I've been using a useful piece of software called "Chinese word extractor." It can be found here: http://www.zhtoolkit.com/apps/Chinese%20Word%20Extractor/

You can copy and paste Chinese text into the program. It will analyze the text using a common Chinese dictionary, and then give a list of all the words & chengyu that are in the text.

You can even create a list of words to ignore. I maintain this list with all of my Skritter words, so after the text is analyzed, it will only show me words I haven't learned yet.

I've been using this software to study short stories, as well as a textbook I'm working on now called Common Chinese Patterns 330. I really suggest you guys try it out - maybe copy and paste a news article into the text and see the words that come out. It's the most useful thing I use to study Chinese, after Skritter of course.

I've been using it awhile too - mentioned it here, in fact. Highly recommend everyone to give it a try.

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=170928405

Is the link broken or just inaccessible from behind the firewall?

@Evan: The problem is that the % signs in the link are replaced by "%25". Remove the "25" or copy and paste the link.

This link will work more consistently: http://www.zhtoolkit.com/posts/tools/