Checkout the website from Besta. I think the model that you need depends on which country are you from. For my 7 year old studying in Singapore, I think CD 668 S is a good buy. It's very powerful tool! I came across this in Popular bookstore. For those of you oversea, it's available through Amazon.
But not CD 668 S (that's customize to Singapore's need).
Ok.. now, why I am impressed by this gadget?
1) Perfect tools to learn Chinese. Can write the Kanji on the screen
2) It shows usage example with complete sentence
3) Pronunciation by native speaker.. comes with a function for user to record user's pronunciation to compare with native speakers
4) Cross references to Chinese dictionary or English dictionary
5) Other contents like Grammar
6) Localized contents, explained "local" English words
7) Big screen!
Nowadays, my son only know han yu pin yin and he does not know Kanji. The cross references enables him to look out for meaning and ping yin in one touch. The pronunciation function is really perfect for him. I find (1) above useful but for my son who knows ping yin, that's not so handy.
I have seen my son looking up the words he could not understand when reading stories book. Now the learning is all by himself. I am glad with this investment. I selected the biggest one because of the screen size. We adjusted the font size to the biggest to make the words easier to read. I always concern about kids eye sight.
The bad point? The English user interface is not nice at all. The Chinese user interface is perfect but both my son and I are not familiar with those Chinese term. The menu can be changed to Japanese, Korean, Spanish by pushing the same button. This is a little bit irritating because one careless touch, the menu will turn into a language that we cannot read. Either I don't know how to use it, or may be the Taiwanese maker just do not know how to make it simple and user friendly enough. Other than this, it's a perfect tool. But I would say if you do not intend to learn Mandarin, don't buy from Besta.
Look at the font.. quite big isn't it?
My son really enjoy the new toy.
There are cheaper model starting form SGD45 ranging to the most expensive model selling at SGD550. I heard that the price in Malaysia is RM1700 for equivalent model. Unless you get discount, it seems to me it's cheaper here in Singapore but do not forget, those sold in Malaysia will have the local contents like Malay language.
2 comments:
I was thinking to buy one for my kids. My husband and I just discussed about it last week. From your sharing, I guess it's a good tool to invest.
Yes, it's a good tool. In Malaysia and Singapore, we have the luxury of having them to try at stall first.. I had concern earlier whether my son know enough words or Kanji to use the dictionary. It looks to me he can't understand the mandarin explanation because his Kanji vocab is not at the level yet, but his Eng vocab is adequate to use the dictionary. Electronics item always become cheaper.. if cannot use, just wait for bargain.
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