How it works You will see a sentence with words in the wrong sequence. You need to drag the words into the correct sequence. If you have difficulties in completing the question, you can click on the hint button. But we would recommend that you don't if you want to keep the exercise challenging.

We have taken a short passage from each book and we ask you questions about each passage.

So that you know the four greatest chinese novels in chronological order are: - Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese: 三國演義; pinyin: sān guó yǎn yì) (14th century) (more recently translated as, simply Three Kingdoms)
- Water Margin (Chinese: 水滸傳; pinyin: shuǐ hǔ zhuàn) (also known as Outlaws of the Marsh) (14th century)
- Journey to the West (Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: xī yóu jì) (16th century) also known as Monkey King
- Dream of the Red Chamber (Chinese: 紅樓夢; pinyin: hóng lóu mèng) (also known as The Story of the Stone, (Chinese: 石頭記; pinyin: shí tóu jì) (18th century)

How it works: This is a reading comprehension exercise. Before you can answer any of the questions in this exercise you should read the relevant articles. You can find the articles in your right hand side by clicking on the 'Articles' tab. Each question is labeled with the article number to which the question applies. For example, a question starting with A1 - XXXX refers to article number 1.

How it works: The way this exercise works is: you are presented with a chinese word and four images and you will also hear the pronunciation of the word in chinese. Based on what you hear and what you see you need to select the correct image. Even if you don't know the word at the beginning, don't worry, you will get immediate feedback on whether your option is correct or not. If you get a low score then you should repeat the exercise again. You will see that the more you repeat the exercise the better your score will be. Tips: If you want to see the roman alphabet pronunciation of a particular chinese word, click on the button that says 'pinyin'.

How it works You will see a set of cards with the face down. You need to use your mouse and click on one of the cards. After that you need to click on another card. If the cards turns to green that means you have found two cards that match. This means that you have matched an image against its chinese word in Hanzi-Image mode or that you have matched the chinese character against its chinese pronunciation if you are playing in Hanzi-Pinyin mode. There is a time constraint on this exercise so try to be quick!

In mandarin chinese it is not only difficult to distinguish tones. Certain syllabes in pinyin sound quite similar. Take as an example 知道 - zhī dao - to know and 迟到 - chí dào - to be late. To the untrained ear they sound the same but actually they have a slighly different sound. That's why it is important that you try this exercise and see whether you can differenciate the different sounds in pinyin.

How it works: You will hear the sound of a word in chinese and you have to select the right pinyin spelling from a number of options. For each question only one option is correct.