You can look up characters, Chinese sentences or phrases by Pinyin, character radical, English definition, English phrase, English sentence fragment, character itself, Chinese phrase or Chinese sentence fragment.

a. By Pinyin
To look up a character by Pinyin, enter a Pinyin string, such as wo3 and zhong1, and click the Search button. Use v for ü, for example lv3 for lǚ. Also, the tone numbers, 1,2,3 or 4, are required and they must be at the end of the Pinyin string.

b. By Radicals
To look up a character by character radicals, simply click the radical look-up button, which has a magnifier icon, on the toolbar. Radicals are ordered by stroke counts. Once the radical look-up table shows up, click the radical of the character that you are looking for. The system will display the corresponding characters, ordered by stroke counts. If you are not sure the meaning of a radical, move your mouse over the radical. The English definition will be displayed as the tool tip.

c. By English
To search a character by English, simply type an English definition, such as me and Chinese, and click the Search button.

Tip: if you cannot find the corresponding Chinese characters, which is common if a single character cannot describe the meaning of the English word, use the powerful Wildcard Search. Say, you are looking for the corresponding characters for computer, you can enter computer * and then hit the Search button (Note that there is a space between the word and asterisk). All the computer related Chinese sentences will show up. After you find the character in the sentences, you can click the character or copy and paste it to the search box to view the stroke order animation and other information.

d. By English Phrases
To search the corresponding Chinese phrases or sentences for an English phrase, enter a phrase, for examples, Chinese food, chicken soup, good luck, etc. and then Click the Search button.

e. By English Sentence Fragments
This is similar to the search by English phrases. Simply enter a sentence fragment, such as, prefer to, might as well, my Chinese teacher, am going to, He is a big boy now etc. The system looks up the Chinese-English dictionary and sentence repository to find the corresponding Chinese words and sentences.

f. By Characters
To search English definition and stroke order information for a Chinese character, you can enter a Chinese character to the search box using your favorite Chinese character Input Method Editor(IME), and then hit the Search button. Alternatively, you can copy and paste a Chinese character from other sources, such as files or web pages, and then click the Search button.

g. By Phrases
If you are looking for the example usages of a phrase or idiom, for an example, 動物園 (zoo), you can copy and paste (or enter using a IME) the phrase or idiom to the search box and hit the Search button. The search results, if any, will display on the example sentences area.

h. By Sentence Patterns Or Any Sentence Fragments
If you are looking for the example usages of sentence structures or patterns, such as 與其...不如 (instead of..., might as well...), you can copy and paste the patterns into the search box and then hit the search button. Again, the example usages, if any in the system, will show up on the example sentence area. In fact, you can search any entire sentences as well.

You can simply click the Print button on the toolbar to generate the worksheets for the characters you have studied online via the Stroke Order Animation or the Worksheets page.

To generate general-purpose blank worksheets, go to Worksheets page.

Note that this site uses a pop-up window to display the generated worksheets. If your browser is configured to block pop-ups, you need to allow this site to open pop-ups.You need to register and sign in to generate worksheets that have stroke sequences for individual characters. You can sign in when you are using Stroke Order Animaition or Worksheets pages, where you generate writing worksheets.

Click anywhere outside the pop-ups to close them. If you have made changes on the Display Options pop-up, all the changes will be temporarily saved and applied automatically. After you leave that page, the changes will be reset to the default settings.

On the up-right corner of the page, there is a Sign In link when you are on the Stroke Order Animation or Worksheets page. Before you hit the Print button on the toolbar, click the Sign In link to enter your member serial key. You do not have to sign in if you want to print blank worksheets or worksheets without stroke sequences. Your serial key will be cleared once you leave the Stroke Order Animation or Worksheets page.

Click the Options button on the toolbar to bring up the Options pop-up and then check the Generate worksheets for tracing option, which is on Worksheet tab. On that tab, you can also select the grid style and writing box size for the generated worksheets. By default, the system uses medium size writing boxes with diagonal grids.

On the Worksheet option tab, you can also change the character printing colors. By default, written strokes are printed in black, while the strokes for tracing or the current stroke are printed in red. If you are using a black & white printer, the red color will be printed as light gray, which is good for tracing.

Yes. This is one of the best features of the Arch Chinese learning tool. You can select a character from

• Search result pop-up
• Imported character pop-up
• Studied character pop-up
• Example phrases
• Example sentences

Once a character is selected, the animation will start automatically. You can click the character in the center box to write the character stroke by stroke interactively. When all the strokes for the character are written, it will start over again.

Alternatively, you can click the Stroke Forward button on the toolbar to write the strokes interactively. After the character is written, the system plays the pronunciation of the character automatically.

Some users have found it very useful to slow down the time between strokes. The default pause time between strokes is one second. You can adjust the pause time through the Animation tab on the Options pop-up.

On the same tab, you can also adjust the time interval between characters when animating multiple characters continuously. You can click the Slideshow button on the toolbar to watch the animation of all the studied characters. You can also watch the animation of all the imported characters by clicking Slideshow button on the Imported Characters pop-up.

This system runs on all major browsers, including Internet Explorer 6.x & 7.0, Firefox 1.5, 2.x & 3.0, Safari 3.x, Opera 9.x and Google Chrome. The system works on Windows, Linux and MacOS X. Minium screen resolution is 800X600. If you can watch YouTube videos on your browser, you should be able to run this tool.

After you import the characters or phrases you want to study, get a cup of coffe and then click the Slideshow button on Imported Characters pop-up. The system automatically demonstrates the stroke order, along with pronunciation, English definition, stroke number, example phrases and example sentences, for the imported characters. You can adjust the speed and intervals between characters via the Display Option pop-up.

Simiarly, you can watch the animations for all the studied characters after you have studied them. You can do that by clicking the Slideshow button on the toolbar. Alternatively, you can click the Slideshow button on the Studied Characters pop-up.

The handwriting pracice worksheets are based on the latest PDF specification. Some very old versions of PDF viewers may not be able to view the PDF files. The message will disappear if you upgrade your Acrobat Reader (or other PDF viewers) to the latest version.

Yes. you will notice minor discrepancies when you compare textbooks from Mainland China and Taiwan. In this system, the stroke orders for simplified Chinese characters are strictly based on 《现代汉语通用字笔顺规范》 (Modern Chinese Commonly Used Character Stroke Order Standard) published by 国家语委和中华人民共和国新闻出版署(China National Language And Character Working Committee and General Administration of Press and Publication of the Peoples' Republic of China) in 1997. For traditional Chinese characters, which is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Arch Chinese follows the standand issued by Taiwan Ministry of Education.

Click the animated character or the Next Stroke button on the toolbar to switch the system to the interactive mode.

Click the Display Options button to bring up the Options pop-up and uncheck Play sound after stroke animation.

Yes, you can. Click the Display Options button to bring up the Options pop-up and slide the slider thumb to adjust the writing speed.

Below the animation box is the usage examples of the character. You can click Chinese characters in the usage example box to learn how to write them as well. On the left and right ends of the example phrases, the Prev Page and Next Page buttons allow you view more usage examples.

The example sentences are shown on the left side of the page. Because we have a large example sentence repository for frequently used characters, again you can use the Prev and Next buttons to get additional examples that aren't shown on the screen. Except for the animated character, all other characters in the example sentences are hyperlinked. That is, with one click, you can find the stroke information, English definitions, etc for the individual characters of a sentence.

For the time being, it cannot, but we may provide a downloadable version in the future.