A: Voca Bee helps you learn and improve your Chinese vocabulary through AI-powered Smart Flashcards. It's designed as a supplementary tool for memorizing and growing your vocabulary. It helps you:

• Get familiar with word usage through varying personalized example sentences with matching audio.
• Master pronunciation by hearing how words are pronounced with audio that matches each sentence.

A: Voca Bee is a Smart Flashcards app similar to Anki, with several advantages for vocabulary learning:

• It won't overwhelm you with huge wordbank (or deck). It starts with the most commonly used words such as nouns, verbs, etc., helping you learn vocabulary progressively.
• It automatically grows your wordbank based on your level of mastery, ensuring continuous vocabulary improvement.
• It varies the example sentences with matching audio so that you won't only memorize the word, but also you will slowly get a handle on its proper usage.
• Example sentences use only words that are in your word bank. It won't use words that are not familiar to you, and each sentence comes with matching audio for pronunciation practice.

A: The main focus is strengthening the listening skill and comprehension. You might have already learned some basic survival words and phrases, but the truth is, normal Chinese would not talk or reply to you using basic, stripped down sentences. The few vocabulary you know could easily get drowned in the abundance of different measure words and sentence particles, or use the same word in another way with another meaning you're not familiar with. Some Chinese who might want to talk to you would try to be polite, or lighten the sentence, or use common compounds to sound friendly, and could easily overwhelm you in that situation.

Voca Bee does not skip these particles and measure words. If a word is widely used, it will get added into the word bank. And it won't use it only in its most common usage (though it would try to use its common meaning more frequently in a sentence).

The "Alternative Sentences" section would make the learner become more familiar on how regular Chinese would convey the same meaning in different ways so you won't be surprised when something is said differently compared to what you would have expected. Sentences like "Where are you from?" can be said in so many ways, so when faced with that situation, you won't get lost.

A: This project was created by a Chinese language learner who happened to be a software engineer, married to a native Chinese. It was conceived after some frustrations in downloading shared Anki decks, and paying expensive apps with their own flashcards and word bank. These things are either overwhelming or disorienting. After learning some 300 words in a deck, it's surprisingly still difficult to understand what common Chinese are saying in everyday life.

In comparison, at least based on the creator's experience, after reaching less than 200 words using Voca Bee, comprehension has increased dramatically. People talking around you would no longer sound encrypted.

Try it for yourself and share your experience with us!

A: It's not necessary because the system will automatically add new words to your word bank based on your learning progress. Every new word added is generally based on its usage frequency.

But if there are specific Chinese characters or words (or phrases) in your social domain that you want to learn first, then you can add them in the Word Bank page.

For example, if your social domain is in school (like a teacher or a student), then the word 书 (shū, book) or 课程表 (kè chéng biǎo, class schedule) might be highly frequently used for you. Or if your social domain is in the office (like having a business trip to China), then 电脑 (diàn nǎo, computer) or 会议 (huì yì, meeting) might be highly frequent words for you. For a traveler, 买 (mǎi, buy), 公交车 (gōng jiāo chē, bus) or 目的地 (mù dì dì, destination) could be one of the most frequently used words.

A: When reviewing flashcards, you can rate your performance using four buttons:

• Again - Choose this if the word sounds familiar but you have forgotten the meaning, or if you completely don't know what the word means, like when it's your first time to encounter this word.
• Hard - Choose this if you understood the word but not the sentence (or the other way around), or understood both but it took some effort to recall and analyze the meaning.
• Good - Choose this if you know what the word means and understood the sentence with little effort.
• Easy - Choose this if you can understand the word and the sentence without effort, as well as it makes you feel bored to study this word again.

A: Here are some complimentary resources that can help you learn Chinese:

• Fluenz Mandarin (fluenz.com) - They follow the progressive approach to learning by starting with most frequently used and practical words without overwhelming you with a lot of unfamiliar words and phrases at once.
• Pleco Dictionary - An essential mobile dictionary app with comprehensive character lookup, stroke order animations, and audio pronunciation. Great for quick word lookups and understanding character components while on the go.
• Google Translate - Useful for quick translations and understanding context. The camera feature helps translate text in real-time, making it practical for reading signs and documents in Chinese.
• AI Chats like ChatGPT or Gemini - Excellent for practicing conversations, getting explanations of grammar points, and receiving personalized feedback on your Chinese writing. They can help you understand nuances and cultural context that traditional resources might miss.