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Chinese is quickly becoming a well loved study choice as a foreign language but it can still be hard to find resources and tools to support a Chinese learning environment. Penpower Chinese Expert provides the right setup by immersing learners in a Mandarin listening and speaking setting — but with a twist.

Unlike most other Chinese language programs Penpower is a learning TOOL; not curriculum or teaching materials, but a customizable, open end tool that allows students to use it in their own way:

1. Open-end Tool

# Penpower Chinese Expert uses phrase segmentation, speech recognition, text to speech technology, optical character recognition, handwriting and even machine translation software to basically convert any resource into a digital format.

# Students can utilize any resource; magazines, books, and newspapers, and transform them into learning materials.

# Students can also use the copy/paste function to turn Web-based articles and other digital formats into learning materials.

2. Immediate Feedback

# The Penpower tools combine a number of different elements to make a language environment that supports reading/writing, speech, and listening skills development.

# Students can strengthen listening comprehension with the clearly pronounced text feature.

# Students improve their speech ability with instant speech recognition correction feedback and oral exams.

# Reading comprehension develops through the use of an onscreen phrase dictionary and online dictionary.

# Student handwriting skills, an vital element of learning Chinese, are supported through handwriting recognition technology.

# Penpower Chinese Expert also provides a user community where students can share learning materials and encourage one another in the process.

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I found this newsletter captured the essence of this product. It provides you a total immersion environment for learning the Chinese language. If you are taking an online class or a class in school, this tool is like a 24×7 personal tutor with you.

1. The pen scanner is a powerful tool by itself. There are 13000+ traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan, 6700+ simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China. The scanner recognizes them all. In addition, the scanner also recognize 4000+ Hong Kong characters, Japanese characters and English. It’s really handy when you want to turn printed text into electronic form. Fantastic for students!

2. You can use the tool to convert traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

3. The tool provides stroke orders for all the Chinese characters (13000+ traditional and 6700+ simplified). You can practice your handwriting either with a mouse or a tablet, it will tell you when your handwriting is recognizable.

4. The tool provides pinyin or zhuyin for all the Chinese characters. You can even place pinyin on traditional characters, or zhuyin on simplified Chinese characters

5. The tool provides Chinese English dictionary and phrase dictionary.

6. The most valuable feature is “sentence segmentation”, it breaks up a sentence into smaller components to aid your comprehension of the sentence. Then you can use your mouse to hover over them to see the English meaning.

7. You can hear mandarin pronunciation in TTS for characters, phrases or sentences. You can also record your own speech, and playback too.

8. When you are all alone, the speech recognition feature comes in handy. You practice on the phrases, and the software will tell you straight away how excellent your pronunciation is.

9. The translation feature built-in is just as excellent as yahoo or google translate if not better.

10. The community share is a fantastic feature for fellow Chinese learners to share their Penpower Chinese Expert files. http://www.penpowerinc.com/5_0service/5_3pce-share.html

11. There is a blog located at penpower-chinese-expert.blogspot.com to share a young girl’s experience of learning Chinese.