New Tool for Learning

A few weeks ago, Bethany and I each purchased a new language learning tool. The Palm Treo... with Pleco software. This has absolutely changed our language learning experience. Granted, Pleco was not cheap (it cost as much as the handheld itself). But it has been well worth it.

Here are the best features of the software... at least, the ones most useful to us:

Handwriting recognition: If I see a character in a textbook, or on a menu, or at a bus stop, and I don't know what it is... I just scribble the character into Pleco using my stylus, and it gives me the nearest matches for the character. I tap the character, and just like that... I know how it is pronounced, its definition, and what other words the character may be used in.

What was this process like for us before? Well, last semester, we were red dictionary people. Anybody who has studied the Chinese language has certainly seen the red Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary. First, look at the character that you don't recognize. See any radicals that look familiar? Find that radical in your dictionary's front pages. Then, count the number of additional strokes in that character, aside from the radical. In that section of the dictionary, go to the sub-section for that radical with the number of additional strokes for that character. Search down the list of, who knows... maybe a few dozen possible characters... until you see the character you're looking for. Oh, by the way, with the font size, each character is about the size of half of a grain of rice. Short-grain rice. Now, if you're lucky enough to have found the character, you have next to it... the pinyin for the character. Now, look up in your dictionary according to that pinyin. Beware that there are likely 10 other characters with that same pronunciation. Search around... you'll find it.

That was the process... pre-Pleco. If you're on a bus, you would have by now missed your stop. At a restaurant? Everybody behind you (if there even was a line) would have cut in front of you and barked their orders already. And if you're doing homework for your Chinese reading class... it would take you 3 hours to look up any vocab you don't know in a 500 character essay.

Now, with handwriting recognition... both of us, in a major way, save so much time. We have just finished 3 weeks of school. Honestly - I am not exaggerating - I believe we have each saved probably about 8 hours per week because we've got quick, on-the-go, accurate character lookup through Pleco.

Flashcards: See a word or phrase in Pleco that you want to remember and test yourself on later? Tag it with a flashcard category. Set up review sessions and tests on your flashcard categories. Setup the test to give you the character and make you choose the pinyin from multiple choice, or choose the tones given the pinyin, or choose the definition from multiple choice, or any of over a dozen permutations. Even test your writing of the character using the handwriting recognition module.

In the last 3 weeks, I have gone flashcard category crazy. I have a category for banking, feelings & emotions, immigration, grammar terms, phrases & expressions, technology. I probably have about 20 categories right now, in addition to a category for each chapter in our textbook.

What was it like before? Well, before, I didn't even bother trying to do flashcards. But, Bethany...? Bethany has a box... about the size of a 9x13 cake pan. It is more than half-filled with business-card sized flashcards that she hand-cut and hand-wrote all last semester. Rubber-banded together by categories or chapters in our textbooks. I went into the same office supplies store 4 times last semester to buy the same notebook 4 times... so that Bethany could use the thicker cardstock in the notebook to make her flashcards. She learned her words well... but she also spent a lot of time making flashcards.

Now, along with saving time... we are just way more organized about the words that we are learning and about what we need to review more. So, I think, our retention efficiency is better than pre-Pleco.

Looking forward to seeing how this new tool will play out and help in this coming semester...