Learning Chinese Made Easy with Locally Made iPad App

Textbooks and audiotapes away, please—a better way to learn Chinese has just arrived.

Palo Alto-based language learning company Better Chinese today released Discovering Chinese for the iPad. The app combines audio, visual and interactive learning to help students at the middle school and high school level learn Chinese.

Whereas many language programs are dependent upon textbooks, workbooks, audio files and videos, all commanded by a vigilant teacher, the new app combines these elements into one auto-correcting iPad application.

Instead of a workbook, students can learn to draw Chinese characters right on the iPad. Other interactive elements include comic book-style lessons, animated videos, and playable pronunciation of Chinese.

“In the iPad you can practice your stroke order and practice listening and speaking,” said Marlen Renderos, a student at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, which hosted a pilot program to test the app last year. “Using the iPad is a lot of fun, because it offers us a chance to use technology to learn instead of using textbooks, which are heavier to carry.”
also hosted a successful pilot program to test Discovering Chinese last year. Parent company Better Chinese joined Stanford University and the National Security Association’s STARTALK program to create a summer intensive language course on the iPad. Twenty-three students participated in the pilot, and “they loved it,” said Better Chinese CEO James Lin.

But the best part of the app, says Lin, is the real-time data teachers get to work with.

Using the iPad, teachers get instant feedback on how the students are progressing through the tutorials. “The students can all learn at their own pace,” said “Discovering Chinese” marketing director Esther Lee, “because they can go back and relearn.”

Not only that, but the different elements of the app keep the students from getting bored, says Hilda Leung, the Mandarin teacher at Brentwood middle who tested the app with her class last year.

“I have an all-boys class with fidgety boys. When they’re using the iPad, they’re always on task,” said Leung, who values the differentiated learning encouraged by the application.

While Leung went around the class coaching students, the more independent learners could work on app activities on their own. The difference is, says Leung, the students actually enjoy using the app, to the extent that they don’t want to put it down—compared to the age-old textbook which often left her students feeling uninspired.

“We’ve seen a huge shift in how education is delivered,” said Lin. “Teachers are acting as true facilitators of the learning process, and iPads [are the tools].”

But using the iPad app in a classroom setting can be a challenge, too. Leung says that because there are so many options and she wanted to expose her students to all of the interactive lessons, she taught slower than she usually does.

“The challenge for the teacher is, how do you manage your classroom so you can cover everything you want, let them try out everything on the iPad,” and get the lesson done, Leung said. “You can’t be structured. It’s challenging, but fun.”

Better Chinese has roots in Hong Kong, where they started in 1997. Their U.S. launch in 2005 and subsequent move into Silicon Valley proved an essential move when the National Security Association is now calling Chinese a “critical language” for American students to learn.

We feel like we’re the underdog, said Lee of Better Chinese. “We’re competing against big publishing houses. But we have the benefit of being in Silicon Valley and the benefit of creating something that’s out of the box.”

The company is offering a free first lesson on Discovering Chinese. Each additional lesson is $5.99, or the entire volume—a complete year of instruction—is downloadable for $49.99.