Romanization refers to transcribing the sounds of Chinese into the Roman letters used in English and the Romance Languages. Romanization solves a problem for learners who would like to learn the spoken language without having to learn thousands of complex Chinese characters. Users can practice the pronunciation of sounds learned in the main text of each lesson. Unfortunately the drill patterns are not consistent. Some drills display four different sounds followed by four example words in columns.
Some drills display five different sounds followed by four different tones of that sound in rows.
The Voice Animation activity allows users to see and hear how to pronounce the basic Chinese sounds. A short audio description of the proper tongue and lip position for coherent articulation accompanies each animation. These two Language Labs use the recording capacity of the computer to refine users' pronunciation of characters, individual and multiple phonetic sounds and entire sentences. Users can practice their own pronunciation by recording individual words, full sentences and phonetic patterns. However, the technical aspects involved in the recording process may be somewhat intimidating for a non-technical learner.