Introducing Custom Word Lists

Since day one, Chinese Tutor has used an algorithm to determine the order in which words are introduced. That's good for learning the most common useful words, but what if you just wanted to learn some particular words that you find interesting?

Starting today, Chinese Tutor will let you create your own word list from the Dictionary and Word Explorer. You can then practice just those words in Flashcards and Speaking Practice by switching over to "Custom Words" from the Account page.

The Custom Word List feature is available to all Premium (including Prepaid) Chinese Tutor subscribers. To get started, add some words to your Custom Word List in the Dictionary, then switch over to using "Custom Words" in the "Custom Word List" section of the Account page.

Our new Chinese Flashcards

Chinese Tutor aims to make learning Chinese as fun and easy as possible. One of the ways we have done that in our Chinese Flashcards has been asking you to type the pinyin for words rather than just clicking a "next word" button, making the process of learning and reviewing words more engaging.

Today, we're going a step further by introducing some exciting new features to Chinese Flashcards.

Countdown Timer
We've added a countdown timer to make Flashcards more challenging and fast-paced. It rapidly ticks down toward 00:00.00, keeping you on your toes!

The countdown timer has a pause button in case you need it. It will also automatically pause if it detects that you are doing something else. If you would rather go at your own pace, the timer can be disabled from the Account page.

Event Feed
To keep you tuned into your achievements, we've added an event feed that shows progress events along the bottom of the screen.

Some of the things you'll see in your event feed include:

• New words you've unlocked.
• Notifications when you've had a streak of correct answers.
• Words that break your streaks.

The event feed will only be shown if your screen has room for it. It won't show up on phones, but will be visible on most tablets and computers. Going fullscreen (by pressing F11 on your keyboard) might help if it isn't showing for you.

Try out these new additions to Chinese Tutor's Flashcards now, and let us know what you think!

Introducing the Word Explorer

One of the things we love about the Chinese language is how words get put together to form new words.

熊	+	猫	=	熊猫
bear		cat		panda
-
可	+	乐	=	可乐
can		laugh		entertaining
-
火	+	山	=	火山
fire		mountain		volcano

We thought, wouldn't it be great if we could show that information in Chinese Tutor's Dictionary? So we created what we call the "Word Explorer." The Word Explorer lets you navigate through Chinese Tutor's word database. For any word, you can see the words that contain it, or the words it contains. You can also see related words.

熊猫 (panda) in the Word Explorer

You can view any word in the Word Explorer directly from Chinese Tutor's Dictionary. Just search for a word and click on the (more about this word...) link.

Happy exploring!