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If you study Chinese, there are some essential tools, like the Pleco dictionary or a browser popup dictionary. Curiously, I don't recall ever seeing them mentioned in any textbook I've studied. The textbooks I've studied are mostly "here's some words, here's a snippet; go study".

Question: Are essential Chinese study tools, like Pleco or browser popup dictionaries, mentioned in any Chinese textbook?

Rebecca J. Stones
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  • "Using a dictionary" is an essential tool and it's not something I recall being mentioned explicitly in any language textbook. However, it's not essential that your preferred dictionary is a pop-up dictionary or not. I've tried such dictionaries and personally never found them that beneficial. They seem to encourage looking up lots of words, and although they make that efficient, the fact that it encourages so much looking up adds too much distraction cost. That's just my opinion though. Others will other preferred dictionary formats. – Brandin May 09 '23 at 07:29
  • Also, "using a dictionary" is not even sufficient. Sometimes you look up a word and there are 5 definitions listed. So, which one was intended in the text you are reading? Pop-up dictionaries don't seem to have solved this problem. MT tools tend to make a reasonable guess as to which definition is meant, but sometimes those are wrong or misleading, as well. Asking a native speaker to clarify the meaning is often a good fall-back, but even native speakers don't know every word. – Brandin May 09 '23 at 07:32

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