Tech Tool of the Week: Chinese Writer

Chinese Writer app by trainchinese

Here at Chinese American International School in San Francisco, where half of our students' daily instruction is conducted in Mandarin, one of our top priorities in educational technology is to identify tech tools for Chinese language instruction and practice. One of the tools that has been widely used by our Chinese faculty this year is an iPhone/iPad app called Chinese Writer. Chinese Writer is a game in which students can practice writing characters, study stroke order, and listen to pronunciation of characters. Its options for customizing characters for student practice are extremely valuable for our teachers.

In Chinese Writer, students tap on characters that fall from the top of the screen. Once they tap the character, they must quickly draw the character using the correct stroke order. While students are writing the character, they are also listening to an audio recording which allows them to listen to and practice the pronunciation of the character. After each game, students can review what they practiced and view stroke order diagrams if they need extra help remembering how to write a certain character.

Screenshots of the Chinese Writer app

Chinese Writer comes with its own, ready-made sets of characters that are divided into packs by difficulty level. In the free version, you can access several hundred of these characters. Additional character packs require an in-app purchase. Here at CAIS, we chose not to use the pre-set character packs but rather to create our own sets that are customized for our students' Chinese curriculum. In order to accomplish this, we set up a subscription on Chinese Writer's parent company website, trainchinese.com. Next we gathered vocabulary lists from our Lower School Chinese faculty. Based on these lists, we then created our own, customized "character packs", one for each grade level. We then downloaded the character sets from trainchinese directly into Chinese Writer. Students enjoy racing against the clock to write the characters in time before they fall to the bottom! This app has proven to be a valuable tool for practicing characters in our Chinese classrooms this year.

To see Chinese Writer in action, check out the brief demo video below: