How Tingxie Practice Works
- Snap or type the list. Tap Take or upload a photo and photograph the printed tingxie sheet, or type and paste the words. The characters are picked out of the photo on your own device, one word or sentence per line. Numbering and any pinyin printed on the sheet are stripped away.
- Check the result. Your photo appears next to the list. Text recognition is good with clear printed lists but can confuse look-alike characters such as 己 and 已, so read through once and fix anything that doesn’t match.
- Practise. Start the tingxie test, flip through flashcards, or print a worksheet. Save the list on this device, or copy the share link to send it to a grandparent or tutor.
A Test Built for Children Who Can’t Type Chinese Yet
Typing Chinese means typing pinyin and picking the right character from a list, which is a skill most lower-primary children don’t have yet. It also gives the game away, since the keyboard suggests the characters. So the standard test here works the way tingxie works in class. The word is read aloud twice, your child writes it from memory, and only then is the answer shown.
Children can write on paper or directly on the screen with a finger or stylus. The writing pad shows one 田字格 square for each character, the same grid used in Chinese exercise books, so your child also practises getting the proportions of each character right. After revealing the answer, your child (or you) taps I got it right or I got it wrong. Honest self-marking is a learning step in itself: comparing their own strokes with the printed character is exactly where children notice a missing dot or a misplaced radical.
Older children who already type Chinese can switch to typing mode. Their answer is checked automatically, ignoring punctuation and spaces, and any wrong characters are highlighted.
Three Ways to Practise the Same List
| Mode | What your child does | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Tingxie test | Hears each word twice, writes it, reveals the answer with pinyin, and marks it. Missed words come back in a retry round. | Rehearsing the real tingxie, from mid-week to the night before |
| Flashcards | Sees each word with its pinyin and taps to hear it. Hide mode shows only the pinyin first. | The day the list comes home, and learning to read new characters |
| Printable worksheet | Writes in 田字格 squares: dictation boxes, a 看拼音写词语 exercise and trace-and-copy rows. | Stroke and handwriting practice, homework time, and screen-free days |
A Weekly Tingxie Routine
Characters are learned through repeated writing spread over several days, not one long session. A routine like this takes about ten minutes a day:
| Day | Activity |
|---|---|
| Day 1 (list comes home) | Scan and save the list. Go through the flashcards with pinyin on and say each word together. Talk about the parts of each character: the radical, and any component your child already knows. |
| Day 2 | Print the worksheet and do the trace-and-copy rows, paying attention to stroke order. |
| Day 3 | Do the 看拼音写词语 section of the worksheet, then a tingxie test with the pinyin hint switched on. |
| Day 4 | Tingxie test without the hint, just like the real thing. Retry the missed words. |
| Day 5 (night before) | One more test. Write any words still missed three times each in the exercise book. |
Tips for a Photo That Scans Well
- Printed beats handwritten. The reader is trained on printed characters. A teacher’s handwritten list may scan partly or not at all. In that case, type the words in.
- Flat, bright and straight. Lay the sheet on a table, avoid your own shadow, and hold the phone directly above it rather than at an angle.
- Crop out the rest. Fill the frame with the list itself. Headings like 第七课 听写 and boxes for name and class are usually dropped automatically, but a busy photo slows things down.
- One column at a time. If the list is in two columns and the words come out mixed up, photograph each column separately. Each scan replaces the list, so scan, check, and practise one column at a time, or type the second column in under the first.
About the Pinyin and the Voice
Pinyin is added automatically using a Chinese dictionary that reads characters in the context of their word, so 长大 becomes zhǎng dà and 长短 becomes cháng duǎn. It is correct for nearly all school vocabulary. For the occasional character with several readings, such as 乐, 行 or 还, check it against your child’s textbook.
The words are spoken by the Mandarin voice built into your phone, tablet or computer. iPhones, iPads and Android phones include one by default. On a Windows or Mac computer you may need to add a Chinese voice in the system’s language or speech settings. If no Mandarin voice is found, a notice appears above the Start button.
Your Photo Stays on Your Device
The text reader runs inside your browser. Your photo is never uploaded to our server or anyone else’s. The first scan downloads the reader and its Chinese language data from a public code library (about 3 MB), and your browser keeps them for next time. Saved lists live in your browser’s own storage, and a share link carries the words in the part of the address after the #, which is never sent to the website.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tap “Take or upload a photo” and photograph the printed tingxie list. The page reads the Chinese characters on your phone, puts each word on its own line, and shows the photo next to the result so you can correct any character it misread. Then choose the test, flashcards or the printable worksheet.
No. The text recognition runs inside your browser, so the photo never leaves your device. The first time you scan a photo, the browser downloads the Chinese text reader (about 3 MB), which it then keeps for next time.
The default test is write-then-check. Each word is read aloud in Mandarin, your child writes it on paper or on the on-screen writing pad, then taps Show answer and marks it right or wrong. Older children who can use a Chinese keyboard can switch to typing mode, which marks the answer automatically.
The pinyin is generated automatically and is right for the vast majority of school words. Characters with more than one reading, such as 长 (cháng or zhǎng) and 乐 (lè or yuè), are read from the surrounding word, which is usually but not always correct. Check these against your child’s textbook.
Yes. Choose Traditional in the script setting before scanning, so the photo is read as traditional characters and the words are spoken with a Taiwan or Hong Kong Mandarin voice where your device has one.