I'm going to let you know about what I consider the most helpful gadget you can buy with your money for your Chinese or any other language you happen to be learning. It's a smart phone.
I happen to own an iphone but as far as I can see the brand is unimportant. What is important is the programs that you can put on it and its functions. So I like my iphone but any brand will do fine.
Electronic Dictionary
The first thing you will want is a good electronic dictionary to put on your phone. This is an amazingly helpful resource to have in your pocket when you are out an about. The dictionary I use is called Pleco which as far as I can tell is the best on the market, although I'm sure there are many other good ones. Firstly an electronic dictionary will make looking up characters infinitely easier than a paper dictionary. If you come across a character you don't know the pronunciation for to look it up you need to know the radical, find the radical in a radical index and then count the total number of strokes in the character. I've never done it for a any length of time, so I'm sure it gets easier and easier as you do it more often, but you still need to spend a long time to look up new words. This makes using resources made for native speakers incredibly arduous. In novels made for early teens that I read I usually come across a minimum of one new word or character on every page. Sometimes you can ignore the word and continue and you will still get the gist of the story or sometimes get a vague idea of the word from the context. This is okay to reinforce what you already know, but if you want to use your reading to learn new words you will have to look them up to learn them with any efficiency. With a smart phone and Pleco this is not a problem. Simply roughly draw the character on the touch screen and it will give you a list of characters that resemble what you drew. This only requires knowing the basic stroke order.
So an electronic dictionary makes accessing native materials far easier, which is an enjoyable way to study. Pleco isn't actually a dictionary itself, its a program which you can download certain dictionaries to. Mine has four different dictionaries. Two are Chinese to English dictionaries. Great for an English translation and a few example sentences to understand how to use the word. The fact there are two makes it great for cross referencing as sometimes the translation slightly differs and more example sentences is always a good thing. The other is an English to Chinese dictionary which takes English words and gives the definition entirely in Chinese.. This is helpful because sometimes English words can have many different meanings and the Chinese to English dictionaries usually only give you one word translations. But go the other way and you will get an explanation for most of the major uses for the word.
Then finally there is an ordinary Chinese to Chinese dictionary which is very helpful as it gives further example sentences and also explains Chinese in Chinese. So you get a lot of great sentences not necessarily using a word you are looking up, but explaining it. This is great because it is often more precise than the English translation and also shows you how to explain things formally if you can't say a word but need to ask a native speaker what it is in Chinese. This is also the hardest dictionary to use as there are often many words you don't understand in the explanation. However the beauty is you can tap on the characters you don't understand and a small window with a definition and pronunciation will pop up. So you can work your way through the new difficult sentences with ease.
Pleco has many other functions such as a character reader that uses the phones camera. This sounds amazing but in reality it needs good lighting and a steady hand. I prefer to draw the character on the touch screen. It also has a flashcard app but it doesn't have the ability to add sentences, so I just use Anki. There is also a really cool app where you can copy and paste any Chinese you find into the dictionary and then get quick pop ups with the definition and pin-yin for words you don't know. I've copied and pasted many Chinese wikipedia articles about topics of interest into it. Usually they would be over my head with all the technical vocabulary but using the reader it's easy.
A spaced repetition system (SRS)
A spaced repetition system is like a flashcard program that allows you to put your own vocabulary, definition and sentence patterns into it. There is a question side and an answer side. You see the question side, try to answer it and then tap the screen to see the answer, be it pin-yin or a definition in your native language. The really important part that distinguishes an SRS from normal flashcards is that you constantly review everything you study at ever increasing intervals. So the first time you see a word you will see it again in a day, then probably every day for a week, after that it will be every two days, then three, then five, then a week, then two weeks, a month, two months, three months and so on. So after you have studied the word thoroughly you will see it often enough just not to forget it. Therefore it makes reviewing incredibly efficient and makes a great way to keep track of how many words you have studied. Also its a great way of keeping yourself disciplined because if you don't do your reviews they build and build until they are out of control. So you get into a good habit of doing it everyday to keep in under control. Once again the selling point is that it is on your phone. So when ever you get some free time you can pull out your phone and study. When you are sitting on the train, or the bus. I've spend flights from Taiwan to Australia using my phone to study and take advantage of the time in a seat. Also I study sitting in bed, when I have breaks from teaching at work or even when waiting in a line. It's a great way of getting back that wasted time. Creating the cards are also easy although typing on the phone isn't as fast a a keyboard I can just copy and paste the examples and definitions straight from the dictionary.
Some people use it for recognising characters and the English translation but I prefer to concentrate on the example sentences. I've found that if you understand and read the example sentences enough not only the word, but the context and the grammar involved in the sentence will become ingrained into your brain. You'll find that if you read enough examples of the correct grammar eventually when you talk the correct grammar will just fall out of your mouth.
Listening and Recording Audio
Smart phones have the ability to record audio. It's quite good to get a perspective on how your Chinese really is or how accurate your pronunciation is. You might be surprised that you actually sound better than you think you do when you listen to yourself talk in a normal situation. Also if you have a private lesson with a teacher you can record it and listen to it after class. It's far easier than taking notes and nothing gets left out.
Finally you can use your phone like an mp3 player to get listening practice in when you are on the move or doing something that needs you to use your hands like driving, washing the dishes, exercising and so on. I have everything from Chinese music, audio CDs that accompany my textbook, Chinese pod-casts and audio ripped from Chinese dubbed anime that I watch. It's a great way to take advantage of those times when you need to do other things.
So in short, buy a smart phone, you can use it to practice every one of your language skills and the portability means you can be study without dragging books and pencils with you where ever you go. It might be a big expense but it is absolutely worth it if you are serious about learning a language.
