Resources for Mandarin Chinese

One way to become bilingual is to grow up in a household speaking one language and in a country that speaks another. I am trying to do this with my children, but as an American Born Chinese (ABC) I have not regularly spoken Chinese for years. Now I am making the effort to do this.

In addition, I have searched high and low for resources to help me with this. Most of the resources I find are for adults or high school students trying to learn the language. With the increasing American interest in China, I thought I would share the list of online resources that I have found useful for children.

Audio Learning for Adults:
ChinesePod is a branch of the Praxis language company. Based in Shanghai, their audio lessons are aimed at adult learners of any level. They have a series of lessons called "Baby Talk" full of commonly used phrases for parents to use with children. They keep it entertaining and practical. Lessons are short, divided up by level, have a vocabulary list, and a forum to ask questions. It's also the best resource for modern words like a T shirt or the internet. The main speaker is a native speaker. They also have "assistant" non-native speakers with obvious foreign accents who translate with her. I love listening to it while I am doing dishes or hanging laundry.

Dictionaries
Yellow Bridge
Using the site to search by radical is cumbersome and often fails to produce the character in question. Translating an English word to Chinese works most of the time, but some casual modern terms are missing. The best part of this dictionary is that once you look up a character, you can break it down into radicals and find other characters that have the same radical in it. Looking up a word made up of more than one character is relatively easy in this dictionary.

MDGB
This is the best dictionary to use when looking things up by radical, especially for characters written in simplified Chinese. Using this site to translate from English or pinyin to Chinese is really difficult. It is really useful for converting between the traditional and the simplified form of the character.

Chinese-Tools
This is the best dictionary to see how a word is used in a sentence. Looking up words or characters by pinyin is difficult. It does not have a way to look up characters by radical. It also doesn't give any traditional characters. It does have more modern words in it and closer translations from English into Chinese than the other dictionaries.

zhongwen
This is the easiest dictionary to use for looking up words by pinyin. Looking up anything by radical is a nightmare. Sometimes when I cannot figure out which radical to use to look up a character, this dictionary is the one I use to find a character by stroke number. Unfortunately even this is not easy because the print is so very tiny.

Children's Learning
Better Chinese
This is a site for young learners that carries books, teacher's manuals, workbooks, lesson plans, music, and online games and stories. It is designed for children growing up in non-Mandarin-speaking households, so all materials come with pinyin and an English interface.

ChinaSprout
General store including cultural products aimed at non-Chinese families with adopted Chinese children. They often have things in stock that other sites have run out of. There is a big selection of books and learning materials but very little guidance in what to buy.

YESASIA
This is the place to find contemporary music and movies (DVD, VCD) from Asia and the West in any Asian language. Videos are useful for getting children to hear consistently correct Chinese intonation. Materials are divided up by country of origin and by language spoken or sung. It is not easily searched by categories such as children's movies or bestselling Mandarin pop album. It's best to look for something specific. For example, looking up Strawberry Shortcake will find more results than children's movie.

China Books
This site was started by an English speaker searching for resources for children. Book selection is terrific. It is a large selection, but every book I have gotten there has been well written and well received by the girls.

Asian Parent
Good selection of books with CDs. Also has Disney books and books on CD in Mandarin that I cannot find elsewhere.

Cheng & Tsui
Ceng & Tsui has been a publisher for 25 years of English and multilingual educational materials about Asia. The site has a wonderful selection of textbook series complete with student and teacher books and workbooks, audio, and video. I love their Flying with Chinese series for children although this particular series requires the teacher to read and speak Chinese already.

Chinese FLES
This fascinating site is the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C.'s site where they are developing a Chinese FLES curriculum for kindergarten and first grade. They also have a google group for discussion among educators.

Comments

[CE Bilingual Books]

Tienchin Ho,
I enjoyed reading your blog. Would you be interested in reviewing a Chinese - English bilingual book? I would be happy to send you a free copy. The book title is THE FROG IN THE WELL. It is based on a Chinese idiom. Please check it out at www.cebilingualbooks.com
Thanks!
Irene

[bingbing]

http://www.typepad.com/t/comments

[shellyuan]

If you want to find as much mandarin learning resources as possible. I recommend http://www.hellomandarin.com.
Hope you will like it.

[xiaoQ]

http://www.learnchinese.bj.cn
Chinese World is the largest and the first LIVE Chinese language education provider in the world. They offer 24/7 on-line Chinese class through Live Video Classroom and education service support .Students can study Chinese anywhere / anytime on-line with bilingual teachers and volunteers .

[Tienchin Ho]

Wow! Thank you everyone for sharing your resources.

Irene, from what I see on your site, the book has English and Chinese side by side on the page. Although this is great for a completely non-Chinese speaking household, I have found that the English on the page distracts my children and myself from learning the Chinese. The idea of using chengyu to teach Chinese is perfect for children！ The illustrations are also beautiful.

bingbing:
hellomandarin looks useful for adult learners. My children, however, need real life dancing and singing with interaction with other children. They are not as interested in online learning.

xiaoQ:
Like most of the services offered online, Chinese World is geared mostly toward businessmen. I have a 3 and a 5 year old who are learning Chinese. I am not looking for online teachers.

Thanks everyone!

天琴