Bliu Bliu (reading practice matched to your level with vocabulary)

bliubliu.com/

Submitted by Olle Linge on 07 July, 2014 09:05

Beginner Intermediate Advanced Reading Web Simplified-Characters Traditional-Characters Tools-and-Apps Resource-collections

Liked by Olle Linge, Olle Linge2, and stefanwienert


This website gives you reading materials based on your current level. That level is based on a quick assessment at the beginning and presumably also on what you're doing when reading, but I don't know how accurate this is. Still, it's a useful resource for daily readings with lots of scaffolding. There's also a pop-up dictionary where you can look up words you don't know.


29 November, 2014 01:57

I tried using this site, which looks promising, but -- maybe I'm using it wrong -- it doesn't work well for me at all. For one, their popup dictionary seems to be based on Google Translate?? Word spotting and definitions come out pretty junky, and lacking pronunciations. I sent them some feedback, so I'll post an update if I get it to work better.

03 February, 2015 12:24

Update: It's too bad, but currently Bliu Bliu is simply useless for reading Chinese. Don't waste your time on it now.

In particular: "BliuBliu doesn't recognize bi-grams (compound words)" http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Bliu-Bliu

This was confirmed to me by Claudio Santori, who runs Bliu Bliu.

So it doesn't know 喜歡 is a word, it only knows 喜 and 歡...

Also: it doesn't include pronunciations, translations are often wrong, and example sentences are silly.

It's an interesting attempt at a generic language-learning system for any language. Unfortunately it needs more work before it is adapted to unique characteristics of Chinese.

18 March, 2015 08:38

Hm... I'm considering removing this resources. I only checked it briefly based on a recommendation when I added it, but after your comments, I checked it some more and it really is quite useless at the moment, needs some serious upgrades.