Praxis Language began work on this iPhone app back in 2008, and this week the ChinesePod Quick Review app finally appeared in the iTunes store. It’s a free app, but ChinesePod subscribers will definitely find it more useful. As one of the key designers of the app, I’m pleased to explain here a bit about how it works and how to get the most out of it.
Don’t think of it as a dictionary
ChinesePod has a vast archive of lessons (well over 1000), and every word of every lesson is annotated. The same is true of the expansion sentences (sample sentences) for the key vocab. We also have audio for all key vocabulary and dialogue/expansion sentences. That’s a lot of word data, all accessible through the Quick Review app.
Even with 1000 lessons, however, the ChinesePod lexicon does not cover every obscure word in the language as you would expect of a dictionary. Its focus is on the high-frequency language in everyday situations. You could think of it as a massive phrasebook. In addition, we are constantly editing our word data to make sure that our database is always improving, covering the most important vocabulary. As our word data improves, we will be updating the app so that its data improves as well. What’s more, the app also checks ChinesePod’s online glossary, letting you take immediate advantage of the latest word data from the newest ChinesePod lessons.
Sentence-jumping bliss
OK, now here is the real beauty of the app. Start by searching for a word. Any simple word… it doesn’t really matter. I’ll use “crazy.”
Now choose a definition of that word, and then click on “sample sentences.”
You can see a list of all the sentences in the ChinesePod database that feature the word. I’ll choose one.
I see the sentence I chose at the top. I can tap it to see the English translation. I can also look down below and scroll to see each individual word in the sentence, along with the pinyin. I can quiz myself: do I know every word in this sentence? If I want to check, I can press the “P->E” button at the bottom of the interface, which switches the pinyin to English.
I can also press the audio icon. The little “down” arrow indicates that the app will need to download the audio. Audio on demand saves a lot of space and load time. After the audio file downloads, you can see that the down arrow has disappeared, and I can play the audio.
Now, for the real discovery-based learning experience, I can tap any word in the sentence from the list below, which will then look up that word. After another couple taps, I have a new list of sample sentences featuring the new word, and the loop repeats.
This “sentence jumping” is an amazingly addictive way of exploring the language, and it’s only possible with a sufficiently large database of sentences and each sentence’s individual words. Fortunately, ChinesePod has that in spades, and you know the sentences are modern usage, always relevant and useful.
Flashcard sync and review
ChinesePod subscribers can also make use of the Quick Review app’s flashcard feature. After entering in your ChinesePod login details, the app will sync your personal vocabulary list. It has immediate access to any lesson vocabulary you’ve ever saved, and it also keeps your vocabulary organized using the same labels you use in ChinesePod.com’s vocabulary manager.
The Quick Review app makes good use of the iPhone interface. First, to flip a card, instead of using the “flip” button, you’ll likely prefer to just double-tap it. Then to go to the next card, just slide your finger across the screen. You’ll find the same audio playback for the key vocabulary words you’ve saved. Notice that you also have a shuffle option, and even an “auto” review option, with customizable delay.
We hope you enjoy the app [iTunes download link], and that it enables you to study more and learn more. We have plans to continue to update the app and to expand on functionality. The same is true for the Google Android version.
Finally, I’d like to thank our CEO, Hank Horkoff, for the passion and persistence it has taken to actually get the app in the iTunes store, the lead programmer of the app, Sean Fannan, as well as John Biesnecker, who contributed ideas during the design process.
Update: Version 1.2.1 is out
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60 Comments
I’m a big fan of iphone and your website. I would like to let you know some of the current chinese-english-chinese online dictionary weakness points.
1. don’t have sample sentences. even though cambridge has provided sample sentences, but they have only english-chinese, not chinese- english. moreover, cambridge doesn’t have a pinyin pronounciation.
2. don’t have the writing orders. For example, when you see hanzi, you don’t know where to start writing in proper order.
3. don’t have chinese-english-chinese within one search yet. for example, for dianhua, you need to change to eng-chinese page to search chinese, and need to change back to chinese-eng to search english. this is just a waste of time.
4. don’t have pronounciation. the best is to have both english and chinese pronounciation.
5. should have a history list. and can save the words like bookmarks with an area for short notes (same as cambridge one).
6. i like the way you have flashcard, but the best should be able to make our flashcard from our bookmarks, same as slovoed.
let me know if you need any more comments. i’m more than happy to let you know.
Looking forward to seeing the best chinese-englsih-chinese on iphone!!!!!
I didn’t see system requirements listed. But, does this app work with iPod Touch over WIFI?
Hi there,
Have only one comment and that the sequence of flashcards is not genuinely random. When I start up the flashcard feature, the sequence of flashcards are determined by the lessons. When I click shuffle however, the sequence of the shuffles is predictable (i.e. clicking shuffle once comes up with the same “shuffled” card the next time you start up the flashcard feature).
There are basically 2 features I’d suggest. First that the shuffle feature genuinely shuffles the flashcard so there is no predictable sequence, secondly, that “shuffle” might, as an option, shuffle all subsequent cards in the deck as well, and not just the one you’re looking at.
Other than that, the app looks and feels absolutely fantastic. Great job!
Al,
Yes, it does! iPhone, iPod Touch.
-John
Any hope of a Windows Mobile version?
Just want to inquire, as I do with all iPhone/iPod apps, if the login is HTTPS secured? If I’m in a library or coffeeshop wifi hotspot, I don’t want someone capturing my username/password if it’s being sent in the clear.
Am I correct in assuming that since I am only a basic plan subscriber and don’t have access to the Vocabulary Manager the flash card part of the program is on no use to me?
finally CPOD has an app of their own…
ive been waiting for something like this that gives me my flashcards.
thanks!!
Fantastic! I’ll definitely put this through its paces in the coming days. I’ve often forgotten a word or phrase I learned how to properly use in a cpod lesson and wanted to look it up on the go. The gazillion CCDict apps are pretty worthless when it comes to finding the exact right word or phrase, though they can help get meaning across. The examples are good, and I’ll be using the flashcards more diligently now.
Thanks again CPod and keep up the good work.
I’m a basic plan subscriber, and I also don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch (just a regular ol’ iPod), so let me get this straight:
1. If I had an iPhone or iPod Touch, I could use this app regardless of being a ChinesePod subscriber, and thus I’d get this awesome phrasebook/dictionary with lots of useful vocab and example sentences.
2. If I were more than a basic plan subscriber, I could get something very similar through the Vocabulary section. (Is this correct? I actually don’t know what the Vocabulary section is like because I don’t have access to it, and I didn’t take full advantage of exploring when starting up my account. Or is it that this phrasebook/dictionary-type feature is really only available as an app for an iPhone, not as an online feature despite its awesomeness?)
3. Since I’m a basic plan subscriber without a fancy iPhone or iPod Touch, and thus fall into neither of the above categories but somewhere in between, I get no access to these features.
Oh hey, whoa, I should have done more searching before writing the last comment. I just found the glossary under the Resources section, which I’m guessing is the same thing as the dictionary part of this iPhone app?
Tom,
No plans for Windows Mobile yet.
-John
Nahan,
Currently, the login uses an API to connect to our servers. Although our servers are secure, that initial API connection is not secure. OAuth is being implemented in a future version to solve this issue.
Since you only have to log in once, not every time you use the app, we recommend you log in from somewhere you trust if you are worried about security issues.
Kevin and littleswallow,
Basic and subscribers cannot save vocabulary or edit/organize their vocabulary lists. This means that they cannot make use of the flashcard feature.
Fantastic… even with the basic subscription this is just great. I’ve always liked the glossary feature but I haven’t used it much online. This implementation makes a great ‘iPoddy’ app for passing a few minutes without really wasting them… plus it will be right there if I’m listening to a podcast at the gym and I want to look up or internalize a bit of vocabulary (luckily the gym has Wifi). Even the organization is nice, because using mouse-over translators on my computer makes me too lazy–I mouse over too quickly–and having the translations right below the text is also ‘too easy’. Of course, I have yet to see how often I’ll use it, but my first impression is that this could be another ‘game changer’ as far as helping me internalize words and characters.
Hi John and Hank : )
Wow! you guys are awesome! What a terrific tool! I just played with the Quick Review Dictionary and I absolutely love it! I especially love the Ken/Jen/John backdrop. I can’t imagine the amount of work and persistence that went into creating this user-friendly and fun tool. Wow! I personally don’t need to use it much since there’s such a derth of Chinese speaking people in my daily life (sad but true.) But, I can totally see how it is so useful to students of Mandarin. Outstanding!
The only little suggestion from me is to make the contrast between the English/Pinyin/Chinese buttons more noticeable. It’s a little bit difficult to see the subtle difference in the dark grey and black…at least for my >40 year old eyes : )
The audio button to play the words does not seem to work. Is this expected behavior?
For flash cards, Spaced Repetition is really key. Shuffling the cards (which doesn’t seem to actually have any effect on the order of the cards in this new app) is okay, but if you know a few of the words well, and others you can’t quite get, you want to see the ones you know less often than the ones you haven’t gotten yet.
In Anki I have a deck of 700 words and phrases so far. Randomly ordering them would not work, I would hardly ever see the new words and phrases. With spaced repetition, words I have already learned won’t repeat for weeks, or even months, but new words will repeat in minutes or hours. If I don’t see a word for two months and when I do see it again I realize I’ve forgotten it, it can start the cycle over again. I don’t worry about forgetting a card any more. Anki will remind me.
Before I found Spaced Repetition software, I would use rotating decks of flashcards to get a similar effect, but there is much more management of review involved, and I don’t learn words from a deck at the same speed. Some words need more practice than others. Anki takes care of all of that now.
The ability to easily search for example sentences is really neat, but what would make it useful for me is a button on the example sentence screen where an example sentence (with sound) is turned into a flashcard. Then, when I have a word I’m not sure I understand how to use, I can browse it, look at several example sentences and add them to my flash cards for review.
you have done great work here. I’m looking forward to your updates to make it even better.
Oh, and one other idea. This would be fairly sophisticated, but it seems possible. Given the correct information, you should be able to identify lessons that the user could look at next. A little link on the Me page saying: We Recommend .
You could base the recommendation on:
1. Studied vocab (the user knows ~ 80% of vocab for recommended lesson based on flashcard usage).
2. Previously studied lessons (similar topics, certain percentage of overlapping vocab)
3. Stated interests of the user in his/her profile. (if such an question isn’t asked in the profile right now, it could be asked. If the user is learning for business, predominately recommend lessons in that area.)
4. Results of the self evaluation test in the Resources -> Tests area. (Could be used to give an indication of which level of lessons are most appropriate.)
Such a recommendation feature would probably increase usage of your archive of old lessons. Right now I find the list of lessons over whelming. I have tried to search for lessons I would like to study in the past, but usually I find the lessons I choose either too easy or too hard.
Hi,
I just downloaded the ChinesePod Review app onto my iPhone and registered with my user account. When I click on the ‘Update’ button, I get a message stating that it has been successfully synced. However, when I select the Flashcards button in the app, I don’t see any vocabulary items (even though I have a list of 862 words in the vocabulary section of my online account with ChinesePod). Is there something else I’m missing?
Thanks.
Fei chang xie
– Thank you Thank you
I love my touch and I love the Fun lessons – and banter
This app is just another plus in the line of what is making you the best Chinese language learning resource – Keep em coming guys
Good work!
Unfortunalely I seem to be having same Problem as Valerie – Know you will Iron this out soon
Hey there,
A quick feature request – I’d love for my own vocab list to be part of the dictionary. If I hear a really useful word that I know I might forget and want to look up later, it’d be cool if it popped up in the dictionary. That way I’d be very likely to use the cpod vocab manager for all my vocab needs.
Colin
Hello,
According to the admin comment above June 5, it appears that Basic and [iTunes?] subscribers (see quote below) can’t make use of the flashcard feature. Is that correct? I have a Premium membership on ChinesePod. Is that sufficient to gain access to my online ChinesePod vocabulary via Flashcards on the iPhone app?
I love what ChinesePod offers online am excited to gain access to my vocabulary list on my iPhone. How can do I this? I haven’t noticed any admin comments recently. Is there a better place to ask this question than on the blog?
“Basic and subscribers cannot save vocabulary or edit/organize their
vocabulary lists. This means that they cannot make use of the
flashcard feature.”
-Admin (June 5)
Thank you,
Valerie
To follow John’s example, I entered “crazy”. However I only get two entries, fakuang and mengjin. Is there a reason why I don’t get the same results?
-Erik
Same problem as Valerie, the app works fine, I can add words in the vocab from within the app but all my saved vocab does not sync…
Any idea why?
Otherwise the rest is great – congrats to all the team…
Great app. How about adding more jumping ability? When displaying the dictionary definition of a multi-character word, allow us to click on individual characters in it to get their dictionary entries.
And tell us, for each character, what the radical and phonetic roots are.
And how about a link from the dictionary entry of a word to a list of the dictionary entries of the words that contain it?
And for each sentence, how about links to the lessons it occurs in? Of course, we would leave your app and jump to the browser after clicking it.
HI , I don’t have iPhone or iPod Touch, I have iPod and newest iPod Nano… will this app work on new iPod Nano? If not, any thought to providing an app “for the rest [and majority] of us Apple “iUsers” ?. Thanks so much!
well done Chinese Pod! an excellent application and another example of your fantastic innovative offerings! Keep it up,Paul
Low Budget,
It does seem that some audio is not playing even though the audio file seems to be downloading. We’re working on a fix for this.
- John
AZERDocMom,
I agree that the button contrast isn’t high enough. Those grays are an Apple default color setting, but in this case, it’s probably best not to use it! Thanks for the feedback.
-John
Jacob,
Great ideas! I agree that SRS is awesome, and we do have plans to integrate SRS functionality across our whole service (main website, mobile site, iPHone apps, etc.). Look for it in a future version of the app.
As for your “identifying lessons” idea, you’re totally right. We have a huge amount of lesson, word, and user data we can use to inform all sorts of recommendations for users. We are working on this too! The possibilities are indeed quite exciting.
-John
Valerie and Jackos,
Premium and above users can access their vocabulary data through the app. We will look into the issue of the app not syncing back the site’s online data.
fbazar,
The app only works on the iPhone and the iPhone Touch. Sorry!
-John
Dan Grayson,
Great suggestion!
Our app really isn’t designed as a character dictionary (or even a totally complete word dictionary), because we don’t have all the data necessary to fully support those kinds of lookups. Definitely something to consider for the future, though!
-John
App review:
RE flashcards:
Sort no worky
Needs Supermemo type paced repetition
Could benefit from groups
Dear Cpod team,
I’m a Premium Cpod user and I’m unfortunately facing the same problem as Valerie and Jackos when trying to sync my vocab/ flashcards list. Could you please look into it? Thanks a lot.
Sincerely,
Jana
I’ve had a couple of days to use the app now. Previously I commented that shuffling flashcards wasn’t working for me. I must have been doing something wrong as it is working fine now.
I have had problems with the application crashing, a lot (once every few minutes). I have an iPod Touch, 32GB, 2nd Gen I think. Fortunately it remembers my last search so it is fairly quick and easy to get back to where I was.
For me, the most useful thing about the app is the word search and sample sentences. This would be more useful to me on the website than it is on the mobile device. I use this to find more example sentences for words I am having trouble remembering or understanding how to use. When I find an example sentence I like, I migrate it to a flash card and practice it.
Another thought, it would be really interesting to know which lesson the example sentence comes from. Then I could consider studying the lesson as well, giving me more context for the word I am working on.
Great app! Love the unique sentence surfing feature… a lack of example sentences are definitely one of the major weaknesses of the available dictionaries on the iTunes store.
Is there any way to delete individual flashcards on the app? If not, there definitely needs to be.
Thanks for making this app!
I also have the problem of not seeing any word on the vocabulary / flashcard list after sync. I have an iPod Touch and a Praxis subscription. In theory it is equivalent to Premium in all the languages, isn’t it? So, I think I should have access to this application too. Could you please confirm if there is any problem with the use of Flashcards by Praxis subscribers?
Thanks.
I cant get the vocab to sync
Valerie, Gaoya, Francisco,
We’ve been debugging all week, and have determined that (1) some Praxis Pass users may experience problems syncing, and (2) users with very large vocab lists may experience problems. The fixes will be submitted next week (but we can’t make Apple approve them immediately).
-John
Hi all,
I have problems with finding sample sentences when not on a WiFi network. I had expected the app to work also with my usual UMTS (not WiFi) internet iPhone connection, no matter where I am. Isn´t that the case?
Another thing: I tried to reproduce the example JOhn has given in the blog, but the results I get using “crazy” are totally different (fakuang and mengjin instead of shenjinbing). Strange, isn´t it?
Thanks for your help and comments,
Michael from Munich
Thanks John,
I am looking forward to the fix. I am excited about this app. I guess I am guilty of having a large vocab list…. flashcards on the go? watch out!!!
What use is this app (apart form the dictionary) to basic subscription users?
hi,
I am a bit confuse about the dictionary part of the app. There are three options to search, english/pinyin/chinese. How do I search using the “chinese” button?
Long
Thanks, John!
Like Putao, I’m also guilty of having a large vocab list. I’ll patiently await the update once it clears through Apple.
Keep up the good work with ChinesePod. This an amazing site and community!
-Valerie
Love the application, but I also can’t get any sample sentences. Do I need to be within a wifi network to get them?
If so, it would be much more convenient if the dictionary came with a load of sample sentences already built in.
Also – i’m sure everyone’s said this, but the flashcard randomizer isn’t random, and it would be useful to have a better way to organize the cards into folders.
But great all the same.
I just downloaded the update and it apparently doesn’t work with the new 3.0 software. When ever I start the app it just goes to the loading page, crashes, and then goes back to my app desktop. I hope this can be fixed because I really like the app and using it for flashcards.
Ditto, I have the same problem as a previous blogger. The Update cloes down. As described.
“I just downloaded the update and it apparently doesn’t work with the new 3.0 software. When ever I start the app it just goes to the loading page, crashes, and then goes back to my app desktop. I hope this can be fixed because I really like the app and using it for flashcards.”
michamunich,
The app does require a wifi connection to retrieve word data.
The discrepancy you speak of is explained here, in the release notes for the latest version of the app.
-John
Enda,
Basic users cannot make use of the flashcard functionality, but they can still look up words and do the “sentence jumping” with audio that I describe in the post.
-John
flyrealhy,
To use the Chinese input option, you need to first activate Chinese input on your iPhone. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards.
-John
Valerie,
The issue is fixed. please update, but read the special instructions for existing users. Thanks for your patience!
-John
Kevin and Stephen,
It’s actually not an issue of compatibility with iPhone 3.0 firmware, but with the old version of the app and the new version. You will need to delete and reinstall (sorry!), but the app does work fine on the 3.0 firmware. Please read the latest version notes.
Thanks for your reports!
-John
How about posting a link to the ‘fix’ for the app update somewhere on the home page of chinesepod. It has taken me quite a while to find out if the problems I’ve experienced were unique to me or if others had similar problems and what to do about it. I enjoy the app very much and would also like to thank you for all the hard work that must of went into it.
Hope this thread is still read…
Every time I sync my flash cards I lose all flash card data off my phone
Is this the expected result ?
southpat,
That bug has been fixed in the latest release of the app. The latest version is version 1.2.4.
-John
Cheers John
Would you believe the update came out tonight!
I also reported on the feedback page on the app
Is there any way to get the add word back
As mentioned.. It knows I have already added the words to the flashcards so the + icon is no longer available on words I have already added
How can I add these words back ?
I downloaded app from itunes for my i phone. It seems that i did not get access to dictionary or phrases as mentioned above. It does let me have access to the “ME” lessons but there is no access to pin yin in the dialogue section. I really could use this app. Can you help me?
xie xie richard
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