This app was mentioned in 19 comments, with an average of 1.26 upvotes
For Pinyin, Tonally Orthographic Pinyin.
For Hanzi, CJK, but it's a lot to demand from a first-semester student. Pleco does it for you. Just look at the "CHARS" portion of individual characters. You might find some characters connect with other characters you're studying.
More practically, though, send texts to Chinese speakers, but don't use the Pinyin IME. Switch to manual/handwriting, instead.
>There is one very simply rule regarding these gloves
You need to go above and beyond to get your Chinese students to appreciate these rules and what they mean.
Telling them the rules and other information is not a guaruntee. Think about it. English is, to the Chinese (and others), a hard language to learn. It is a completely different in tone and infliction. It's a second language and when these students are having all their senses, tolerences and stamina taxed from being in such a strange country, their comprehensions are going to be depleted.
Also consider your regional accent, which may make it difficult for them. Speak slowly and emphasise heavily, especially with technical words.
>cultural differences you think TA's/lecturers/professors should be beware of when educating Chinese students?
Do not take it for granted that once said is once told. Get them to repeat back to you what you've just said. Invite them to ask you to repeat if they didn't understand. Make them feel comfortable with admitting they did not understand the first time.
Put up signs and rules in Chinese writing around the lab. Use google-translate and other online dictionaries. Maybe make a few posters with pictures and Chinese texts explaining the rules about gloves, etc.
You may want to install phone apps to help you communicate on the spot, such as Pleco and Google-Translate.
Never admonish or criticise Chinese students in front of the class or other people. The culture of losing face is pretty serious. Instead, speak to them ouside the lab/classroom (ideally with their Chinese study-buddy for backup), away from their their peers.
Hope this helps.
Google stuff probably won't work in China, Pleco is offline and works well
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/pleco-chinese-dictionary/id341922306?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pleco.chinesesystem&hl=en
It's mainly that there are some specific apps that don't seem to have good alternatives, e.g. for me those include Pleco, and the Kindle Android app (there's a web version of the Kindle reader, but in typical Amazon fashion, it simply doesn't work).
BTW, does Cloud Ready support Crostini? Last time I looked, it didn't...
Try to use Chinese as much as possible in daily life. If your standard is terrible like you said, catch yourself when you use English due to not having that vocabulary in Chinese, and look it up when you have time.
Download a dictionary into your phone. I use android so I downloaded Pleco. It is convenient, you can handwrite (when encountering unknown words in the wild) type pinyin, type English, and they come with many example sentences too.
Try to be more attentive when listening to anything Chinese and you might find yourself saying "oh didn't know I could use this word this way" or "oh I can express myself that way as well"
Your two best apps will be Pleco (with the CC-CEDICT dictionary) and Moe dict (萌典). Both are free and the latter will teach you stroke orders if you click on the characters and Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciations.
And yes, as others have stated, you should definitely be learning stroke orders if you ever want to write a message, especially if you are living in Taiwan and don't want to be a 老外 for the rest of your life.
Also, in Pleco, some of the Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciations are only written on the single characters, so if you are looking at a two-character word, always take a glance at the single characters to make sure they don't have a "TW pr." at the bottom.
Hope that helps!
I think Pleco is the app you are looking for, it has all of this features, (some of them paid, but you don't need them if you can spend some extra time), it's an excellent app for Chinese.
You can use the Live OCR to recognise the characters, but it won't translate them directly (unless you have the paid module), but you can write them down and it will translate them for you (It's more steps, and can take long).
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pleco.chinesesystem
OP ( u/dolphins3 ), save your money. This is shovelware.
Instead use Pleco's flashcards or if you want to go all out; Ankidroid.
As far as what's available to be pulled and free or not-free, I haven't looked into making an app. But as far as what exists, here's what I like using:
ALC for example sentences. It was created by professional translators and doesn't have the problem that Tatoeba / Tanaka Corpus has, namely that there are a significant number of awkward in Japanese or Awkward in English, or Awkward in Both sentences since a lot of it was created by students.
Weblio with example here, as you can see pulls from multiple dictionaries. Ideally an app like this would exist somewhere. Perhaps not a data source in itself, but by and large the individual sources it pulls from are all useful. It should be noted the site also has a Thesauras and J-J Dictionary and Classical Dictionary.
For J-J stuff, Goo is usually my go-to.
What would be perfect, in a perfect world is something like the Chinese app Pleco. Basically what makes it great is aside from just the normal features, it also has SRS, OCR, and a number of other dictionaries that can be downloaded, both free and not free, example sentences, and the dictionaries aren't all the same, some are even specific, like one of Medical Terms.. It is perhaps the closest an app will get to a high quality electronic dictionary like the Casios.
Not sure how you'd categorize it, but: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pleco.chinesesystem
I recommend you install plecco.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pleco.chinesesystem
Pleco — Excellent Chinese dictionary app.
Termux — For those of us without Crostini.
Libby — Exactly like the (absolutely excellent) website, but fully downloads books, for piece of mind when you're offline. Other major ebook apps like the Kindle Android app and Google Play Books also work great on ChromeOS.
Fallout Shelter — Works perfectly on ChromeOS.
I've "learned" the Joyo Kanji a long time ago, so I'm past the point where I need to look-up Kanji individually anymore. And if I need to look-up a Jukugo (ie, mutli-Kanji compound), I almost always know at least one of their readings, so I use my OS's JP keyboard to type it in and then do a wildcard search on a site like Jisho or something.
Example: Say I see 魔法, and dunno what it means, but I know 法 is pronounced ほう. I then use my JP keyboard type-in that Kanji, and then search for *法. And thusly, I find 魔法 listed somewhere down the page.
As far as Jinmeiyou Kanji go, I largely don't bother unless I either have to (read as: when I must know the name of a cute girl doing a cute thing in some dumb thing I'm reading), or if I've encountered it often enough that I might as well buckle-up my pants and learn it. Which I usually do by either using Pleco's OCR, drawing functionality (I know it's a Chinese app, but it's so accurate) or radical/component breakdown. Or possible Jisho's multi-radical search, which I find very useful too.
There's also Kanji Tomoe, though I don't really use it at all. As well as muh Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, because it's just fun to randomly go through and nail-down the subtleties of vocab.
Well, Pleco can recognize the words you're pronouncing if you're pronouncing them right... close enough?
People also say Pleco is pretty good. The Android version is free.