Website updated on 6/27/2010.
Chinese Toolbox READER
Free software for learning Chinese through reading. Download now.
Announcement: Development of the next major release of Chinese Toolbox READER is progressing well. It will support most of the features users have requested as well as a few surprises. See Upcoming Release for more information.
Study Chinese by reading the Chinese text you want to read! Chinese Toolbox READER is a tool to help you do just that. It’s a Chinese reading assistant with an integrated, customizable character dictionary, a system of smart review, and a word dictionary. With Chinese Toolbox READER you can learn Chinese by reading whatever text you’re interested in (sports, current events, etc). Click here for more information on Chinese Toolbox READER.
Just go to the web page of interest, copy the text, and paste it into the Chinese Toolbox reader. Press the right arrow key to select the first character. That character automatically appears in the character dictionary window, where you can see, among other things, the English definition and the pronunciation in both pinyin and zhuyin. When you come across a multi-character word, that word will appear automatically in the word dictionary window.
Chinese Toolbox software keeps track of the characters you know and those you don’t know so well. Pressing the spacebar on a selected character marks that character for unassisted reading. The program also updates time stamps when characters are selected. So in review mode its easy to find and review characters you haven’t seen in a while. The character with the oldest time stamp is displayed first.
Although Chinese Toolbox READER eliminates the drudgery of having to look up each character and word you’re unfamiliar with, the goal of the program, and the focus of its design, is in helping you to not rely on dictionaries. So when you mark a character for unassisted reading, the program will not automatically show you the meaning when you see it in the future. If you do forget a character, you can revert the character to “assisted reading”.
When you’re ready to give Chinese Toolbox READER a try, click on the following link:
Download Chinese Toolbox READER
