I have been looking for some interesting Chinese materials for my 7-year old daughter. A friend of mine recommended the touch reading pen to me recently. As there are so many books in their E-Read book collection, I don't know what to choose. Then I saw the beginner package. It includes a touch reading pen and 8 books. The books range from workbooks of Chinese Pinyin, characters, math, to fairy tale stories, Chinese dialogues in Disney's Scenes and etc. They are a good combination of working materials and fun readings. My daughter loves the Pen very much. Now she is touching and reading the Chinese books whenever she has time. She has made very good use of the Pen when she is in the car. She is learning Pinyin one by one in the workbook and get chance to practice them in the fairy tale stories (with Pinyin and characters). The Disney book is interesting. It shows only name of objects in Chinese and English (e.g., sunglass). Yet when you touch the pages, there's conversation in both Chinese and English. My daughter loves listening to them as they are from her favorite/familiar characters. I plan to buy the full set of fairy tale stories and Disney books when she finishes these two.
Currently a lot of Chinese books are accompanied with CD/DVD. As I don't want my daughter to play with a computer or watch too much TV/CD/DVD, I am pretty hesitant to buy them. Now I am very happy with the Pen. It serves the multimedia functions, helping sound out Chinese Pinyin/characters very clearly and improving my daughter's pronunciation and intonations. Most importantly, it develops her love for Chinese learning. On the other hand, I don't need worry about her attaching too much to TV or computer.
Would recommend this set to any beginning Chinese learners!
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I bought Touch Reading Pen and some E-read books for my kids late last year, thought they might like it, didn't expect this Touch Reading Pen and books become one of my kids' most liked Christmas presents.
About this "toy", what's important to my kids:
it's been 3 months since they got it and they haven't get sick of these "toys". They have learned a lot of Chinese words from these books in a effectless way simply because they are interested in it.
the reason I give 4 star(instead of 5 star) to "how much fun is this toy" is, sometimes it takes a few seconds longer before the Pen reads a word(after it is pointed at certain word). Because of this reason kids can lose their patient while they eagerly waiting to hear "how it read in Chinese".
About this product, what's good to me as a parent:
while kids "playing" with these toys, they learn Chinese in effectively. I give a 5 star to its "educational value" for sure;
it works as described always very important to a buyer;
I am a little unsure how to rate "durable" of this product, we've have them for 3 months they still work as new. I give it 5 stars, don't want to make a bad assumption on a good product, because it's so worth to buy.
Highly recommond this product to parents who try to encourage kids learn Chinese.
Linda R.
Best Deals for Touch Reading Pen English-Chinese with 8 books - Beginner Package
My son attends a Mandarin Dual Language Immersion elementary school, and as I don't speak Mandarin Chinese nor read Simplified Chinese, I thought this would help him to learn to read and build up his vocabulary, similar to the Leap Frog Tag. My younger preschooler actually enjoys it much more, as she's much more into reading than her older brother. She's already dropped it a few times and it's holding up very well.
Educationally, it does work very similarly to the Leap Frog Tag system, as you touch the pen to the words in the books.
The downsides are that the pen does not function as well as the Leap Frog Tag. You really have to touch the pen to the book straight on for it to sense the book. If you are crooked or off a little, then it doesn't read anything. Also, the default volume is really loud, so I'm constantly touching the volume control to turn it down. Also, the instructions are in Chinese and in typical very poorly translated English and make very little sense to me, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot in what the Touch Pen can do. I think I'm gonna have to bring in the instructions to my son's Chinese teacher to read and explain to me what I'm missing.
I wish the books that came with the package were more story books instead of game-ish and just phrases of stories; I did purchase the Brown Bear series of books, but they are too easy for my first grader son as he already knows most of the words and can figure out the rest from context. My preschooler enjoys them though.
But the absolutely biggest problem is that my order arrived in a taped up box and with the contents unwrapped, like this was a previously purchased or used item. I addressed this with the seller and with Amazon. Amazon responded promptly by refunding me a portion of my sale. The seller never responded.
Honest reviews on Touch Reading Pen English-Chinese with 8 books - Beginner Package
The positive is you can learn the sound of the pin yin which some of the Chinese school in my local area can't really teach accurately. This is more of a supplement to his learning. I thought the pin yin could have been more. When they read some of the sentences, it could be slower but it was a little too fast to pick up. They did pronounce the pinyin good!!!
