Introduction:
 |
| Linda Wu, managing
director of Gowell Software Limited says that GoChinese has created an entirely
new learning mode and provides learners, especially non-Chinese learners,
with a multifunctional web-based Mandarin learning platform. |
As "China Wind"
is blowing around the globe, people from many countries, like European and American
countries and Thailand, are attending Chinese classes and equipping themselves
for the "China Manic". However, it is really not easy to master a
foreign language.
"GoChinese", an
online Mandarin learning platform winning the eLearning Grand Award of the HKICT
Awards 2006, provides an easy-to-use platform for learning Putonghua Chinese
that helps these learners master this difficult language. Linda Wu, managing
director of Gowell Software Limited, which has developed GoChinese, states that
the software has created an entirely new learning mode beyond the traditional
paper-and-pen framework, providing a web-based educational platform integrating
Pinyin phonetics, pronunciation and definition functions, thereby facilitating
Chinese learning.
Software makes Chinese
learning easier
Linda Wu explains that GoChinese
provides an easy-to-use online learning platform, for which you only need to
highlight words or sentences to hear the standard pronunciation in Mandarin.
You can also click on a single Chinese word or phrase to view its definition.
The software can also display Hanyu Pinyin phonetics and relevant Traditional
or Simplified Chinese characters.
GoChinese also provides
other learning functions, such as online testing, so that teachers can design
tests and exercises according to the progress of students, thereby improving
the learning results. Linda Wu points out that GoChinese has a 250,000-word
Chinese-English dictionary database, an automatic word segmentation engine,
and "linguistic synthesis" modules based on linguistic theory. Such
functions enable teachers to easily prepare exercises on a single platform without
making separate recordings, for instance. Students can also learn from self-selected
materials.
Flexible design improves
learning efficiency
Practice is most important
in language learning, and it is essential that an online learning platform provides
learners with graded exercises. Linda Wu explains that the company combines
linguistic theories with information technologies and has developed the platform
into an excellent language learning tool, which can be further developed into
platforms for learning other languages.
In fact, the flexible design
of GoChinese makes it unnecessary to make any installations or use plug-ins.
It makes use of sound files and learning outputs, rendering the platform easier
to operate. GoChinese can also integrate with other software applications to
achieve better learning results. Take Nanyang University of Singapore as an
example, where GoChinese works with the university's Blackboard Learning System
to streamline and provide students with a more advanced learning platform.
Looking to the future, Linda
Wu expects GoChinese to be applied to the learning of other languages such as
English, French and Spanish.
