Tag: teaching languages

Best Japanese textbooks

I have been teaching Japanese for last 15 or so years and two best textbooks I have come across are:

What makes the two stand out is that they are perfect both for self-studies as well as learning with a teacher/tutor.  Unlike many textbooks in the market that offer few or no exercises, these offer plenty practice for the words, kanji and grammar that you learn. That is the best way to make sure that you don’t forget what you  learn the next day, as it seems to happen way too often.

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Chinese-English character dictionary

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-dictionary.php

This is a pretty cool online tool. Bummer, I can’t use it in my Chinese classes, because, by some strange twist of academic management, 30Russell Square is deprived of WiFi access to EduRoam.

What I really like is that YellowBridge allows you to draw characters in a Java applet window, much quicker than searching by the radical.

In search results you get

  • both the Traditional and Simplfied versions,
  • Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese pronunciation
  • Mandarin audio file
  • compound words
  • Java animation for the stroke order
  • usage examples (Chinese sentences with English translations)

Korean hanja readings are conspicuously missing.

Japanese readings, however, are not very reliable. For example, it claims that the Japanese reading for 团 is shuu. In fact, it is dan, related to the modern Mandarin tuan.

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Learn Korean script quickly: online flash cards

http://www.aeriagloris.com/LearnKorean/

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