Category: Reviews
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“Relationship Calculator” – An App To Help Keep Those Familial Terms Straight
One of the biggest challenges many learners face is in trying to learn the different ways of addressing family members. I remember what pretty much amounted a general look of confusion around the classroom as we went over the multitude of combinations. Of course, we were told “well, just parents, siblings and close relatives matters” to which…
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Chinese Learning Apps for Android Roundup
This post is a follow-up to the New Chinese Learning App Roundup post, but this time we’ll be focusing on apps for Android! While messing around on my Android phone, I went through and grabbed what seemed like the most useful apps from the Google Play store for Chinese study. Check out the list of…
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Ninchanese – a new comer to the online Chinese language learning arena
I had been following the progress of Ninchanese for a little while. I joined the beta program a while ago, and it was a few months ago that I received news that the beta was ready. I’ve gone in and played around a bit, and thought it might be worth taking a look at and…
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SwiftKey for Android Now Supports Chinese!
Every so often I switch the default keyboard just to check out the third party ones. I don’t use them often, but I was happy to see that SwiftKey (one of the first third party keyboards I downloaded) finally supports Chinese input. And, perhaps just in time for Chinese New Year, they’ve also introduced a…
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McDonald’s Taiwan Goes to Japan
Okay so I have a guilty pleasure: Whenever McDonald’s comes out with a new and unique burger in Taiwan, I can’t help myself but go and try it. Mostly because, really, you’ll never get to see these things stateside. This time around, McDonald’s has decided to go to Japan with a tonkatsu-esque pork burger and…
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[App Review] Mandarin Companion Graded Readers – A Complete Immersion Environment
Personally, I’m a huge fan of graded readers: not only do I use them in my own Japanese language studies, but they also play a large role in my graduate school research. However, I find that for Chinese learning, there’s far fewer selection of graded readers to come by. Recently, Mandarin Companion has started releasing Graded Readers to…
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An Authentic Taste of Japan Hidden Away
I usually don’t get into food or restaurant reviews on this blog, but I really wanted to showcase this particular Japanese restaurant. I’m admittedly a huge fan of Japanese food, and this place bills itself as “Japanese home cooking” (日本家庭料理). I’ve always been more of a fan of a good home cooked meal, something local,…
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[Book Review] Reading and Writing Chinese
Tuttle Publishing graciously supplied this book for me to take a look at and review. Below are my thoughts. Reading and Writing Chinese, 3rd Edition By: William McNaughton, Revised by Jiageng Fan (2013, Tuttle Publishing) I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to Chinese characters–and I’m a huge fan of Chinese character books.…
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[Book Review] Chinese For Beginners
Tuttle Publishing graciously supplied this book for me to take a look at and review. Below are my thoughts on the book. Mastering Conversation Chinese: Chinese for Beginners By: Yi Ren and Xiayuan Liang (2012, Tuttle Publishing) There’s quite a large number of Chinese textbooks on the market nowadays, so finding the perfect one is a…
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「萌典」Free ChineseChinese Dictionary (iOS/Android)
Since I first wrote this post there have been two updates to the app I’ve updated the post accordingly. (3/6/2013) By chance I came across a new dictionary app for iOS and Android devices called 「萌典」(you can also find it by the English name “MoeDict”). It’s sourced from the Revised Chinese Dictionary put out by…
En Route To Fluency 