More on Learning Mandarin...

One can only read the same stuff that many times before one feels bored. Been trying to learn and improve my Mandarin to teach my girl her Science which is in Mandarin. Ebooks that read to you are mostly kiddy ones. Then I remembered this... the Bible. It's practical and the reading list is endless...

Enter this iPad app called Bible.is. The opening screen says this - faith by hearing. And indeed it is faith by hearing! 8) It reads to you in Mandarin. I learn to recognize the Chinese characters by following it on the screen while it is read out to me. I like the way they read it too, making the Scriptures come alive, different voices and all that; multi roles. Bible.is comes in many languages - Malay language and even Hakka! This reads to me as many times as I want. And I can make it repeat it as often as I want too! It negates the need to ask someone do it for me. Humans get tired. Gadgets don't. Moreover, I will not feel sheepish at my own forgetfulness. The only snag is you need to be online for the audio section to work.

The reading continues even when you open up other apps. And since I have some difficulty understanding everything, what I do is try to read the verse in its English equivalent while the reading is ongoing. I am also using YouVersion for the same purpose. The only difference is, this one doesn't provide you with the drama - no multi voices. It is more of a narrative. This a win-win situation cos I learn how to read and the Scriptures too.

But if I want a side by side comparison, I use The Holy Bible by Paul Avery. The problem right now is the Mandarin translation that I have is not the simplified version.

One more example of how the iPad has enabled individualized learning... and doing a pretty good job at it.