Basic Chinese 500 is an effective course for learning to read Chinese. It focuses on teaching the 500 most frequently used Chinese characters which enables you to concentrate your efforts and gain the best reading ability within a relatively short time. No previous knowledge of Chinese reading or writing is assumed. You start by learning to read your very first word, then proceed very quickly to reading sentences from the beginning of the course. The book version, a reading program developed for native Chinese pre-schoolers and elementary children, is currently widely used in kindergartens and lower primary years. This highly acclaimed program is a 5-volume series, each volume teaches 100 new characters.
This App is Volume 2 which builds upon the basis of Volume 1. It contains the second 100 of the most frequently used Chinese characters, including nouns, adjectives, verbs, auxiliary words and interjections. It also includes more than 20 radical words which are the building blocks of Chinese writing. In Volume 2, the sentences are slightly longer than in Volume 1, and the sentence structure is more varied. The 100 words in Volume 2 are organized into 100 short lessons which can easily be mastered in about 3 months. Upon full completion of these short lessons, you will be able to start to read stories and understand short essays (e.g. the Treasure Box story books series which is especially written for each volume of this course to enhance your reading experience).
Each lesson introduces 1 new character, accompanied by a 3x3 square diagram to illustrate the writing, stroke sequence, stroke weight and proper aesthetics. It is then followed by 5 sentences. Each sentence comes with:
- full text in Chinese characters with standard pronunciation annotation
- an authentic Putonghua (Mandarin) audio readout of the sentence which you can follow and repeat as verbal and listening practice or use for dictation purpose
- explanation in English (note: some sentences are literally translated to help the reader to associated the English and Chinese words)
- a colourful cartoon picture to illustrate the meaning and to help memorization
Sentences are deliberately structured and sequenced to repeat some of the Chinese characters learned in previous lessons. This “revise-as-you-learn” methodology reinforces your learning experience and has been proven very effective. The various sentences also provide examples to the different usage of a certain word.
In addition, separate lists of these 100 Chinese characters organized and grouped according to the same radicals (bu-shou) or rhyme are included in the App to help you to distinguish characters of similar form and sound.
A bookmark feature is also available for you to note down difficult words and sentences. This can be used as a revision list while on-the-go.
The incremental search function enables you to locate words and sentences in the whole volume by partially entering the translated English text, pronunciation (pinyin) or Simplified Chinese text (using iPhone/iPad/iPod’s built-in Chinese writing keyboard). The comprehensive listing of the search result is very useful for finding how words are used in different context.
The Basic Chinese 500 course adopts the most natural learning style of a child acquiring a mother tongue. For learners who are interested to gain more in-depth explanation of the Chinese language structure and rules, we recommend to use this App together with grammar books as supplement.