dictionary is typed up and ready to train.
Why a word list beats the scan
What you add on top of the book is everything a paper list cannot do.
Entries come from the lesson dictionary of the course itself. Where a character has several readings, the reading the lesson teaches is the one in the list.
Native pronunciation for each entry, so tones are something you hear and repeat, not something you guess from the page.
Spaced repetition brings each word back just before you would forget it, and stops showing what you already know.
Every character animates stroke by stroke, and you can write it with your finger until the order sticks.
One list per lesson, numbered exactly as the book numbers them. No matching up, no renaming, no spreadsheet.
Browser, iPhone and Android share the same lists and the same progress. Ten minutes before class count too.
Why the book alone is not enough
A textbook shows a word once. Memory research is blunt about what happens next, and about what fixes it.
Students who kept testing themselves on foreign-language vocabulary recalled about 80 % of it a week later. Those who kept re-reading the same list recalled about 36 %.
Karpicke & Roediger, Science, 2008Spreading review over days beats cramming it into one sitting, in a meta-analysis covering more than 14 000 participants. The longer the gap you need to remember for, the bigger the gain.
Cepeda et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2006Foreign-language words drilled at expanding intervals were still there nearly a decade later, with no further study in between.
Bahrick et al., Psychological Science, 1993That is exactly what the flashcards do: they ask you for the word instead of showing it, and they come back on the day you are about to forget it. Your lesson list plus the app is the pairing the research points at.
The series
Part I starts from the sounds and the first characters, part II and part III carry the systematic course. All three are the fifth edition of 2010.
Published by Восточная книга. The earlier course by the same authors, «Основы китайского языка» of 1993, has its own lists as well.
Three steps
The lists follow the book's own numbering, so lesson 14 is lesson 14.
A free account keeps your lists and your progress. No file, no import, no plugin.
Listen, recognise, type or write the character. The app brings back what you are about to forget.
Questions
Т. П. Задоенко, Хуан Шуин, «Начальный курс китайского языка», parts I, II and III, fifth edition 2010. The predecessor «Основы китайского языка», вводный курс of 1993, is covered separately.
A free account is enough to open the lists and start training. A subscription adds the offline app features and unlimited reviews, and you will know exactly when you hit that point.
Yes. The Russian meanings come from the lesson dictionary of the book itself, not from a generic word list. Where the app's dictionary offered several meanings for one character, we picked the one the lesson uses.
No. It runs in the browser. The iPhone and Android apps are optional and sync the same lists and the same progress.
Report it from the list and an editor checks it. That is how proper names and set phrases from the texts were added, within two days.
«Основы» is the earlier course by the same two authors, published in 1983 and 1993. «Начальный курс» is its radically reworked successor and the edition sold today. The words overlap, the lesson numbering does not.
Ready when you are
1 841 words across 36 lessons of the course. Open the one you need and train it tonight.
Free to start · iPhone, Android and browser · the same lists everywhere
