Say what?

Non-native Mandarin learners can get an impressive amount of help from multiple-feature mobile apps being developed, some of which are free

As Mandarin becomes increasingly popular as a second language, there has been an explosion in the number of digital tools, methods and services to facilitate learning.

An array of mobile applications has sprung up to cater to the needs of nonnative learners, most developed by individuals or teams who have first-hand experience with the difficulties of second-language acquisition.

Aside from being a resume enhancer and facilitator of cross-cultural exchanges, knowledge of Mandarin provides a window onto a people, culture and economy widely recognized as being ascendant.

But learning Mandarin can be a daunting prospect for nonnative speakers, especially those accustomed to alphabet-based and atonal languages.

The Chinese script is a confusing hodgepodge of ideographs and pictographs, and homophones abound. Characters are logographic rather than phonetic, making language acquisition less intuitive and more dependent on rote memorization of new vocabulary and immersion.

Jacob Gill, a student from the San Francisco, California area currently finishing his master's at National Taiwan Normal University, has been studying Mandarin since 2006. "In the past we say many of the most successful language learners come from a strong language program, or from years of living in a language community. That isn't the case anymore, and will be even less so in the future."

Developers say mobile apps make the process of learning Mandarin on one's own efficient, intuitive and location-free. Any idle moment can be turned into an opportunity for a little brushing-up, and one no longer has to lug around a dictionary to do so.

Applications can also reproduce some elements of human conversation, helping users to build up the confidence and skill for a public debut in a new language.

"We deliberately kept our app very simple so users could get started straight away, with no previous experience required. We also created some useful features such as slowing down pronunciation and copying text into your clipboard for SMS and email," says Beth Gladstone of Tap & Say, a phrasebook app developed by Codegent.

Michael Love, who founded Pleco in 2000, says: "By lowering the barrier to work with 'real' Chinese, we let you stretch yourself beyond your current skill level by making it easier to read characters and understand unknown words."

Jacob Gill runs the popular blog iLearn Mandarin, and also works with the team at Skritter. "It's not that apps have more or less to offer. They just create a more focused experience from, say, a traditional textbook, a random Internet search, or even a classroom.

"Apps allow users to have access to particular chunks of information anytime and anywhere. While the Internet may have the answer to everything, a good app will have thought about how to present users with very specific information and hopefully keep them coming back for more," Gill says.

Gill recommends students pick a suitable vocabulary review application: 'Memorizing and learning new vocabulary can be a tedious process, but having a scientific and systematic approach goes a long way to easily committing new information to memory."

Robin Woods, CEO of Communicarta, which has joined hands with the Chinese publisher The Commercial Press to develop an app, agrees that fun learning is important. Linguap Chinese, the app his team has contributed to develop, would allow users to gain credits while playing games.

One example is a game where the user needs to match clothing items to their designated places in a wardrobe. There are three levels of difficulty, the easiest being where Mandarin characters, pinyin - the system for expressing Chinese pronunciation in the Latin alphabet and English are all provided. As the level of difficulty increases, the English and pinyin are taken away.

The app also teaches users how to write and pronounce numbers when they enter numbers onto a calculator screen. It also has a clock face for users to set a time they want to learn how to write and pronounce.

The app also teaches users how to write and pronounce numbers when they enter numbers onto a calculator screen. It also has a clock face for users to set a time they want to learn how to write and pronounce.

Apps such as Skritter, Memrise, Anki and Fluent U use what is known as a Spaced Repetition System to reinforce vocabulary. They are particularly useful for learning Chinese, given its vast number of unique characters. "SRS systems allow you to manage your learning schedules by giving it over to highly optimized algorithms," says Neil de la Rouviere, blogger and student from South Africa.

De la Rouviere points out the potential for data mining the activities of language app users to better understand their needs: "What we've seen so far is more of a gold rush, with developers trying to be the first ones in a new space, rather than trying to create the best app for a larger learning ecosystem.

Nowadays, truly personalized learning is possible, with apps providing the channel to individual learners." Gill endorses this idea, adding that, "ideally, a good application should help identify areas that students are struggling with, and find new and effective ways to help solve those problems."

Matt Ho, co-founder of Native Tongue, was frustrated by the lack of opportunities to practice Mandarin in his native Australia. With the arcade-style Mandarin Madness, the goal was to recreate an authentic and engaging immersive experience digitally.

"Our challenge was to create an app that didn't require the use of English. We wanted a completely visual and immersive experience so that anyone, anywhere could play the game. However, we realized that was very difficult and had to do some localizations for the text in the user's local language," Ho says. "In particular, we find that young kids and mature aged students (30-45 year olds) find our application very engaging and fun."

At the end of the day, though, language is a means of communication and expression, and the goal for most students is real-world proficiency.

"The most successful students are the ones who aren't afraid to make mistakes," observes Gill. "They force themselves to use the language despite not always knowing what to say or how to say it. I don't think apps should be seen as replacing other methods of language learning. Rather, they are supplementary."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/17/2014 page25)