How to use it

Why children fall behind

Each textbook lesson brings 9 to 20 new characters, and Year 1 to 6 add about 2,400 in all. In class a character is taught once or twice and the lesson moves on. Without review most are forgotten within a few weeks, and the next lessons are built on them. After a few years the gap feels too big to close. It isn't: five new characters a day covers the whole Year 1 list in about four months.

The daily routine

1. Ten minutes, every day. Short daily practice beats a long session on Sunday. Tap Start today's practice; it mixes reviews that are due with up to five new characters.
2. Hear it, find it, read it, write it. New characters start with sound, meaning and stroke order. Then the child picks the character from a spoken word, reads it aloud, and writes the 习写 characters in the 田字格.
3. Let the schedule decide. A right answer moves a character to a longer gap (1, 3, 7, 14, then 30 days). A wrong one brings it back today. Characters remembered across weeks turn dark green: mastered.
4. Then read the textbook lesson. When a lesson's characters are mostly green, read that lesson in the textbook together. The lesson page gives the page number and the words to go over first.

If you don't read Chinese

• Every character and word has a sound button, pinyin and an English meaning.
• For Year 4–6, pinyin is worked out from the lesson text rather than copied from the textbook. A character with more than one reading can occasionally show the wrong one.
• Listen and choose and Write mark themselves, so you only need to cheer.
• For Read aloud, let your child read first, then tap Show answer. The app plays the sound and you compare.
• Sound uses the tablet's built-in Chinese voice. If you hear nothing, add a Chinese (Mandarin) voice in the tablet's text-to-speech or language settings.

Catching up an older child

• Start with the Year 1 quick check, even for a Year 4 pupil. Gaps at the bottom cause most of the trouble higher up.
• Characters marked as known in the check still come back once a week later, to confirm.
• Keep it at five new characters a day. Going faster usually means more forgetting, not more learning.

For tutors

• Add each pupil as a child. Each one keeps their own record and current lesson.
• The lesson order, unit names and page numbers match the KSSR SJKC 华文 textbooks (Year 1–2: 2017 edition; Year 3–6: KSSR Semakan 2017 textbooks, Year 3 2018 printing, Year 4 2019, Year 5 2020, Year 6 2022), so you can set homework by lesson.
• The Progress wall shows every character in a year's book at a glance. Tap one to see it and its words.