nchiku for mandarin study

Yes, it is more than a dictionary. Too bad I didn't know about this website until recently.

nciku

Below are some features that I think are good:

• Shows results from a few diffrent dictionaries with sentence examples.
• You can listen to most of the sentence examples.
• Words and phrases looked up are instantly added to the Vocab List.
• You can take tests (Learning Definitions, Learning Words, Dictation, and Writing), out of which I particularly find Dictation and Writing useful to me.
• Automatically records the result of the test to help visualize your study progress.

My Madarin laoshi told me that my grammer and pronounciation are ok, but my vocabulary should be expanded. I think this webtool can certainly help this purpose. So below will be my study procedure.

1. Listen and study Chinesepod skits.
2. Lookup unfamiliar words in nciku.
3. Randomely review nciku Vocab List in a frequent cycle.
4. Put Chinesepod skits in iPod and listen and listen and listen.

I wish there were things equivelant for Cantonese. As online tools are quite limited for the language, I just study in an old-fashioned way - read printed text books. I wonder if the market for Cantonese is too small for developers to focus on.