Learning Chinese -- PINGRID, my vocabulary training game
Hello, Chinese learners.
If you are like me, one major difficulty in learning Chinese is to associate characters with their pronounciation. Noting that, I developed a small game to help memorize new words.
It is called Pingrid. The game consists of finding a word among a grid of other words.
Pingrid incorporates an original learning model aimed at insisting on "difficult" words. I have been using it for several months now to study my vocabulary and it has proved to be a real asset in my learning process.
Though quite simple, Pingrid is tremendously effective. It works along the same lines as other advanced repetition-based learning programs. What makes Pingrid unique is that it is 100% tailored for learning Chinese vocabulary.
Screenshot: 
Included is a sample study list and a complete tutorial to get you started right away !
 | Download the package at: http://www.box.net/shared/b7uzv0g548 (Just unzip the file to a directory and... RUN) current version is v2.1c (Oct. 6, 2009) |
 | |
 | How to get the Chinese voice to work. -> you need to install the voice engine with the Microsoft Chinese voice. You can find that on the Lingoes web site (which, by the way, is a great translation tool): http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/speech.htm That voice is not very nice but it is free. Commercial alternatives are all pretty expensive. If you know of any good free voice, please let me know! For more detailed instructions, look here. |
 | Finally, if you haven't yet, be sure to check out Pablo, a great Chinese-English dictionary for beginners. |
25 comentarios:
Pablo is really getting some use now with the new F10 clipboard look-up. It could well end up ousting Makan as my default interface to CEDICT - especially now that it's using the latest 25.5.2008 version...
With a few minor mods, Pingrid could also be made more useful as a learning tool. The font currently used is definitely not one of the prettiest - how complicated would it be to enable use of SimSun and/or other installed fonts?
Also learning of new characters would be greatly enhanced if after right-clicking for an unlearned character the user had the chance to see what the correct character was before being presented with the next batch of characters. The simplest way to implement this would probably be to require some further user input before moving on to the next quiz item after the right-click. With something like this in place, I would expect to see Pingrid also getting a lot more serious use.
I would like to see 'words' spelled together, i.e., "huan1ying2", not "huan1 ying2".
I noticed someone said, "I want to see words spelled together"...WHY?
Canyoureadthis?Allthewordsaretogether.
I would be VERY confused if the Pinyin words were beside one another!
Hello, I represent a publisher who would like to publish the screenshot found on this site, could you get in touch with me so we could discuss permissions to use this image?
Thanks for your time.
Hello Jill, you can post me an email at ehaton (at) gmail.com
Hello vic
(I am late!)
The new version lets you select the font you prefer.
As for having time to see the correct characters:
the correct word keeps showing while you keep the mouse button pressed.
Hi,
First of all, thanks a lot for Pingrid. It seems to be really fantastic.
But I have a problem: the pinyin does not appear correctly in my pingrid, I don't know why. I realized the problem is with characters with diacritcs, but I wasn't able to solve the problem.
Well, hope you can give me a "hand".
Thanks a lot.
Kisses from Brazil,
Juliana.
Terrific game. I really like the ease of switching fonts - learning what a character looks like in different writing styles is difficult for me, and using a variety of fonts helps with this.
One suggestion: it would be nice if the program would choose the random words from those with the same number of characters as the target word. When presented with a single character, like wǒ, it would be nice to only have single characters as options to pick. It's obvious that 朋友 is not going to be the answer for wǒ, for example.
this is a great way to learn characters, but since it is supposed to be fun, could n't we have a scoring system, like noting the number of correct answers vs wrong answers and also some sort of time vs results scoring system so we can see how our speed skills improve?
Hello jpo,
Your suggestion has been made by several users, i.e. to display only words with the same number of characters as the word to find.
I have always resisted this, for not totally rational reasons, one of them being that I find the resulting effect visually unattractive.
I have tweaked the word selection so as to show *more* words of the right length than would result from a random pick in the ditionary. I may have to tweak it some more...
Thanks for your input.
Hello google,
nice suggestion. The real reward, of course, is to see your vocabulary increase, but some scoring can only help maintain motivation.
Any ideas are welcome.
Regarding speed, I would like to share an observation.
I have found personally that my average answering speed is very stable, at exactly 6 seconds since several months. Have some other users experienced the same thing? or not?
it would be nice to be able to choose between simplified and traditional characters.
I also see mistakes in the pinyin. 'shing' instead of 'shang' and so on.
Hello Mr. T,
Actually, it IS possible to play with Traditional characters. It is a 'hidden' feature.
There is no menu command to activate it, you need to:
1. close Pingrid if it is running,
2. open the 'prefs.txt' file
3. in the line 'tradorsimpl=Simplified', replace Simplified by Traditional
4. save and close.
By the way, you'll notice that by altering the prefs.txt file, you can also change the number of rows and columns in the grid (from 1x1 to 9x9)!
As for the pinyin bug you mention, I cannot reproduce the problem on my computer. Maybe it is a font problem. Would someone have an idea??
Great! I've changed my preferences file for traditional characters, thnx.
-
some concrete examples of pinyin mistakes I get (ignore the missing tone marks, that's just me):
上海 - shang hli
加 - jil
千 - qiln
先生 - xiln sheng
百 - bli
今天 - jin tiln
明天 - ming tiln
很多 - hln dul
北京 - bli jlng
商 - shlng
星期 - xlng ql
五 - wl
i had version 1.99 and i just upgraded to v2.1
i'm still getting the same problem. Perhaps it's only me?
1.I hate the fact that when I choose the right character it auto. jumps to a new character. Also when I finally choose the right character it jumps to a new one. I don't like holding the right mouse button down everytime. If you could change it so that by default when you choose the right character it only goes to a new screen after you click a forward button which you could add , or just a right click or double right click or something like that.
2.Please change the font for the english and pinyin definitions to a MS true type font or something similar.
3.If the pinyin shows it is only one word then it should only display one character choices, same with 2 character ones should not show one character choices, it is too obvious.
Great work so far.
Hello Laien,
thanks for using Pingrid.
1. auto-jump to next word
When you have found a word, Pingrid maintains it displayed while you keep the mouse button pressed and then automatically jumps to the next word.
This is a feature I do not plan to change because one strength of Pingrid compared to other learning programs is precisely its speed. I personally have around 100 words to review every day, so I want the interface to be as quick as possible.
I hope one gets used to it. If it really bothers you, I may add it as an option to have to take an action (for instance click in the lower part of the screen) to move on.
2. Font for English and pinyin definitions: the font used is Arial Unicode MS, a Microsoft unicode font. If you do not have it installed, I recommend you look for it. If you have it already, then it may be a bug, keep me posted (by private email please).
3. "If the pinyin shows it is only one word then it should only display one character choices, same with 2 character ones"
This comment was made by quite a few users. I understand the logic of it, but I am not entirely logical! One thing is that I do not like the visual aspect of the screen when there are only 1-character or 2-character words pefectly aligned. Again, since you are not the only one to request it, I will think of adding that as an option in the game.
Cheers!
i'd like Pingrid very much if it weren't for the following (maybe some of this is a problem on my end):
1. There are too many characters showing, roughly 24 i believe. As a result, i have often a tough time FINDING the character even though i know it well. So, i'd prefer the option of having fewer characters or a bit more time so that i'd avoid answers rated "blue" which means that the character will come back kazillion times.
Imho, you either know the character or you don't. Therefore, to get a choice out of 16 or 24 options shouldn't mean much. Also, i see this game as a learning tool/ drill not as a race against the machine that i'm bent on WINNING.
2. I can't open the Help nor the Prefs file. Links not working?
These files probably have the answer to how to go about loading alternative word list. It was my plan to add lots of words to a wordlist, or design one of my own, but i don't see how i can load it into the game. I'd be happy to make my list available, once i have generated it.
Hello he,
> 1. There are too many characters showing
There is a 'secret' way of changing this.
a. close Pingrid if it is running
b. open the prefs.txt file in a text editor (Notepad for instance).
c. manually change the lines: numberofrows= and numberofcols=
The number of rows and columns can be 1 to 9
d. save prefs.txt and restart Pingrid!
> 2. I can't open the Help nor the Prefs file.
The help file is a .chm (Windows help file). It is a pretty standard file format. Maybe the help viewer hh.exe is missing on your computer?
> These files probably have the answer to how to go about loading alternative word list.
By default, the word list is the wordlist.txt file. It is a plain text file that you can freely edit.
Thanks for playing Pingrid!
Thanks for your reply.
I went to the prefs.txt file. Didn't see numberofrows= or numberofcols= anywhere. So, i typed it in and used 4 for the numberofcols. Then i played Pingrid and nothing had changed, i.e. numberofcols was still 6. Then i went back to the pref.txt file and noticed that the lines i had typed in of numberofcols= and numberofrows= had completely disappeared.
Furthermore, i've never seen a Progress window anywhere. I turned off my Firefox Popup blocker but still didn't see a way to access this Progress window.
As to, the Help chm file format, the problem may be that i use Vista that apparently doesn't support chm. I solved this by downloading a trial version of a SW program that converts chm to pfd.
I have also had trouble editing the numberofrows= and numberofcols= lines. In fact, the exact same trouble that the previous poster had. Is there a fix for this?
P.S. Awesome idea, and I also love Pablo. I'll be donating soon (though not a lot, being a broke college student).
Hello he and Ringo,
The problem is mine, not yours!
I announced the new feature but forgot to upload the new version of Pingrid.
It is done now, sorry for the inconvenience.
A comment for Pablo users:
Pablo has a new feature called "favorite words", that is words signaled by the user.
Personally, my favorite word list is also my Pingrid training list. Using the option to track new words, whenever I signal a word as favorite in Pablo, it is added to my Pingrid word list!
I am having technical problems with the new version. On first startup it pops up a little warning window that says: "I was not able to find any 1 or 2-character Chinese words from file: wordlist.txt Words will be picked at random from the whole dictionary."
After I click the okay button and banish that window, the Progress window pops up. Nothing else happens. If I click on the little orange progress bar (or if I just wait), the progress window freezes and dies.
I am running Windows Vista.
Hello Ringo
(* blushing with embarrassment *)
You are right again, the bug is mine. I have just uploaded a corrected version.
Now, if you want to avoid downloading again, you should also be able to solve the problem by creating an empty "prefs.txt" file in the Pingrid directory.
Very sorry for the trouble!
No worries, thank you very much for sharing this!
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