Chinese-Tools.com is a commercial site; however, it consists of thirty free lessons including topics ranging from simple daily conversations to more sophisticated conversations such as food, weather, sports, and illness. Each lesson comes with more than one conversation accompanied by audios, text in simplified Chinese characters, pinyin, and English translation. Additionally, there are vocabulary, grammar, and exercises.
Type of Material:
Drills and Practice
Recommended Uses:
Can use as reference in online class
Can assign as homework
Can use in class
Technical Requirements:
Web browswers
Identify Major Learning Goals:
To learn basic Chinese conversations,
To understand vocabulary,
To comprehend grammar, and simplified Chinese characters.
Target Student Population:
Junior/high school and college students.
Any classes in Chinese
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
None
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The lessons are arranged in a progressive order, from the simplest to the hardest.
Each lesson is consistently presented in an organized manner.
The contents cover essential conversations a learner would likely encounter in a real situation.
Users can also print out each lesson for their records.
Provides clear text, vocabulary, notes, and audio files.
Concerns:
The link from the main page to each lesson page is accompanied by a thumbnail showing a relevant picture. However, there are no pictures within the lesson.
The Chinese characters are in a small font with no option to enlarge them.
No interactive drills.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Each lesson is structured with conversations, vocabulary, grammar, Chinese text, and English translation.
The first two lessons introduce Chinese phonetics, including the initials, finals, tones, tone changes, and pinyin spelling rules. Additionally, there are character writing exercises.
There are also links to various cultural sites such as Chinese art, poetry, songs, and recipes, as well as links to useful learning tools such as online dictionaries and converters for simplified-traditional characters.
The course provides 30 lessons which cover many topics for daily conversation.
Students can use the audio files to listen to the lessons. Grammar and notes are also provided.
Concerns:
The character writing exercises are available only in the first six lessons.
The lessons could be more useful by including cultural backgrounds for the conversations.
There are no animations of character writing and no audios for the vocabulary words.
Additionally, there is only one speaker for each dialog.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Each lesson starts with a menu and links to the various sections of the lesson.
At the end of the lesson, there is a link to the next lesson.
The course materials are clearly presented and navigation is easy.
Everything is on one page.
Concerns:
Each page is quite long, so it would be useful to include a link from each section back to the menu at the top of the page.
Clicking the audio file will take the user to a new window.
There is no back button.
Creative Commons:
Search by ISBN?
It looks like you have entered an ISBN number. Would you like to search using what you have
entered as an ISBN number?
Searching for Members?
You entered an email address. Would you like to search for members? Click Yes to continue. If no, materials will be displayed first. You can refine your search with the options on the left of the results page.
Searching for Members?
You entered an email address. Would you like to search for members? Click Yes to continue. If no, materials will be displayed first. You can refine your search with the options on the left of the results page.
