Has anyone used mandarinposter.com 's poster ?
How is it ? does it help ?

in my opinion this poster is a good idea if you have to impress your new gf or bf - nothing else.

skritter is much better. and if you really have to impess anybody you can just copy the wordlist at the end of your textbook and put it on the wall.

This pretty much sums up that no way I need one!

"copy the wordlist at the end of your textbook and put it on the wall."

I've been experimenting with doing just that recently, linking the words together by their common characters, coloured by HSK level. I quite like some of the results:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19769162/HSKChart/example1.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19769162/HSKChart/example2.png

@alanmd, That's awesome! How did you create it?

My Mandarin Poster was really encouraging when I was building up from around 500 characters, because I could see my progress developing and identify high-frequency characters to look into. It's a bit redundant now that I'm well over 1,000, but I'm still keeping track.

@adamd i think they are coming up with next 1500 chars as well soon..

@alanmd Going to second lechuan in saying that looks really cool and useful, as well as wondering how you made it!

@lechuan @Janerl I created them with a small Python script processes HSK lists and feeds the relationships into a graph generating library. HSK levels 1-3 work well together, levels 5 and 6 have too many words and have to be graphed alone (interestingly there are proportionally not many new characters with multiple 'connections' (edges) at these high levels).

Next month when I get some time I'll clean up and share the images and the script to generate them if anyone else is interested. I'm also going to print up a really big HSK 1-3 poster for myself...

@alanmd, count me in as interested in the script/images! good work.

When I was starting out (first 200 characters) I used to put all of my vocabulary on notecards and then post them on the wall. I called it my great wall of Chinese.

http://www.joshmcfarland.net/wp-content/gallery/cincinnati/dsc02876.jpg

I filled the entire wall before I moved to China and stopped doing it. I did it by importing my vocabulary into an Access database and then setting up reports that printed on notecards. It remembered which ones I had printed so I couldn't print duplicates.

I feel hand pasting every thing on the wall was beneficial, because I knew I took the time to do it. I'd always walk by it and see how fast I could read through them all on my way out the door.

the new generation of language learning books recommend this method of making your own mindmaps according to your interests and hobbies.
this way you build your very own vocabulary which sticks better.

@Sandeep: Thanks for the update. I don't know whether I'll need a second poster by the time I'm up around 1,500 characters, but I know people who would be very interested.

@alanmd: You're a genius. I'd love to see the final HSK 1–3 poster.

Hello Alan,
did you finish the script yet? I'd love to get my hands on it and generate such a beautiful poster by myself.
Thanks!

To those of you talking about printing the posters, I just want to inform you that printing large size posters (about A0, if my math serves me right) can be bought very cheaply (about 20 kuai a piece) in those small printing shops on university campuses all around China.
At least in Denmark you get to pay 15-20 times as much as that. So I thought some of you might like to know... And yes, I do have a large scale poster of myself on the wall in my room.

I haven't had much time but I have cleaned up the images a bit. I will release the individual images this week; they are usable but could be improved still. I can also release the script although it will require a bit of programming ability and tweaking to generate each graph; there are lots of ways to decide how to treat words and characters from different levels. With the wrong settings, the higher levels become overlly cluttered.

I have some useful but not completely polished images of graphs for HSK1 to HSK4. Sample images are here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kxoeckgy8qhug1i/9nUZAyWuzD

I have only shared the low resolution images in this album, email me (there is an address in my profile, and on the images) if you want any of the high res versions. They are about 600dpi at sizes of about 30" wide; should print clearly at any reasonable size. I can generate higher resolutions if needed.

I was initially intending to graph just my own Skritter word list, then I decided to add HSK word colouring, then I decided that graphing each HSK level would be fun. If someone wants a graph of a custom list such as your own Skritter list we could discuss this.

I have only got as far as HSK Level 4 so far, and I had to take a different strategy with HSK4 from the earlier levels. The graphs for HSK 2 and 3 include the words from previous levels, but this was just too complex with HSK4 show I only show the new HSK4 words. HSK5 and HSK6 are just a big cloud of nodes and edges at the moment, some thought is needed before they can be graphed.

The graphs show characters and words that are included as words in the HSK lists that I got from Lingomi http://lingomi.com/blog/hsk-lists-2010/
Each word, or character that is listed as a word, is given a solid border. A character that is common to two or more words, but not listed as a word on its own, is given a dashed border. Colouring uses the first HSK level where a word or character appears.

I generate these for my own use, but I would appreciate comments about any of this; the layout, colours, colouring strategy， difference between the way that HSK 3 and 4 are laid out, different way of handling previous levels for HSK 3 and 4, etc.

Cheers!

@Alan, those graphs look lovely. I'll try printing the low-res versions, and email you if I need higher-res (to impress my gf maybe ;-)).

Also I'd like to see a version with traditional characters.

OK, let me know how they work out.

I don't need it so I won't be spending any time on a traditional version. The easiest way to generate a traditional version would be to run a simplified->traditional script on the SVG file (just looks like html with embedded hanzi characters). I can give you an SVG version of any of the graphs.