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I want to buy an English learning machine for my children who have been in primary school for 4 years. Which is better? comprehensive
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Guide to shopping guide of English learning machine

As a master of digital technology, software resources and educational products in recent two years, English learning machine swept the field of educational products (ELP) with irresistible force. In particular, the products have achieved many functions such as learning, information, dictionary, entertainment and so on, and are well received by parents and students.

At present, there are many kinds of English learning tools on the market, including point reading machine, digital learning machine (PDA, dictionary) and repeater. As parents, how can we choose an English-assisted learning tool suitable for our children?

First of all, we need to know the characteristics of various products.

As a new professional tool for English learning, point reading machine is not only suitable for beginners' listening and speaking practice, but also suitable for gradual practice. In terms of manipulation, it is very simple that "seeing, pointing and listening" can make children concentrate on their studies and will not be distracted by time-consuming and laborious manipulation; In addition, because it is a professional English learning tool, it is much more professional than other tools in listening, speaking and reading training. So it is suitable for primary schools, junior high schools and beginners.

Digital learning machine is a general term for dictionaries, palmtop computers and other products. Its function focuses on information query such as dictionaries, but the function of listening and speaking practice is weak. Small five characters are generally used in liquid crystal displays, which are harmful to developing children's eyesight and easy to cause myopia after long-term use; Manipulation is also very complicated; Therefore, it is suitable for high schools, universities, adults and other students with a certain English foundation and mature eyesight.

Repeater uses tape voice data, and its function focuses on progressive practice of listening and speaking; For young children without English foundation, it is difficult to manipulate the tape to the designated location, either too late or not, and the time to manipulate the repeater may be longer than the time to study, which is quite complicated to use; On the other hand, due to the limited capacity, the pronunciation on the tape is generally only 1/3 of the left glaze pox text in the textbook, and there are still a lot of sentences and exercises that children need to learn without pronunciation; Therefore, the repeater is not suitable for primary schools and beginners.

Secondly, we need to know the needs of children.

The heads of primary schools and junior high schools of the Ministry of Education pointed out: English teaching in primary schools should focus on stimulating and cultivating students' interest in learning English, cultivating a certain sense of language and a good foundation of pronunciation and intonation, and guiding students to communicate simply in English. Prevent and correct the practice of teaching language knowledge such as pronunciation and grammar, and pay attention to cultivating students' ability and hobby of communicating in English. To put it bluntly, there is only one goal at this stage: to cultivate children's interest in learning English through standard listening and speaking exercises.

Cultivating hobbies is actually very simple, making children feel that learning English is a very simple and meaningful thing; Being able to blurt out everyday words with standard pronunciation, children can have a good face in front of classmates and adults; If you choose to use more complicated tools, you will leave a bad impression on your children: "Even the tools for learning English are so difficult to manipulate, it is even more difficult to learn English", thus making children lose confidence in learning English; Therefore, to choose a simple English learning tool, the point reading machine is the most suitable.

Many parents can't help their children's purchase demand when they see the advertisement of digital learning machine or because of the comparison psychology, so they bought digital learning machine in primary school, but it is too complicated to use and the effect is not ideal, which also has a serious impact on their children's eyesight, and later they have to buy point reading machine.

Senior high school students have mastered the basic vocabulary, have a good foundation in listening and speaking, have strong thinking and manipulation abilities, and their eyesight is basically mature. Parents should choose a portable digital learning machine that focuses on information or a repeater that focuses on listening and speaking progress.

Point reading machine for beginners.

As an auxiliary learning tool, point reading machine plays an important role in cultivating students' interest in learning English and improving children's listening and speaking ability.

Many parents think that it will be all right to teach their children to use the point reading machine after buying it, but this is far from enough. For beginners, out of curiosity and fun, children will be interested in newly bought tools for a period of time. Parents should study with their children for a period of time after they buy them from the point reading machine, while they are still in the "hobby period", so that children can develop good study habits as soon as possible.

Cultivate children's learning hobbies

Before learning, parents can teach their children how to turn the machine on and off, and then teach them how to operate it in detail.

Parents and children study texts together, and children often like to turn pages. Parents don't have to force their children to turn around. They can follow the school first and then look back when the children are not paying attention.

After learning the text and entering the test function of the point reading machine, parents can interact with their children and find sentences in the textbook. Children will praise if they find the right one and encourage if they find the wrong one. At the same time, I sometimes go to Zhao Dong to find the wrong ones and guide the children to evaluate them.

Improve listening and speaking ability.

English listening and speaking ability is the most basic and difficult of the five abilities of English "listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating". Practice is a step-by-step process. In the process of practice, we should follow the principle of easy before difficult, that is, words and sentences should follow the text.

Listen and say words and sentences.

With the help of the repeat function of the point reading machine, parents and children listen to the words and sentences they want to learn repeatedly and encourage their children to say them themselves.

The follow-up function of the point reading machine encourages children to follow.

The contrast function of the jukebox encourages children to talk to each other, then play, find the differences in intonation and pronunciation with them, and practice repeatedly.

Listening and speaking texts

After basically mastering listening and speaking sentences, practice listening and speaking of texts, read the speed function of the machine in advance, and adjust the speed to a suitable level. Parents and children listen to the text together. When they think that children can basically understand, they gradually speed up their speech. When children can understand at normal speed (the speed of tape playing), they practice dialogue. Parents choose the sentences in the text to ask questions and let the children answer them.

Precautions for parents

When starting to use the point reading machine, it is mainly to cultivate children's interest in learning English; Therefore, parents need to learn how to use the point reading machine, so as to guide their children to use it, and correct their children's wrong operations in time to avoid their children losing interest in using the point reading machine.

Parents should arrange time to study with their children when they start using the point reading machine. With the children's skillful use of the point reading machine and the mastery of the learning method of using the point reading machine, parents gradually reduce the time of studying together to exercise their children's autonomous learning ability.

Children should be urged to use the point reading machine every day from Monday to Friday, and it is best to learn English at a fixed time every day to develop a good habit of self-study.

It doesn't have to take too long to study with the point reading machine every day, but it should be about 30-45 minutes: it takes about 5- 10 minutes to review yesterday or before; Spend about 15-20 minutes reviewing what you learned that day, listening and reading repeatedly until you fully understand and speak fluently; What needs to be taught tomorrow will be previewed in 5- 10 minutes. Listen to 1-3 times and follow 1-2 times.

According to the content of the text, contact the family environment and answer each other with the children to consolidate the knowledge learned. At ordinary times, children should be asked and encouraged to say greetings and daily expressions in English, so that children can practice more.

Buy a point reader, five to five, no

One is a wireless pen.

Wired pen is an early technology of point reading machine, which belongs to outdated technology. Wired pen has a fatal weakness: for thick books, the correct rate of point reading is very low; In the textbooks of senior primary school and junior high school, it often appears that "A" reads "B" and one line reads the next; Therefore, some wired nib readers and junior high school textbooks are all * * *, fooling consumers; Regardless of the thickness of the book, the click accuracy of the wireless pen is the same.

Second, flash memory.

Flash disk is the most advanced memory of point reading machine based on flash memory chip and computer disk management technology, which has many advantages, such as small size, high reliability, long life, good versatility, quick and convenient updating of teaching materials and so on. However, due to the backward technology and the lack of advanced computer disk technology, the memory card used by the general point reader has many shortcomings. A point reader using flash drives can increase its capacity just like changing a computer hard disk. 1Gb is not enough, so it can be changed to 2Gb, which is very convenient. The point reading machine using memory card has a fixed capacity and cannot be replaced;

Third, USB download.

First, USB downloads quickly. It generally takes about 10 seconds to download a textbook from a computer, and it usually takes more than 10 minutes for other methods. Second, it is correct. The possibility of USB download error is one in 100,000, and the possibility of other methods is basically above 5%. Third, convenience. All computers have USB interfaces, but other download interfaces may not. For example, a notebook computer only has a USB interface, and there is no other download interface. For the point reading machine without download function, it can't be considered, because it is all eliminated products.

Fourth, the teaching materials are rich in content and complete in functions.

At present, some reading machines on the market can only read the text, listening and summary, but can't read the practice part; Some point readers have phonetic symbols, grammar, comparison, overall reading, testing, follow-up reading and translation functions, but no dictionary and spelling functions. When choosing a point reading machine, we should pay attention to whether the practice part can be pronounced, especially the content of junior high school textbooks.

Fifth, after-sales guarantee.

In the second half of 2005, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine conducted quality monitoring and spot checks on some learning machine products, and the qualified rate of product spot checks only reached 60%. Many brand learning machines were "red cards" by AQSIQ. According to the latest statistics, the repair rate of digital learning machine is over 40%, far higher than the repair rate level of mobile phone 5% and MP3 10%. In view of this, parents must consider after-sales service when purchasing point readers, so as to avoid unnecessary troubles in the future. Before buying the point reading machine, you must specifically inquire about relevant information and choose a brand with good after-sales reputation, so as to be aware of it; When purchasing the point reading machine, we should not only try the machine on the spot, but also find the problems in the pre-purchase stage as much as possible; Before deciding to buy, be sure to read clearly whether there is a clear after-sales commitment on the manual or warranty card to avoid being cheated.

First, don't eliminate or unsalable products.

The obsolete and unsalable products are characterized by backward technology, imperfect design, incomplete functions and defective performance. In order to seize the market, some manufacturers will launch several new products within one year. Due to the lack of necessary investigation, evaluation and testing, and the backward technology adopted, it is inevitable that some point readers with inherent design defects or obvious defects will appear. Soon after these point readers are listed, they will become outdated and unsalable products because of their topic exposure, and these products will generally be sold at low prices; So don't be greedy for cheap, buy an outdated point reading machine.

Second, don't brand products.

OEM products are characterized by no R&D team, no production base, short life cycle and no guarantee of after-sales service. At present, there are a large number of branded products in the point-reading machine market. Please be careful when you find that the two products are similar in appearance in the market. One is a labeling machine. In order to avoid being fooled, don't buy either product.

Third, don't trust advertising products.

It is only four years since the introduction of the point-reading machine, and some manufacturers pay more attention to marketing than product innovation, which leads to the slow functional innovation of some point-reading machine products and the outdated technology used, which seriously affects the actual learning effect of children; In addition, there may be exaggerated propaganda in advertisements, which makes our parents fall for it and suffer; The following figure is the satisfaction questionnaire of a brand digital learning machine's heavy advertisement, which should be used for reference. On the other hand, the huge advertising investment of manufacturers is ultimately paid by our parents.

The quality characteristics of products have a "bathtub curve", that is, there are many quality problems in the early stage and they are relatively stable in the middle stage. There will be more quality problems in the later period; Many manufacturers are eager to launch new products to seize the opportunity, and put products with imperfect design and unstable quality into the market for consumers to test. Pay attention to when purchasing point reading machine. It is recommended to buy the new product three months after it goes on the market.

5. Don't use fancy products.

The basic function of point reading machine is listening and speaking practice. In order to raise the price of point readers and make our parents pay more, some manufacturers add some fancy functions that are inconvenient to use, such as Chinese-English dictionaries. In fact, a professional English-Chinese-English dictionary costs more than 10 yuan, but after adding this fancy function, it is really unfair for us to pay 300-400 yuan more. Therefore, when choosing a point reading machine, you must not spend money for some fancy functions.

Point reading machine knowledge

Wired pen

Line pen is an early recognition technology of point reading machine, which comes from foreign early education machine and is suitable for books with thin thickness. When the number of pages in the book is less than 80 pages, the correct rate of wired pen reading is still good; With the increase of book thickness, the click accuracy of wired pen drops rapidly. For example, the number of pages of textbooks in senior grades and junior high schools is generally above 120. At this time, the accuracy of wired pen clicking may drop below 50%. In order to overcome the shortcomings of wired pen, the wired pen point reading machine is used, and the textbooks of senior high school and junior high school are relatively thick, bit by bit. The advantage of wired pen is that it is not easily influenced by the outside world and has good anti-interference. Because it doesn't need a power supply, and it doesn't need to be replaced because the battery is exhausted.

Wireless pen

Because the wired pen has a low recognition rate of thick books, the latest point reading machines all use wireless pens, which are not affected by the thickness of books, and the correct rates of thin books, thick books and point reading are the same. The wireless pen also has some disadvantages: (1) When the point reader is too close to the TV and fluorescent lamp (less than 30 cm), it will be delayed by the interference of the TV and fluorescent lamp; (2) The wireless pen itself has a battery. If the battery in the wireless pen runs out, there will be some mistakes, but the battery of the wireless pen can generally be used for more than 2 years.

USB transmission

There are three ways to download textbooks from computer to point reader: (1) using RS232 serial port; (2) using a parallel interface connected to a printer, and (3) using a USB interface. At present, USB is the standard communication interface between computers and external devices (such as point readers), but the serial interface and parallel interface (printer interface) widely used in the past are basically eliminated because of their slow speed and easy error. For example, the current notebook computer generally only has USB interface, without serial port and parallel port. It usually takes only 10 seconds to download a textbook from a computer, but it usually takes more than 10 minutes to use a serial port or a parallel port. The download error probability of USB interface is one in 100,000, and the error probability of other interfaces is generally above 5%.

Flash disk storage

There are two kinds of chips for the point-reading machine to store the contents of teaching materials: one is NorFLASH, which is generally small in capacity, with 32Mb and 64Mb being the most common. NorFLASH is an early memory chip, which is widely used in small electrical equipment as a memory chip for programs. The other is NANDFLASH, which is a new type of large-capacity memory chip, and is widely used in products that need a lot of data storage, such as U disk, MP3, MP4 and so on.

Flash disk is the most advanced memory of point reading machine based on flash memory chip and computer disk management technology, which has many advantages, such as small size, high reliability, long life, good versatility, quick and convenient updating of teaching materials and so on. However, the memory card used by the general point reader has many shortcomings, such as large size, poor reliability, short service life, poor universality, slow updating of teaching materials, and even the need for manufacturers to update, because the technology used is backward and advanced computer disk technology is not used.

A point reader using flash drives can increase its capacity just like changing a computer hard disk. 1Gb is not enough, so it can be changed to 2Gb, which is very convenient. The capacity of the point reader using the memory card is fixed and cannot be replaced. In order to increase the capacity, you must buy a new point reader.

storage capacity

Mark how many things a USB flash drive or memory card can hold, that is, the storage capacity. There are two minimum units of storage capacity: bits and bytes, commonly known as small "B" and large "B". The relationship between them is 1 byte = 8 bits. Whether to use "B" or "B" as the unit of production capacity is an established practice of an industry; For example, when it comes to the weight of diamonds, everyone uses "carat" instead of "gram", while when it comes to the weight of gold, everyone uses "gram" instead of "carat". On computers, such as hard disk capacity, everyone is used to using "B" as the minimum unit, and the capacity of "40G" hard disk is "40gbyte"; On the other hand, in the point-reading machine with the chip as the storage medium, everyone is used to taking "B" as the minimum unit, and the capacity of "5 12M" flash disk is "512mbit"; Therefore, when viewing a "5 12Mb" flash drive on the computer, the computer will automatically take "b" as the unit, and the capacity will be marked as "64M" (the actual display may be less than 64M because the computer system will occupy some space).

The capacity has five units of B, B, K, M and G, and the relationship is: 1G= 1024M, 1M= 1024K, 1k = 654338. It takes 2B to store a Chinese character.

Is it better to have more textbooks?

The answer is no, flash drives (memory cards) with the same capacity do not mean that the more textbooks are stored, the better. The reason is simple: the more textbooks are stored, the less content they have. On the other hand, English textbooks at this stage are changing every semester. There is no value in downloading and storing some unused textbooks after one or two semesters, just spending more money. Generally speaking, it is enough to store 3-5 textbooks: a random dictionary; Review last semester's textbooks; One textbook being studied and another textbook for next semester can be used for preview, and if necessary, one more extra-curricular English.

Is the pronunciation really inaccurate?

There may be three reasons: (1) British pronunciation is divided into classical pronunciation and modern pronunciation, and some words in the two pronunciations are quite different. Most of the words taught in China more than ten years ago were pronounced in classical Chinese, but now they are all pronounced in modern times; (2) The difference between British pronunciation and American pronunciation. Nowadays, parents and most English teachers may learn British pronunciation, while American pronunciation is popular at present. For example, the British pronunciation of "Apple" is quite different from the American pronunciation. (3) China people speak English with obvious local accent. If we are used to hearing "Chinglish" with incorrect pronunciation, we will find pure pronunciation awkward.

How does my child learn English?

Language learning has a "critical period", after which it is difficult to reach the level of mother tongue, especially pronunciation; This "critical period" is generally considered to be 6- 12 years old, that is, in primary school. Learning English in the critical period will get twice the result with half the effort. With a little effort and time, children can easily learn fluent and standard English without losing at the starting line. Many parents know nothing about English, let alone speak and listen, which brings great difficulties to help their children learn English well. However, as long as we take it seriously, be a conscientious person and do some work within our power, we can also achieve good results in helping children learn English well. But how to make children learn English well?

Give priority to developing hobbies and don't put pressure on children. How parents help their children learn English is not only to let them know 26 English letters, remember a few words, speak a few English words and understand a few simple English conversations, but also to make their children like English and have the desire to learn English through English classroom teaching. The leaders of the Education Department of the State Education Commission clearly pointed out that hobbies are the main thing for primary school students to learn English. Don't let children feel heavy psychological pressure at an early age, but let them feel that English is easy to learn and interesting. Therefore, improving children's interest in learning English is the condition for children to learn English well, and it is also the main direction for parents to help their children learn English well.

Parents should encourage their children to speak English. When they learn English for the first time, they will feel very novel, have great interests and high enthusiasm. Parents should make good use of their children's enthusiasm, encourage them to speak English at home, and praise and encourage them in time. For example, every day when children come home, parents can ask their children what English they have learned and how to say it, so that they can practice. Although parents may not understand what their children say and what they say is not so correct, at this time, parents should show great enthusiasm and say more encouraging words such as "It's really good" and "Our children can go abroad" instead of "How harsh!" "Say what!" Such discouraging language.

To create an atmosphere of learning English at home, the English textbooks for nine-year compulsory education being used in primary schools fully consider the characteristics of children's love of novelty and activity. The arrangement of books, speaking, writing, singing, doing, drawing and playing is lively, illustrated and interesting, close to children's lives. Parents can look through this textbook, choose some suitable pictures with English words, and ask someone to enlarge them and post them on the wall of their children's room or in the corner of their room. At home, parents can point out the windows, doors, chairs, tables and other furniture at home, some vegetables and fruits, and let their children say their English names; Adults can also sing in Chinese, and children can sing in English. Let children use English in colorful activities, which can stimulate their greater interest in English and make their English learning more practical. Conditional parents should study with their children, especially in the first semester when their children begin to learn English.

Buying auxiliary tools for English learning, such as synchronous computers and point readers, is completely synchronized with the teaching materials, which can create a complete English learning environment at home; Make up for the lack of classroom study time, and some teachers' pronunciation is not standard. And also help our parents to give their children English learning guidance; With these tools, we can learn pronunciation and speak English with children at home, remember who will remember correctly in the competition with children, and so on, so that children can learn English well in fun and games.