Laokang® Pinyin Trainer 老康®教你拼音 app for iPhone and iPad

Perfect your pinyin in record time! For students of Chinese at all levels, Laokang Pinyin Trainer patiently leads you step by step until your are able to pass the included diagnostic test.

Good pinyin is indispensable for students of Chinese, who would otherwise have a terrible time reading, pronouncing, typing or looking up characters.

Pinyin appears easy, but looks can be deceiving. Have you noticed ye doesnt rhyme with de, si doesnt rhyme with di, nor does yan with dan? Then how can niu rhyme with you, shui with wei, and nuo with mo?

This app cuts the job into five digestible slices, like “levels” in a game. You move from the easiest to the hardest sounds, from the most English-like to the least, and from straightforward spelling to irregular spelling. Track your progress with quizzes at the end of each section.

The app includes a diagnostic test which objectively measures your pinyin proficiency in only 5 minutes. When you score over 95 on this test, you are done.

Laokang, a.k.a. Paul Condrell, is a professor of Chinese at Wheaton College near Chicago, Illinois, who learned Chinese as a young adult. He painstakingly designed this app so students can master pinyin largely on their own, allowing class time to be spent more productively.

The app uses nonsense words, so you don’t need to know any Chinese words to get started. The app uses words without “tones”, so you can concentrate on the sounds only. (Train your tones separately with sister app “Laokang Tone Trainer”).

To help you overcome the quirks of pinyin, he designed a special keyboard which has dynamic key faces. The keyboard speeds your typing and reduces typos. It also helps you grasp the sounds which are spelled in two ways and the letters which sound in two ways.

The app also records your voice as you read different pinyin sounds, then plays them back for self-grading, or grading by a teacher or colleague.

In sum, this is app is professor-designed to achieve measurable results in a minimum time. It’s a must-have for any student of Chinese.